“I had never encountered so much resistance before”
Is there class-based justice in the Netherlands? Investigative journalism platform Investico explored that question. Journalist Belia Heilbron says, “Now that we know class-based justice exists, it’s finally being discussed.”
Lower social standing
“If someone receives a harsher sentence solely because of their lower social standing, that’s what we call class-based justice. There were suspicions that this was happening in the Netherlands, but there was no data to back it up. Normally, a yes-or-no research question isn’t very exciting—you’d rather dig into the how or why. But in this case, we deliberately chose to ask that basic question.”
“We analyzed nearly 1.3 million cases: about 1.2 million decisions by the Public Prosecution Service, 500,000 court rulings, and more than 200,000 prison sentences handed down between 2013 and 2022. It was a massive project, and we could only take it on thanks to support from funders like Adessium.”
Concerning results
“What did we find? Suspects with a migration background and lower levels of education were, on average, three times more likely to be imprisoned for the same offense compared to highly educated suspects without a migration background. Even more concerning than our findings was the judiciary’s lack of transparency. As a journalist, I had never encountered so much resistance before.”
“It wasn’t until after our publication that the debate really took off. Much to my surprise, lawyers, judges, and prosecutors actually opened up during our event at debate centre Pakhuis de Zwijger. ‘I’ve been saying this for years,’ one judge said.”
Wide reach
“For this investigation, we partnered with opinion weekly De Groene Amsterdammer and news program NOS op 3. NOS op 3 has a huge following on social media, and their detailed explainer video on the topic hopefully reached some of the people who could be affected by class-based justice.”
“To be honest, I didn’t expect the investigation to have such a big impact. Professional associations for judges are still inviting us to present our findings. Now that we know class-based justice exists, it’s finally a topic of conversation.”