Samenvatting

An important determinant for the well-functioning of a criminal justice system is elapsed times. The elapsed time of a case is the period that is required to handle a case that pertains to a suspect or convict. Long elapsed times may be interpreted as delays in a criminal justice system, which in turn may lead to “justice delayed, justice denied”. Such a development may undermine the public trust in the government. Therefore insight in elapsed time is of crucial importance for policy-makers to define a sound and healthy justice policy. To gain this insight, we propose a model to measure the elapsed time of criminal cases.