Ministry of Justice and Security


The Ministry of Justice and Security is the Dutch Ministry responsible for justice, imprisonment and public security. The Ministry was created in 1798 as the Department of Justice, before it became in 1876 the Ministry of Justice. In 2010, it took over the public safety duties from the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and became Ministry of Security and Justice. In 2017 the Ministry was renamed to Ministry of Justice and Security. The Ministry is headed by the Minister of Justice and Security, Ferdinand Grapperhaus since 26 October 2017.

Responsibilities

The Ministry has the legal tasks of:
It is also responsible for the coordination of counter-terrorism policy.
Because it shares so many responsibilities, and has twin buildings with the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, they are sometimes called the twin ministries.

Organisation

The ministry is headed by Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus and houses minister without portfolio Sander Dekker who is responsible for policies concerning legal protection. It also knows a State secretary for migration and asylum affairs, currently Mark Harbers, who is entitled to the title of minister abroad. It employs almost 30,000 civil servants, located at the ministry in the Hague and all around the Netherlands. The ministry's main office is located in the centre of the Hague in the same building as the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. The civil service is headed by a secretary-general and a deputy secretary-general, who head a system of three directorates-general:
The Board of Procurators General which heads the Public Prosecution Service is a relatively independent organisation which forms part of the Judiciary and prosecutes persons suspected of breaking the law.
The Netherlands Forensic Institute is an autonomous division of the Ministry of Justice, falling under the Directorate-General for the Administration of Justice and Law Enforcement. The Custodial Institutions Agency is an agency of the ministry.