Deciding on (Dutch) Diversion

• In Event: Deciding on (long-term) forensic care in the Netherlands

Abstract

In 2020 a new law was introduced in the Netherlands which included an article that allowed criminal courts to give a care authorization for mandatory mental health care within the regular mental health care system: article 2.3 of the Forensic Care Act (FCA). When looking at the rationale behind this, one cannot help but notice the similarities with the diversion framework that pleads to divert persons who suffer from mental illness from the criminal justice system into the regular mental health care system. The effects of diversion have often been the topic of research, but little is known about the decision-making process in various diversion initiatives. This is problematic because if one wants to know what works, it first has to be clear who it has to work for and there seems to be no (inter)national consensus on who diversion should be used for. Partially this can be explained by the great differences in eligibility criteria between and within jurisdictions. In addition, there is discretionary space for the decision-makers to decide how to work with those criteria. With article 2.3 FCA there is no consensus either on who it should be applied for and there has been a lot of debate on that topic before and after the installment. Some professionals even feared that this article would cause ‘criminals’ to enter regular mental health care facilities. This research therefore aimed to shed light on the decision-making process of article 2.3 FCA, while comparing it to the international diversion framework. It contains four subprojects: 1) a scoping review on international diversion decision-making processes, 2) a research on the case law of article 2.3 FCA, 3) a qualitative vignette study with decision-makers, and 4) a case study with those who article 2.3 FCA was applied for.

Author

• Vera Oosterhuis, Universiteit Leiden/WODC