MICS Research

MICS conducts cutting-edge research on three main focus-themes:

1. Quality standards for criminal justice systems
One of the key challenges for modern criminal justice systems is to maintain a balance between a growing demand for security while protecting and enforcing quality standards.  What are the standards for maintaining the quality of criminal justice systems? How can the rule of law and human rights be secured as guiding principles while, at the same time protecting citizen against crime?

These questions are all linked to both substantive criminal law and criminal procedure. With regard to substantive criminal law, the concept of criminal responsibility is at the heart of a debate that has been triggered by developments in the field of neuroscience. There seems to be a gap between the way our legal systems understand criminal responsibility, rooted as a social construct in the autonomy of the human self as a rational, responsible actor, and the empirical understanding of the human brain offered by neuroscientific research.

With regard to criminal procedure the emphasis of our research activities is on procedural guidelines, safeguards as well as legal protection of all parties involved in the in the criminal justice system. The legal and empirical research not only covers the various stages of criminal investigations but also includes the growing field of forensic disciplines and their impact on investigative measures. Moreover, the way criminal cases handled inside and outside the court as well as the execution of different sentences are integral part of our research program.

2. Additional and alternative responses to criminal justice
Ideas about the construct of criminal liability are changing. The number of non-penal measures of crime-control has increased during past decades. An integrated approach is applied to both common offences and serious forms of crime, including organized crime, environmental crime, cybercrime and terrorism. Crime policies have shifted to limiting opportunity structures and high-risk situations. The goal is to identify and manage ‘unruly’, ‘dangerous’ groups efficiently and to prevent them inflicting harm on others. New strategies including situational crime prevention and combining criminal, administrative and civil law measures pose new challenges to criminal law practitioners.

The focus of research activities in this area is on the containment of serious forms of crime in a national and European context. New concepts like auctorial justice, new penology and restorative justice the latter putting mediation between victim and offender at its core are of growing importance in contemporary criminal justice systems.

3. International cooperation in criminal matters
Europeanization and have led to new forms of cross-border crime. This poses growing challenges for crime policies and law enforcement agencies. New forms of international cooperation have emerged and supra national organizations are of growing importance in the fight against transnational organized crime networks. Modern law enforcement agencies collaborate with other state authorities, national and international counterparts as well as private stakeholders and increasingly exchange data on crime and suspects.  

How do national crime policies have to be shaped to fit into this system of multinational governance? How are national criminal justice systems impacted by these developments? What are the implications for the rule of law and human rights guarantees in the nation states? MICS studies these new forms of cross-border cooperation on different levels: on the (Eu)regional, the European, as well as at a bilateral and multilateral level. Besides legal implications our research takes a comparative approach to legal political, criminological and cultural aspects of cross-border cooperation.