Artikel

De ontmoeting van hulpverlening en (straf)recht

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Abstract

When social care and (criminal) law meet - In this contribution the discussion on the link between social care and criminal law is placed in the context of the development of the welfare state. The position is that social care and criminal law must be understood in their historical reality. This is the only way to avoid that developments towards a greater autonomy of social care vis-a-vis criminal law would be selectively steered into extensive interventionism and a more repressive approach. When striving for a better society and with the assumption that there is a consensus about how to fill in the concept of social care, the aims of social care and criminal law are historically in line. Repressive interventions are in this case to be seen as a corrective in those situations where social care is being defective. In the same line of thought social care is being regarded as a possible alternative for an approach which only pertains to criminal law. With the development of the perspective of human rights social care acquires an autonomous finality. In this approach the aim of welfare is the protection of the right to a decent existence, whereby the starting-point is not exclusively external criteria such as neediness, low schooling or deviant behaviour, but in which is also taken into account how the needy person experiences his own concrete situation. This approach requires an active and creative positioning from the part of social care and puts the discussion about its finality in the framework of the develop¬ ment of the welfare state.

How to Cite:

Bouverne-De Bie, M., (1997) “De ontmoeting van hulpverlening en (straf)recht”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 42(1), 23–33. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.95257