The right to complain in Belgium and the Netherlands

The aim of this paper is to (1) present our research project: minors behind bars between resistance and rights, and (2) to discuss the possible role children's rights can have in the way youngsters submit (or not) to the detention regime. There are several prison studies that have paid since a long time attention to prisoners, their perspective on prison life and on the effects and pains of imprisonment. However, most of these 'prison studies' have focused on adult prisoners. Much less is known about how young offenders experience and deal with detention. Therefore, an important question remains: how placed youngsters experience, submit to and resist detention regimes? Several Belgian studies exist on the experience of youngsters in detention. However, none of them focused on strategies of submission and resistance. Therefore, understanding behaviours of resistance allows us a certain insight into the institutional practice from the perspective of prisoners. Human rights and children's rights must be understood as an important "player" in contemporary detention practices. The goal of this paper is to focus on the right to complain. In this light we will present a comparative analysis of the implementation of Children's rights in youth detention practices in Belgium and the Netherlands. The right to complaint can be an important instrument in how youngsters deal with and experience detention. In Belgium there is no legal framework that rules the rights of youngsters in detention, neither there is a formal complaint procedure. Whereas in the Dutch "Beginselenwet Justitiële Jeugdinrichtingen" regulating the legal position of children in detention as well as a complaint procedure by an independent monitoring committee. It is however unclear how these implementations of children's rights operate - play a role in the way youngsters everyday experience detention?