Lessons from Italy for fighting organized, undermining crime in the Netherlands

Dr Laura Peters is researching Italy's criminal justice approach to mafia crime.

In the Netherlands, we are seeing more and more organized and undermining crime. Think of the large-scale cocaine trade, the substantial out-and-out problem in the port of Rotterdam and everything related to it. The question is how we should deal with this in an effective but constitutional way. Currently, our criminal law is insufficiently effective in parts to deal with this phenomenon properly. Italy, a country that, like the Netherlands, is bound by the ECHR, has much longer and much more experience in fighting serious organized and undermining mafia crime. What are those experiences and what can we learn from them?

Laura's research focuses on answering those questions. She studies Italian legislation and case law, speaks with Italian experts and then makes the legal transition to the Dutch legal system.

Laura Peters is associate professor at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen. She also advises various parties in the field of criminal justice comparison.

In this video, Laura talks more about her research and its outcomes.