Inequalities in youth criminal justice decisions are well-documented and disproportionally impact socially disadvantaged children. Children from ethnic minorities, children with disabilities and children from low socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be qualified a suspect, prosecuted, detained and sentenced to prison. How are inequalities in youth criminal justice decisions produced? How do they move across different stages of the process? And how do they interact with inequalities in the educational system and child welfare system? This research seeks answers to these questions, which are much-needed to develop equal, fair and effective youth criminal justice practices in the Netherlands and elsewhere.

Youths’ involvement in organized crime is worrisome, as it not only disrupts a healthy development, but also aggravates youths’ criminal behavior, and makes it harder to return to living a crime-free life. Social ties play an import role in the way youths get and stay involved in organized crime, that is why interventions are needed that target the youth, but also the youth’s social environment. We examine hotspots and mechanisms underlying organized crime involvement and use the knowledge gained to improve and implement intervention strategies. This way, the proposed project directly contributes to effectively decreasing youths’ involvement in organized crime.

Youths’ involvement in organized crime is worrisome, as it not only disrupts a healthy development, but also aggravates youths’ criminal behavior, and makes it harder to return to living a crime-free life. Social ties play an import role in the way youths get and stay involved in organized crime, that is why interventions are needed that target the youth, but also the youth’s social environment. We examine hotspots and mechanisms underlying organized crime involvement and use the knowledge gained to improve and implement intervention strategies. This way, the proposed project directly contributes to effectively decreasing youths’ involvement in organized crime.

Three out of four arrestees in the Netherlands were never involved in crime before they reached adulthood. However, the general assumption in criminological research is that crime emerges early in life. Prevention and intervention are therefore mainly focused on youths. Consequently, we know the least on the largest group of offenders: those with an adult crime onset. The processes that cause juveniles and adolescents to offend are well studied but we hardly have data or theories on these processes for offenders who initiate criminal behaviour in adulthood. However, there is substantial evidence that adult onset is more common than currently assumed and therefore research should focus on its explanations and crime prevention strategies should refocus their efforts in order to reduce crime. The aim of my proposed research is threefold. Firstly, I will reliably assess the size of the population of adult-onset offenders. Secondly, I will characterize both adult-onset offenders as well as their criminal careers. Thirdly, I will employ a multi-method approach in which I both test the impact of general risk factors on adult criminal career development, as well as seek novel explanations for adult-onset offending through interviews with adult-onset offenders themselves. I have access to both quantitative population based prosecution data, as well as an existing data source that captures criminal careers for a large representative sample of offenders, that I will supplement with interview data. This will provide a unique and sound empirical base for the proposed study. The findings will be made available to policy makers and practitioners through a national workshop with police officers, the prosecution service and the probation service, in which their practical use for both prevention and intervention in adult-onset will be outlined.

Law enforcement is faced with huge amounts of data from online platforms, digital marketplaces, or communication services. Finding evidence in such large collections of text, images, and other data and bringing it to court is a time-consuming process. Artificial Intelligence tools are a promising way to make this more efficient and effective. But currently no clear legal regulations for AI tools are in place. In AI4Intelligence we let AI tool development, the use of the tools by investigators, and legal regulations go hand-in-hand so investigations lead to trustworthy evidence that is admissible in court.