Checkmate at the check-in : discrimination or transatlantic people smuggling from Brussels national airport

Pursuant to the so-called American travel ban, nationals from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen were denied access to US territory. Consequently airline companies are performing additional checks at the check-in in order to avoid allowing passengers on board who are not in the possession of the required travelling documents to be allowed into the United States. The authors argue that the American travel ban puts airline companies operating from Brussels National Airport, Belgium within the scope of several criminal law provisions. Obeying the travel ban and denying the passengers access to the plane could constitute a form of indirect discrimination based on nationality. Disobeying the travel ban and granting the passengers access to the plane could constitute a form of people smuggling. In its current form, taking account of the interpretation provided in jurisprudence, the Belgian criminal law does not provide a clear way out of this situation. The situation is therefore described as checkmate at the check-in and is used to urge policy makers to provide a more clear legal framework for companies (in this case airline companies) who find themselves confronted with incompatibilities between different legal systems.

SPOCs & surveys: a novel way to conduct comparative research into criminal justice systems

Background: Criminal justice researchers are increasingly confronted with research questions that require them to use ‘foreign information’ in their analyses. Though it is generally accepted that working with foreign information is challenging, several authors pointed to the lack of serious recent work on comparative methodology. Many researchers therefore avoid comparative research. Method: Based on a literature review and practical experience, the challenges of comparative criminal justice research are uncovered, the strenghts and weaknesses of existing methods identified and a novel method developped. Result: The so-called 'SPOCs & survey’-method consists of nominating a SPOC (short for a single point of contact) for the countries to be included in the comparative analysis and asking them to fill out a multiple choice based survey, complemented with free text fields and the option to request documents to be attached. To assess the merit of the method, the paper elaborates (1) on the different degrees to which the method can be integrated in various types of research and (2) the extent to which the method is better tailored than existing methods to successfully overcome the challenges of comparative research referred to in literature. Conclusion: Though the method depends on the access to nowledgeable SPOCs, the weakness is counterbalanced by the strengths of its swiftness, reliability and validity

Need for and feasibility of an EU offence policy: accepting diversities, appreciating commonalities, aligning policies

Starting from the observation that criminal law is different in each of the member states as a result of which (1) what constitutes an offence in one member state does not necessarily constitute an offence in another member state, (2) even where offences are equally criminalised in all member states, the sanction levels may still vary and (3) more generally, the position of the offences in the entirety of the justice system may vary, the question arises to what extent those so-called offence diversities are an obstacle for EU policy making and to what extent it is feasible to overcome those obstacles. The doctoral research underpinned the need for the development of an EU offence policy, using the common criminalisation acquis as a centre piece. The common criminalisation acquis can help (1) to ensure comparability of crime statistics, (2) to avoid redundant double criminality testing, (3) to overcome evidence gathering difficulties, (4) to clarify the mandates of the EU level actors, (5) to identify the equivalent national sentence and (6) to scope the taking account of prior convictions. The only condition: the development of an EU offence policy