Little research exists on what works in the supervision of offenders with debt problems. This qualitative study aims to provide insight into the barriers probation officers and clients experience during supervision regarding debt and the support that clients need. Interviews were conducted with 33 Dutch probation officers and 16 clients. The results show that debt often negatively influences clients’ lives and hinders their resocialization. Probation officers lack effective methods to support clients with debt problems. To adequately help clients with debt problems, probation officers should obtain more knowledge about effective interventions and collaborate more closely with debt specialists from the probation supervision outset.
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During an interview at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service one student questioned Prime Minister Rutte about an official apology for slavery. The Dutch Prime Minister assured that each island-nation to whom the Kingdom apologized “has full power to decide to leave the Kingdom. They are not colonized. They are independent.” Rutte described the current role of The Netherlands as that of a “gateway” to bring their products to Europe. The emphasis on trade relationship smacks of neo-colonial interests. Rutte’s portrayal of The Netherlands acting as the “in” to the European market for the former colonies is far from the recovery that one would expect for the descendants of the enslaved. In fact, the Slavery Past Dialogue made a number of recommendations to the Dutch Kingdom, including “active prevention of discrimination and institutional racism throughout society” and “the establishment of a Kingdom Fund […] for structural and sustainable financing of recovery measures.” The Dutch Prime Minister’s comments belie a singular focus on trade with the Caribbean nations rather than a holistic approach, looking at non-pecuniary interests involving the well-being of the descendants and the societies in which they live today. The “republicanization” serves as a backdrop to the years-long journey during which the Dutch government (and the Dutch crown) seemingly dragged their feet, refusing to issue a formal apology for the trade of Africans by the Dutch West Indies corporation. That much-solicited apology was finally issued in December 2022, despite warnings that any gesture that excluded reparations would not be favorably received by the Dutch Caribbean nations.
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This paper reveals how the automatising of protocols ignited a public conflict between Dutch banks and their Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) clients in the years after the Global Financial Crisis. The bank’s “infirmary departments” for Financial Restructuring and Recovery (FR&R) were accused of (mal)treating SMEs. The conflict resulted in no formal regulatory or legal change despite public support. Instead, the banks created self-regulation to improve communication with SMEs, leading to shifts in governing FR&R for SMEs. This way, the banks mitigated significant negative symptoms of automation and solved the conflict with the SMEs while keeping FR&R and ongoing automation intact. The research uses an interdisciplinary analytical framework to understand national financial conflicts in a digitalised (business) world. It contributes to the theory of institutionalising values in discursive contests between action fields. The paper highlights the material and causes of normative conflicts of interest among critical actors in established public-private networks through discourse analysis and process tracing.
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