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Introduction
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Publications
Publications (63)
While scholars have pointed out the factors determining the impediments to and efficacy of international human rights rules, poor attention has been paid to human rights violations relating to transfers between prison and psychiatric detention. There is a lack of intersection of policy spheres in this regard that should be remedied. Our contributio...
Over the last 30 years, prisoners’ dignity and fundamental rights have increasingly been protected by European human rights bodies such as the European Court of Human Rights and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This protection is aimed particularly at the traditional power relati...
This paper analyses the shortcomings of European suicide prevention policy in places of detention, a topic that has been neglected in the European legal literature. Four interrelated characteristics of the suicide prevention policies developed by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) are responsible for the failures of these policies. First, t...
The power to punish is traditionally seen as an essential prerogative of the national state. Over the last three decades, judicial and standard-setting bodies of the Council of Europe (CoE) have sought increasingly, at a regional level, to monitor and control the power of European states to punish. In parallel, the European Union (EU) has become an...
Belgian sentencing is in a period of turmoil. Belgian judges value their independence. Most believe in the desirability of individualized sentencing and resent intrusions on their autonomy. Although many continue to hold classsical views about the purposes of sentencing, new practices and laws, triggered partly by several decades of rising imprison...
Sinds de inwerkingtreding van de Euthanasiewet
van 28 mei 2002 in België, werd er een juridisch
kader voorzien voor euthanasie. Onder de strikte
voorwaarden van de wet is euthanasie door een
arts niet strafbaar indien de patiënt zich in een
medisch uitzichtloze toestand bevindt van aanhoudend
en ondraaglijk lijden dat niet kan gelenigd
worden, en d...
Twenty years ago, we described how changing prison populations in western countries result from a complex interaction between criminality, external (demography, economy), internal (criminal justice policies) and intermediate factors (public opinion, politics and media). While the outcome of these interactions is contingent, we advocated a reduction...
En Belgique, l’euthanasie peut etre appliquee legalement par des medecins a la demande expresse et repetee d’un patient qui se trouve dans une situation medicale sans issue et fait etat d’une souffrance physique ou psychique constante et insupportable qui ne peut etre apaisee et qui resulte d’une affection accidentelle ou pathologique grave et incu...
In this article we examine the characteristics, challenges and added value of qualitative prison research in a Belgian context. As the many dynamics and challenges of qualitative research are often underreported in academic publications, we pay particular attention to the research processes and the pains and gains of qualitative prison research. Fi...
Non-custodial sanctions, particularly those that are implemented in the community, have different historical roots in common and civil law jurisdictions. Nevertheless, various European instruments seek to shape the imposition and implementation of such sanctions uniformly across the continent. These instruments reflect an apparent consensus about p...
The role and impact of CPT are analysed in interaction with the other instruments for protection of prisoners' rights of the Council of Europe: the European Court of Human Rights and the Recommendations by the Committee of Ministers. The analysis demonstrates a mutual normative reinforcement over the last twenty years between these judicial, politi...
European structures for control of prison administration: the role and the impact of the Council of Europe and the Committee for the Prevention of Torture
The role and impact of CPT are analysed in interaction with the other instruments for protection of prisoners’ rights of the Council of Europe: the European Court of Human Rights and the Recommen...
Is there something distinctive about penology in Europe? Do Europeans think about punishment and penal policy in a different way to people in other parts of the globe? If so, why is this the case and how does it work in practice? This book addresses some major and pressing issues that have been emerging in recent years in the interdisciplinary fiel...
Since the eighties, Belgium faces an increasing number of foreign prisoners. Accordingly, the number of foreign prisoners without a legal permit of residence, who are incarcerated in Belgian prisons due to (suspicion of) violation of the Belgian Criminal law is also rising. With regard to early release, all prisoners fall under the Belgian penitent...
Following the Dutroux case in 1996, the Belgian parole system was thoroughly reformed in 1998 and 2006. Decision-making was transferred from the Minister of Justice to multidisciplinary "Sentence Implementation Courts", supervision and follow up of conditionally released prisoners was tightened and the proportion of recalls increased. Recall of con...
Forum cOlUMN | EDDY VaN caMp Opportuun Het stond in een kwaliteitskrant en dus zou u het ook gelezen moeten hebben. Dat gepubliceerde gesprek met de minister, en niet de eerste de beste. Een beslagen kenner van het politieke democratisch gebeuren en ook van de rechtsstaat. Jurist trouwens. En natuurlijk wordt ook hem de vraag gesteld wat te denken...
Criminal justice has traditionally been associated with the nation state, its legitimacy and its authority. The growing internationalisation of crime control raises crucial and complex questions about the future shape of justice and urban governance as these are experienced at local, national and international realms. The emergence of new internati...
Criminological literature of the last decade is rife with tales and analyses of ‘increased’ or ‘new’ punitiveness in western countries over the last 20 or 30 years. This article starts from the finding that levels of punitiveness vary greatly between countries and are correlated with welfare investments and political economy, different democratic p...
published online [http://www.jura.fu-berlin.de/fachbereich/einrichtungen/strafrecht/lehrende/drenkhahnk/Online-Publikationen/index.html]
Starting from the Belgian criminal justice system, we propose to examine six important transformations: defining the penal sanction is more difficult than ever (1) and sanctions and measures are increasingly diverse (2), a feature which also leads to an increasing diversity of the penal aims (3). At the procedural level, trends in (de)judicialisati...
Belgian imprisonment rates increased from sixty-five to ninety-five per 100,000 population in the past quarter century, and the use of pretrial detention and long prison sentences increased. Notorious crimes, most prominently the Dutroux case, produced mass demonstrations, and a right-wing political party repeatedly urged harsher policies. In contr...
Official discourse in many European countries advocates the use of imprisonment as a measure of last resort. This principle
is also at the core of several Recommendations of the Council of Europe and a Resolution of the European Parliament. In practice,
detention rates in European countries vary greatly, and many countries have witnessed an increas...
Searching for solutions to Belgian prison overcrowding, the authors examine how both the admissions into remand and the average length of remand custody can be reduced. Belgian alternatives to remand custody are compared to foreign initiatives aiming either at limiting the application of remand custody (judicial authorisation, regional quota, legal...
L'insécurité et la victime sont devenues des thèmes politiques importants depuis les années 1980, amenant une politique criminelle axée sur l'efficacité, la célérité et la visibilité de la réaction pénale face à la petite criminalité urbaine. Cette dernière est en effet considérée par les politiques comme responsable des sentiments d'insécurité et...
It should be noted at the outset that private prisons are not a new phenomena. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contract and lease agreements between prison authorities and private entrepreneurs were common, either for the use of inmate labour, or for transportation. Public awareness of abuses, demands for better standards,...
Die Untersuchung befasst sich mit dem Anstieg der Zahl der zu langen Freiheitsstrafen verurteilten Gefangenen in verschiedenen westlichen Landern. Was die Ursachen dieser Entwicklung betrifft, so scheinen sich insbesondere zwei Faktoren auf alien Ebenen des Strafjustizsystems auszuwirken. Zuallererst fuhrt offensichtlich die Abschaffung der Todejss...
Dans cette contribution nous nous intéresserons à l'incidence des droits de l'homme sur le droit pénal matériel, c'est-à-dire sur le choix des incriminations et peines par le législateur et le choix des peines par le juge. Cette analyse nous paraît importante au regard de la montée en Europe d'un 'Etat pénal', bien décrit dans les ouvrages de David...
