Yannick van den Brink

Yannick van den Brink is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Criminal Law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He also holds positions as a Visiting Scholar at University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology; Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) and as a Deputy Judge in the Youth Court of the District Court of The Hague.

Van den Brink publishes and teaches widely on themes related to youth justice, criminal justice, children’s rights, and human rights. His work is dedicated to contributing to the development and implementation of rights-based and evidence-informed youth and criminal justice systems. His specific areas of expertise are (alternatives to) deprivation of liberty, fair trial rights, diversion, age limits and non-discrimination in youth and criminal justice. He regularly trains policymakers, judges and other practitioners on these topics, in the Netherlands and internationally. At the NHC, Van den Brink aims to deploy his expertise to contribute to furthering the Rights-Based Justice programme.

Van den Brink is also an International Advisory Board Member of the Violence Against Children in Detention Project at Penal Reform International, International Advisory Board Member of the Australian Children’s Commissioner’s Youth Justice Reform Project, Academic Advisory Board Member at the Dutch Youth Probation Services and Academic Advisory Board Member of the Youth Crime Programme at the Research and Data Centre (WODC) of the Dutch Ministry of Justice.

Previously, Van den Brink was a Rubicon Research Fellow at University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology (UK; 2019-2022) and an assistant professor of Child Law and Criminal Law at Leiden University (2016-2021). He was also a visiting researcher at Northwestern University School of Law (Chicago, US; 2013), Equal Justice Initiative (Montgomery, US; 2015), Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law (Freiburg, Germany; 2016) and Pierce County Juvenile Court (Tacoma, US; 2022).

Van den Brink holds a LL.B. degree in Law (2009, cum laude), a LL.M. degree in Criminal Law (2011, cum laude) and a MA degree in Criminology (2012, cum laude) from Utrecht University, and a PhD degree in Law (2018) from Leiden University.