Yannick van den Brink awarded NWO Rubicon grant to conduct research at University of Cambridge
Dr Yannick van den Brink, Assistant Professor at the Department of Child Law, has been awarded a grant from the Rubicon programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) to conduct research for a period of eighteen months at the University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology, in the United Kingdom.
Van den Brink will study the implications of the principle of equality in juvenile criminal law. Juveniles from ethnic minorities, juveniles with a limited mental capacity and juveniles from a disadvantaged social-economic background are vastly overrepresented in Dutch youth custodial institutions. This can partly be explained by inequality in the decision-making process in the juvenile criminal justice system. In contrast to England and Wales and the United States, for example, no policy has been developed in the Netherlands that is specifically aimed at reducing this kind of inequality.
Van den Brink will look at how the principle of equality can be safeguarded in decision making in relation to the pre-trial detention of juvenile suspects, without compromising the pursuit of individual arrangements that is characteristic of juvenile criminal law. To this end he will also carry out empirical research at juvenile courts in England and the United States in order to explore to what extent British and American policy strategies aimed at reducing inequality could be applied in Dutch juvenile criminal law.
His research is expected to commence in September 2019 and to be finalized by 28 February 2021. Van den Brink’s supervisor throughout this period will be Dr Caroline Lanskey, Lecturer of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology.