Young Adults in the Justice System: The Interplay between Scientific Insights, Legal Reform and Implementation in Practice in The Netherlands

Date01 August 2021
DOI10.1177/1473225419897316
Published date01 August 2021
https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225419897316
Youth Justice
2021, Vol. 21(2) 172 –191
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225419897316
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Young Adults in the Justice
System: The Interplay between
Scientific Insights, Legal Reform
and Implementation in Practice
in The Netherlands
Eva P. Schmidt , Stephanie E. Rap
and Ton Liefaard
Abstract
In recent years, there has been increased attention for the position of adolescents and young adults in the
justice system. The Netherlands implemented the Act on Adolescent Criminal Law in 2014, making it possible
to sentence young adults up to the age of 23 at the time of the offence as juveniles. This article addresses
the most recent Dutch reforms in order to identify key challenges to consider when accommodating young
adults in the justice system. It is aimed to highlight the important lessons to be learned from the Dutch
experience with a flexible approach to sentencing adolescents and young adults.
Keywords
adolescent development, adolescents, children’s rights, juvenile justice, sentencing
Introduction
In recent years, age limits in juvenile justice have attracted increased attention from aca-
demics as well as from international organisations, national governments, policy makers
and civil society organisations (see, for example, Cipriani, 2009; CRC Committee, 2019;
McDiarmid, 2013). This attention concerns both the minimum age of criminal responsi-
bility (MACR) and the upper age limit of the juvenile justice system. Research into the
neurological as well as the psychological development of adolescents1 has shown that
legal age limits do not always align with the capacities of adolescents to take responsi-
bility for offending behaviour (Loeber et al., 2012a). In most countries, the upper age
limit for children to be dealt with in the juvenile justice system coincides with the age of
majority (i.e. mostly 18 years of age; CRC Committee, 2018), whereas the MACR differs
Corresponding author:
Eva P. Schmidt, Department of Child Law, Leiden Law School, Leiden University, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Email: e.p.schmidt@law.leidenuniv.nl
897316YJJ0010.1177/1473225419897316Youth JusticeSchmidt et al.
research-article2020
Original Article
Schmidt et al. 173
substantially per country and even within countries (see Cipriani, 2009). Yet, recently,
some countries have decided to make changes to the applicable upper age limits, either to
better accommodate adolescents in the transition from childhood to adulthood in the jus-
tice system (with reference to insights from developmental or neurological research), or
to apply adult criminal law to juveniles (e.g. 16- or 17-year-olds) as part of a more repres-
sive approach towards juvenile delinquency (see, for example, the Juvenile Justice (Care
and Protection of Children) Act of 2015 in India and similar debates in Brazil2).
One of the countries that has implemented changes regarding the upper age limit of the
juvenile justice system is the Netherlands. Under Dutch criminal law, the possibility to
apply juvenile sentencing to young adults from the age of 18 up to 21 already existed, but
in 2014 the upper age limit was extended to the age of 23 (Act on Adolescent Criminal
Law [Wet adolescentenstrafrecht]; article 77c of the Dutch Criminal Code (DCC)).3 The
possibility to sentence 16- and 17-year-olds under adult criminal law, which has existed
since the introduction of the juvenile justice system at the beginning of the 20th century,
was retained in article 77b of the DCC.4 The Act is based on the idea of providing maxi-
mum flexibility in sentencing adolescents just below and above the age of 18 (see Dutch
House of Representatives, 2012: 1–2) and its core notion was to approach adolescents as
a ‘separate’ target group in the Dutch justice system (Dutch House of Representatives,
2012: 1). As a result, the Netherlands has developed a flexible system for the sentencing
of 16- to 23-year-olds by making available the sentences from both the juvenile, and the
regular ‘adult’ criminal law system, for all individuals in this age cohort.
To sketch the context: in the Netherlands, like in other Western European countries,
juvenile delinquency rates have declined sharply over the past 10 years (see also McAra
and McVie, 2018: 74, 77–79). Since 2007, police statistics show a drop of around 65 per
cent in the number of juvenile suspects between the ages of 12 and 18 at the time of the
alleged offence.5 This drop can be observed across all types of crimes, among both boys
and girls and among juveniles with different ethnic backgrounds (Berghuis and De
Waard, 2017; Smit and Kessels, 2018).6 In 2017, a total of 19,000 juveniles were regis-
tered by the police as juvenile suspects (Smit and Kessels, 2018). For both 15- to 17-year-
olds and 18- to 24-year-olds, 20.8 persons per 1,000 were registered as suspects in 2017.
Adolescents in these age categories are therefore represented most in the crime statistics,
compared with all other age groups (Smit and Kessels, 2018).
Hence, the identification of adolescents as a separate group within the criminal justice
system was felt necessary because of their overrepresentation in crime statistics (see
Loeber et al., 2013). In addition, recent scientific insights concerning adolescent (brain)
development played an important role (Dutch House of Representatives, 2012: 1–2, 12–13;
Kempen, 2014: 2; Uit Beijerse, 2016: 5). These insights made it clear that development
into adulthood is not completed by the age of 18, but rather continues until (roughly) the
age of 25. The Dutch legislator recognised the relationship between the incomplete devel-
opment of adolescents and (a large share of) criminal offences committed by this group,
the so-called ‘adolescence-limited crime’ (Dutch House of Representatives, 2012: 12–13;
see also Moffitt, 1993). However, while it has been noted that the legislative reforms of
2014 ‘make the Dutch system a leader in raising the age’ (Matthews et al., 2018: 7), com-
pared with other countries in Europe, it turns out in practice that juvenile criminal

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