Publications
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Can European human rights instruments limit the power of the state to punish? A tale of two Europes Vrije Universiteit Brussel
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 increasingly important penal actor, fostering a common approach to transnational forms of ...
Letter to the Minister of Justice Vrije Universiteit Brussel
European and United Nations monitoring of penal and prison policies as a source of an inverted panopticon? Vrije Universiteit Brussel
‘One cannot legislate kindness’: Ambiguities in European legal instruments on non-custodial sanctions Vrije Universiteit Brussel
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 penal values, culminating in 1992 with the adoption of the European Rules on Community Sanctions ...
Punishment, legitimate policies and values: Penal moderation, dignity and human rights Vrije Universiteit Brussel
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 reductionist penal policy in order to curb penal inflation. Subsequent macro-sociological analyses and ...
Mixed system: Belgium. Who is in charge? Conditional release in Belgium as a complex bifurcation practice Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Decisions to release prisoners are a highly sensitive and often debated issue in Belgium. The early release system has undergone some fundamental changes over the last two decades. Since February 2007, independent multidisciplinary sentence implementation courts decide on the detention trajectory of offenders sentenced to more than three years of imprisonment. However, the minister of Justice still has the authority to decide on most other ...
Human dignity and prisoners’ rights – A European Perspective Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Protecting the dignity and human rights of prisoners poses difficult challenges. Degradation is a hallmark of all punishment and especially of imprisonment. Prisons as total institutions entail distinctive power relations between staff and inmates that increase risks of violations of prisoners’ dignity. Protection of human dignity is complicated by difficulties in defining the term: the sense of personal dignity experienced subjectively by the ...