Annie Hondeghem & Xavier Rousseaux 
Modernisation of the Criminal Justice Chain and the Judicial System [PDF ebook] 
New Insights on Trust, Cooperation and Human Capital

This book focuses on one part of the judicial system: the criminal justice chain. This involves all the activities and actors dealing with policing, prosecution, judgment, and sanctioning of crimes. In the last decades, reforms have been implemented in several European countries. In Belgium, for example, there was the so-called Octopus reform in 1998. The police was restructured, leading to an integration of the police forces on a national and local level. New steering instruments were introduced, such as regional security plans. With regard to the sanctioning of crimes, a new institution was installed, called the sentence implementation court. This book evaluates these reforms and discusses the current reform on the reorganization of the judicial landscape. In addition, it examines the relation between trust and distrust and the application to the judicial system. It discusses the human capital aspect of the system, by means of a study on the prosopography of the Belgian magistrates that analyses the Magistracy as socio-professional group, and focuses on situations of system building, transformations under constraint (occupations), and transfers (colonial experience). Lastly, the book presents a comparative study of Belgium and France regarding the new techniques and instruments that are needed to accelerate the judicial response time and to ensure that the judicial system delivers its services on time.

Table des matières

Foreword by High magistrate Introduction (Hondeghem, Rousseaux, Schoenaers).- Part I: Reforms in the criminal justice system in Belgium and abroad.- Ch 1: Croquet & Schoenaers: Local Security Governance in Belgium. Analysis of Inter-institutional Cooperation.- Ch 2: Bastard & Dubois: The execution of sentence: from policy to practice.- Ch 3: de Maillard & colleagues: Introduction of performance systems in the French police [a1] Part II: Reforms in the judicial system in Belgium and abroad.- Ch 4: Broucker & Hondeghem: From Octopus to the reorganization of the judicial landscape.- Ch 5: Vesentini & Gautron & Mouhanna: Accelerating the judicial response time.- Ch 6: Kettiger: The position of the prosecutor’s office in the new Swiss criminal justice chain.- Ch 7: Langbroek: Accountabilities and professional values in judicial organisations.- Part III: Cooperation and trust.- Ch 8: Vanschoenwinkel & Hondeghem & Maesschalck: Trust in the criminal justice chain: focus on the cooperation between police and prosecution officers.- Ch 9: Callens & Bouckaert & Parmentier: Trust in the criminal justice chain: focus on the juvenile prosecution office and juvenile courts.- Ch 10: Hutton: the relationship between justifications for ‘just’ decision-making based on process and justifications based on trust.- Part IV : Human capital : Prosopography, Crisis, and Modernization of Justice: the Belgian Magistrates as socio-professional group. Rousseaux: Introduction.- Ch 11 : Berger: Conflicts, tensions and solidarities: socioprofessional study of «Belgian» magistrates under French Revolutionary regime.- Ch 12 : Ngongo & Montel & Piret & Le Polain: Belgian Magistrates in Colonial Environment.- Ch 13: Bost & Peters: Belgian Magistrates under German occupations.- Ch 14 : Muller & François: Prosopography in Digital Age : bilans, prospects and insights about the database « Belgian Magistrates ».- Ch 15: Farcy & Stevens & Weidenfeld Venema Belgian magistracy seen from abroad: interdisciplinary and international perspective[S2].