Dr. Maria Berghuis

Researcher, Dutch Research and Documentation Center, Netherlands

Dr. Maria Berghuis obtained her bachelor’s degree (magna cum laude) in Social Sciences at the University College Utrecht and her master’s degree in Evidence Based Social Interventions at the University of Oxford. For her master’s thesis, she conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis on the effectiveness of reentry programs for incarcerated adult males, which was published in the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. After completing her master’s degree, Maria worked at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology at Leiden University where she completed her doctoral research into the determinants and consequences of prison visitation in the Netherlands. Her research at Leiden Law School is part of the Dutch Prison Visitation Study, which is an additional research project of the Life in Custody Study. These projects are a collaboration between Leiden University and the Dutch Prison Service. Maria contributed to the coordination of the 2017 data collection of the Prison Climate Questionnaire which was completed by more than 4,000 adults incarcerated in the Netherlands. She was also actively involved in gathering and analyzing information on prison visits and disciplinary reports within official prison records. After completing her PhD, Maria worked as a postdoctoral research for the Life in Custody study. Maria is currently working as a researcher for the Dutch Research and Documentation Centre, an independent research institute of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security. Her current research projects concern recidivism and reentry.