NCJ Number
80049
Journal
Justitiele verkenningen Issue: 6 Dated: (1979) Pages: 4-17
Date Published
1979
Length
14 pages
Annotation
The relevance of judicial policy studies and the relevance of maintaining a judicial policy research center in the Netherlands are examined.
Abstract
The basic premise of a judicial research center is that the goal of judicial policy is to protect the good of society and individual citizens. Policy must make rational choices to meet the needs of any given society. Advanced scientific societies find solutions to problems through an evolutionary process of devising solutions and then testing and retesting them to bring about desired changes. To assure that the research interests of a center for judicial policy are not limited to narrow judicial goals with no regard for other policy areas, the center must formulate a specific research plan, publish all studies, and encourage a broad range of scientific inquiry. Problems to be resolved must be examined from a variety of perspectives using different methods; all studies must be conducted according to strict rules of scientific quality and integrity, with attention to the norms of objectivity of the society. The Center for Scientific Research and Documentation has existed in the Netherlands for several years as a policy research institute, but its growth has recently been limited by financial constraints. For that reason, priorities must be established and a new research plan must be put together every year. Priorities are geared to achievement of long-term rather than short-term goals. In the future the Center must concentrate on the effects of such events as socioeconomic changes and modifications of values, and expand its research to topics outside its immediate field. The Center's study plan must include a discussion of the most important policy alternatives, priority planning, strategic planning of approaches to study priorities, operational planning of personnel resource and time frame utilization, and long and short-term goal planning. While attention must be devoted to answering pressing short-term policy questions, time must also be reserved for policy experiments. A short bibliography is supplied.