In the Netherlands, the police and the Public Prosecution Service have developed the intervention Hack_Right as an alternative or additional criminal procedure for juvenile computer crime offenders. Hack_Right aims to prevent recidivism among participants and provides frameworks in which participants can develop their IT talent in a legal manner. In order to achieve this goal, participants are linked to (cyber security) companies. At these companies, the youngsters complete assignments in which they reflect on their crime, learn about ethical hacking and make technical products.
Currently, 14 Hack_Right pilots have been completed. Our study aims to evaluate the Hack_Right intervention and the pilots that have been carried out so far, in order to identify effective and non-effective principles of the intervention. We used two qualitative research methods to do this: document analysis and interviews. For the plan evaluation, policy documents were analyzed and interviews were conducted with developers of the intervention. For the process evaluation, registrations of individual Hack_Right pilots were used and interviews were conducted with people that impose Hack_Right to suspects, with executors of Hack_Right and with participants of the intervention. Finally, experiences of Hack_Right executors and participants have been mapped. A total of 28 interviews were conducted for the study.
The evaluation is currently in the final phase. Preliminary results will be discussed during the presentation. The first analyzes indicate that Hack_Right is an intervention which is in development and that the content of the different pilots that have been carried out so far, differ per participant.