Publicaties

By comparing criminal careers of individuals who have sexually offended to those who have not sexually offended, the current study examines whether their criminal career parameters and trajectories differ. National conviction records (entire criminal history and about 18 years of follow-up after index offence) from Belgium and the Netherlands are used to describe and compare the criminal careers of individuals involved in sexual or non-sexual ...

Dit editoriaal leidt het tweede deel van het themanummer over ontwikkelingen in de strafuitvoering in en belicht enkele hete hangijzers in onderzoek (o.a. detentieklimaat, ...).

Phoning behind bars : an exploratory study into in-cell telephony Information and communication technologies have begun to enter into the penitentiary systems, adding a digital dimension to the detention experience (Maes et al., 2019). For some time now, prisoners in Belgium have access to television, radio and telephony after payment (Maes, 2009). Newly opened prisons even run a digital platform for prisoners, called PrisonCloud, which, ...

In deze bijdrage blikken we terug op recente wijzigingen in de besluitvorming omtrent uitgaansvergunningen (verder: UV) en penitentiaire verloven (verder: PV). Als startpunt nemen we de bevindingen van een onderzoek uit 2012-2013 dat door onderzoekers van het Nationaal Instituut voor Criminologie en Criminalistiek (NICC) werd uitgevoerd.6 Die studie kwam er op vraag van het Directoraat-generaal Penitentiaire Inrichtingen (kortweg: DG EPI), naar ...

In this article, the decision-making process of prison leave is discussed, and a discussion is given of the current impact of covid 19-measures for prison leave.

This is the editorial introduction of a special issue that focuses on prison leave as it is applied in 8 European countries across the continent.

Prison leave decision-making remains largely unknown, operating as a black box in which applications enter and decisions come out, without knowing what happens in between. Prison leave decision-making in Belgium is no exception to this. After a prisoner submits an application for prison leave, the prison director has to provide a written opinion about it, which is then sent on to the Service for the Management of Imprisonment (SMI), which ...

In this chapter, I set out to assess whether and how criminological research results are put to use in sex offender policies. This focus connects to research related to what has been termed ‘research utilization’ (notably, Weiss, 1979) and to debates about ‘public criminology’ (e.g. Loader and Sparks, 2010; Uggen and Inderbitzin, 2010). A first section sketches elements of the public imagery and a list of assumptions about sex offenders in the ...

Background: Prisons in Belgium are increasingly affected by the digital turn, which challenges living and working in it. Initiatives include e-learning, in-cell telephone, and a video call-project. Newly opened prisons in Belgium even run a digital platformfor prisoners, called PrisonCloud. So far, research studying digitalisation in prison is scarce. The aim of this research is therefore to assess how prisoners’ access to and use of digital ...