Criminal law for adults

The Dutch criminal law system distinguishes between juvenile law and criminal law. If you are older than 18 most of the time the standard criminal law rules are applicable. If you are between 18 and 23 years old the judge, however, can decide to apply the juvenile law rules in your situation. This practice follows, for example, from the

There are many differences between juvenile and adult criminal law. One of them is that the penalties in adult criminal law are much higher than in juvenile criminal law. This can be seen in the guidelines for sentencing used by the Dutch courts in determining the penalty. Due to the fact that juvenile law differs from criminal law, the two areas of law will be discussed separately on our website.

At the bottom of this page, under "more criminal law", you find aspects of criminal that might be interesting for you to read.

If you cannot find the answer to your question(s) on our website, please feel free to contact one of our criminal defense attorneys. Each of our attorneys has their own areas of expertise, but we are all specialists in one area of law and that is criminal law. That is why, without any doubt, our firm is definitely a criminal law firm. 

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