Anke Ramakers

Background

About Anke Ramakers

At the NSCR I am program leader of the research group that focuses on the reactions to crime (sanctions) and the effects. Together with Maria Berghuis (WODC) I lead the SANCTION study, a research program on decision making, experiences and consequences of community sanctions (sanctionstudy.nl). I am interested in the re-integration of criminal justice involved individuals and other vulnerable groups, with a specific focus on income-related questions. Part of my research concerns the relationship between employment and recidivism. In other projects I examine the effects of criminal law and social policies on income and crime. I study these questions using quantitative methods and large longitudinal datasets. I examine data from various contexts. This enables testing whether findings hold across contexts and resulted in an extensive international network. Another common thread relates to the definition of successful reintegration. Common static measures in the field (the likelihood of employment and recidivism) do not allow drawing firm conclusions about reintegration. I use detailed longitudinal data to study how individuals spend their time and to model reintegration as a process. In different projects, I examine changes in housing outcomes, problematic debts, benefit dependency, the reliance on family and friends, the certificate of conduct (VOG), and how various income sources are combined to make ends meet. Interventions outside the criminal justice domain are another topic of interest. Justice involved individuals are likely to report problems on multiple life domains and experience many different types of interventions during their life time (e.g. fines, community sanction orders, prison spells, active labour market programs, debt restructuring, family- and (mental) health interventions). This complexity is examined in a multidisciplinary evaluation study of community court projects in the Netherlands. In collaboration with economists, I examined spill-over effects of active labour market programs (ALMP) and welfare reforms on crime.