A Letter from the Netherlands: Recent Initiatives in Community Justice
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A Letter from the Netherlands: Recent Initiatives in Community Justice Hans Boutellier 1 This paper deals with the development, background and future of the project ‘Justice in the Community’. The first JIB (Justitie in de buurt) office opened in February 1997. Since then, the project has rapidly developed from a concept in its early stages to a physical reality, and there are now eight local offices. Introduction In the Netherlands, the mid-1990s saw a growth in public concern over the crime problem and the government’s response to it. The Van Traa Commission identified a ‘crisis in investigation’ and signified that wholesale improvements were necessary vis à vis investigation methods in terms of prosecution: ‘Authority and confidence need to be restored. Much needs to change in terms of rules, personal attitudes, behaviour and opinions … The crisis in investigation runs deep. It runs as deep as the legitimacy of the enforcement.’2 With these introductory words, the commission hit the nail on the head. A serious lack of confidence in the Ministry of Justice could be established. This legitimacy problem was not only related to organised crime. In general population surveys, crime and insecurity are by far the greatest cause for concern in the Netherlands,3 ahead even of health and social insurance. This is even more so in crime hot spots. The protest of the residents of Spangen in Rotterdam against the nuisance caused by drugs can be seen in this sense as a unique marker: residents demanded more protection from the state. In this demand for more security, the Ministry of Justice is often — rightly or not — the first point of address. It must be concluded that the distance from the ministry to these community problems is great — in both a mental and a physical sense. Yet the 1990s can also be characterised as a period of decentralisation, deconcentration and deregulation. For many policy areas — certainly in the socio-cultural sphere — powers and budgets have been transferred to local governments and local organisations. Given its central brief — enforcing order — the Ministry of Justice has traditionally been strongly centrally oriented. This is expressed in the district structure of the organisation. Despite this centralism, the Public Prosecutions Department or OM has, in particular, developed an increasingly community-linked way of working in practice. The lack of confidence among citizens, the relatively limited contribution to the (perception of) security and differences in scale together pressurised the organisations of the Ministry of Justice into the Justice in the Community ‘revolution’, in which speed of settlement, efficacy of approach and visibility for members of the public are recurrent slogans. The Ministry of Justice was forced as it were to develop new forms.
Copyright © 1999 Perpetuity Press Ltd
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Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal
The Justice in the Community programme In November 1995, Minister Sorgdrager of the Ministry of Justice spoke at a so-called str
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