International crimes cause widespread victimisation and destruction, leading to social disruption that may take generations to repair. Over the years, the international community has established international courts to end the culture of impunity in relation to such crimes and to enforce a culture of accountability. A critical success factor for these courts is to ensure that they are perceived as legitimate in post-conflict societies.

Established after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi eth...

Addiction is pervasively present within the criminal justice sector, resulting in legal professionals regularly dealing with addicted defendants. Yet addiction is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon, resulting in controversies regarding its conceptualisation, and thus difficulties in addressing addiction-related crime in court. Over the last decades, addiction has increasingly been conceptualised as a brain disease, which arguably could alter the law’s current approach towards the crimin...

What practical problems are at stake in current EAW surrender proceedings? The research project Improving Mutual Recognition of European Arrest Warrants through Common Practical Guidelines of which the three country reports for Greece, the Netherlands and Poland are now published, is a follow-up of an earlier project that led to the publication of The European Arrest Warrant and In Absentia Judgments, Maastricht Law Series No.12 In AbsentiEAW. This project is broader than in absentia alone an...

The ImprovEAW-project concerns European Arrest Warrant proceedings in seven Member States (Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania). Maastricht Law Series No. 23 contains the country reports for Greece, the Netherlands and Poland. ImprovEAW is a follow up to an earlier project that focused on In Absentia Judgments (Maastricht Law Series No. 12). This book looks at various other aspects of the EAW surrender procedure that are problematic in practice, such as the ...

Emotions such as guilt and shame motivate us to keep our actions in line with normative expectations and are therefore essential in regulating our social and moral lives. Guilt, Shame and Juvenile Delinquency provides a compelling argument for the importance of considering guilt and shame as part of the etiological underpinnings of juvenile delinquency. It presents a comprehensive review of the criminological literature on the relationship between shame, guilt and offending, and it integrates...

Belgium has one of the highest numbers of Jihadist fighters per capita in Europe. A large group of often young men and women left Belgium for the IS Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. This book focuses on the law governing this situation, with its aim being twofold. First, it provides a comprehensive and detailed overview of the legal framework. Second, it provides suggestions on how to improve the framework, both with a view to effectiveness and with respect for fundamental rights and principles.

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Minors can be involved in judicial proceedings of a different Member State when they have – allegedly – committed an offence within the EU. Whereas the EU has developed instruments to facilitate cooperation between Member States in criminal matters, no specific instruments exist to deal with cross-border youth justice cases. This book assesses to what extent it is possible and feasible to develop EU cooperation in youth justice matters.

In EU youth justice: The personal scope of EU crimin...

A transfer of criminal proceedings may take place between a judicial authority from one Member State and a judicial authority in another Member State when it is in the interest of a proper administration of justice that a criminal offence is further investigated and prosecuted in the second Member State.

There was a general feeling among experts on judicial cooperation in the Member States that the current practice of transferring criminal proceedings could and should be improved. Researchers...

The European Union is today a major player in many policy areas, going from classic economic fields as competition policy, agriculture and fisheries policy to new emergent fields as environmental policy, arterial intelligence policy, security and foreign policy and criminal justice policy. These policies comes with an increasing level of EU regulation, having also a substantive impact on the harmonization of national policies and regulations. This expansion of EU competence naturally also pl...

All over the world, governments impose punishments on their citizens for transgressions of the criminal law. Consensus exists that this sanctioning should be in accordance with the principle of legality and the rule of law. However, governments around the world struggle with providing foreseeability and non-arbitrariness in their sentencing systems. This continuous struggle raises the question how - and to what extent - foreseeability and non-arbitrariness must be guaranteed. Not only in rela...