Samenvatting

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.