'Penalty order is an unreasonable punishment for student house residents'
Violating corona rules earns students a criminal citation. That remedy is often far too harsh, argue Jordi l'Homme and Justin Kötter of Dekens Pijnenburg Criminal Lawyers.
Residents of student houses nationwide are struggling with the intelligent lockdown we find ourselves in, according to many media reports. Also in this newspaper, students wondered How feasible it is to keep the 1.5-meter distance.
We recognize this picture to a large extent, as dozens of students have reported to us in recent weeks who have been fined for violating corona rules. These students are especially concerned about the consequences. This fine is actually not a fine like the one you get for driving through a red light, but a penalty notice. Such a criminal charge for violating the corona rules can have major consequences, as it will appear on the judicial documentation (criminal record). As a result, a certificate of conduct (vog), for example, can be rejected.
In 2008, the punishment order was introduced, abandoning the judicial monopoly on punishment. It became possible for the Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) to impose penalties and measures outside of court.
The idea behind the introduction of this punishment order was that an appropriate and timely response could follow offenses committed. In addition, an important advantage was that it would relieve judges of the burden.
In recent years there has been frequent criticism of this method of punishment, including from a rule of law perspective. It reaches too far to elaborate on those criticisms in this opinion piece, but one event characterizes for us the objections to the punishment order.
In 2019 NRC find out that former Minister of Security and Justice Ivo Opstelten would have downplayed "alarming conclusions" about problems with criminal orders in a letter to the House of Representatives. In the years before, the OM would have unjustly punished thousands of people with a punishment order. According to the minister, it should not be the criticism that came first, but the premise that "a lot went right.
Common sense
This, then, goes to the heart of our objection to the punitive order: the Public Prosecution Service, which fundamentally weighs interests differently from what the courts are accustomed to doing, has, with the advent of the punitive order, acquired the wrong tool and seems to make frequent use of it in these coronation times. Even against students living together.
Neighborhood police officer Fred Kuiper gives in de Volkskrant of April 22 indicated that he finds "some of his colleagues too strict with students. In particular, his colleagues should not immediately issue fines, but should engage in conversation. However, enforcement against students currently seems to take place completely arbitrarily. In several cases known to us, officers appear to have immediately proceeded to hand out "fines.
This is despite the fact that the official police website states that in the event of a (suspected) violation of the regulations in force regarding corona, the person in question is first addressed and warned. If that person then does not comply with the earlier notice, enforcement is carried out by means of a "fine.
The reasonableness and common sense seem lost to some extent as far as we are concerned. How incomprehensible is it that students who have a shared living room, kitchen and often even bank account are not allowed to be together in the garden at their dorm? Of course, measures must be taken to curb the corona crisis, but in our opinion, in this case - also considering the possible consequences involved - the punitive order is an inappropriate and disproportionate way.
