Kristel Beyens

Kristel Beyens is full Professor of Criminology and Penology at the VUB. Within CRiS she coordinates the research line Penality & Society, bringing together penological research on prisons, immigration detention, and community punishment. Kristel studies contemporary evolutions in penality, with special attention to penal decision-making and the implementation of prison sentences and community punishment from a cultural, organizational, and social approach. She has published widely on sentencing, prison overcrowding, transnational prisons, digitalization of prisons, conditional release and recall decision-making and electronic monitoring. Kristel has well established links with several international networks that study community punishment and imprisonment from an international comparative perspective.

She completed a EU funded comparative research project on electronic monitoring (2014-2016) in five European jurisdictions and she was the co-chair of a successful EU funded COST Action on ‘Offender Supervision in Europe’ (2013 -2016), bringing more than 70 international scholars together. Kristel is member of several European networks on community sanctions , penal decision-making and prisons (ESC working groups) She is a member of the think tank ‘The Houses’, which strives for a radical change in prison policy. She gives training to magistrates on the pains of imprisonment and community punishment. Kristel is a regular participant in media debates on penal policies and practices in Belgium.

Since January 2025, she has been appointed as Academic Director of the faculty of Law and Criminology. 

Research Line

Penality and Society 

Current research projects

Jailcraft and training of prison officers in Belgium and the Netherlands

The administrative power of (cr)immigration officers

Explaining differences in prison populations: the Netherlands versus Belgium

Towards a new vision on detention in the prisons of Dendermonde and Haren

Courses (2024-2025)

Penologie en Penitentiair Recht 

Penologie

Stagepraktijk