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This paper tries to ascertain the overall impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Dutch criminal justice system. In the Netherlands, the first case of COVID-19 was reported in February 2020. On March 16, 2020, the Netherlands went into its first lockdown which lasted until approximately June 15, 2020. The effect of the COVID-19 crisis on crime is ambiguous. Whereas less crime was expected in the physical world, more crime was expected in the online world due to the crisis. During the first lockdown all government offices were closed, including the court buildings. Only urgent criminal cases were handled by the courts. Urgent criminal cases refer to those cases where the rights of suspects were violated or the safety of victims was endangered. During the first lockdown, the backlog of court cases increased, which adversely affected all criminal justice institutions that were responsible for executing court verdicts, like the prison and probation services. This paper assesses the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on crime and the criminal justice system. First, the effect of COVID-19 on crime is assessed by performing a regression analysis on monthly crime data. Second, using a long-standing forecasting model for the criminal justice system, an estimation is made of the long term impact of the changes in the level of crime, of the shifts towards different types of crime, as well as of the reduction of the prosecutor and court backlogs, and of a possible economic downturn and increasing unemployment for the complete criminal justice system.

Conflitos entre policiais e operadores da justiça são recorrentes nos estudos sobre o sistema de justiça criminal. Por outro lado, não são raras as pesquisas que mostram como uma instituição tende a ratificar o trabalho da outra. Realizamos uma revisão bibliográfica dos artigos publicados no Brasil nos últimos dez anos (2011-2021) que abordam as relações entre esses dois atores. Neste texto, buscamos compreender: 1) como essa relação tem sido explorada nos trabalhos acadêmicos; 2) as bases dos conflitos e como eles se reproduzem nas percepções e nas práticas cotidianas do sistema de justiça; e 3) se as inovações implementadas nesse período impactaram essa relação. Conflicts between police officers and justice workers are recurrent in studies on the Brazilian criminal justice system. On the other hand, studies that point out that one institution tends to ratify the work of another are also not rare. In Conflicts and Confluences between the Police and the Judiciary in Studies Published between 2011 and 2021 we carried out a literature review of the papers published in Brazil in the last ten years (2011-2021) which address the relationships between these two actors. In this text, we seek to comprehend: 1) how this relationship has been explored; 2) the basis of these conflicts and how they take place in the system and in the daily practices of these organizations; and 3) whether innovations implemented during this period have affected this relationship.

Purpose This paper aims to describe and analyse Swiss prisoners’ and experts’ views on collective punishment, the practice where a group is punished for one person’s transgression. Design/methodology/approach A series of qualitative interviews with prisoners and stakeholders are reported following thematic analysis. Findings Despite being forbidden by the Geneva Convention and other international instruments, participants from this study expressed the view that collective punishment continues to be practiced in some form in prisons in Switzerland, violating the rights of prisoners via unjust and arbitrary decision-making, unjust rules, inequalities in prison structures and continuation of incarceration based on the behaviour of others. Families can also be both victims and vectors of collective punishment, and prolonging the detention of prisoners who would otherwise have been released because of rare high-profile cases of reoffending can also be considered a form of collective punishment. Originality/value These significant findings suggest that collective punishment in various forms continues to be used in Swiss prisons.

Vehicle-tree collisions are the most common type of road crash with fixed obstacle in Czech Republic. Based on the literature review and using real world in-depth crash data, this paper aims to define factors, which significantly influence the injury severity of single vehicle-tree crashes. In-depth data provide a comprehensive view to the failure on the system infrastructure—human—vehicle related to crash, the in-depth crash database include very detailed information related to infrastructure, vehicle, human failure and crash participants characteristics and their medical condition and also crash reconstruction. Multinomial logistic regression and generalized linear mixed model were used to determine the individual effect of each predictor. The statistically significant variables were the day period, trunk diameter and impact speed. Using multinomial logistic regression shows also vehicle age as statistically significant. Obtained results can help to efficiently direct countermeasures not only on the road infrastructure—e.g. speed reduction in selected locations with specified tree character. However, the emphasis should be also focused on driver behaviour.