Gerard Veringa

Gerard Heinrich Veringa (1924 to 1999) was a Dutch criminologist and Catholic People's Party politician. He studied law at the University of Groningen and then criminology and criminal justice at Fordham University in New York, where he took a doctorate in criminology in 1949. Back in the Netherlands he worked in the Ministry of Justice, serving as a prison administrator in Zutphen and The Hague and as Director-General of the Custodial Institutions Agency from 1961 to 1964, before becoming professor of criminal law and criminology at Radboud University Nijmegen. In 1967 he became Minister of Education and Sciences in the De Jong cabinet, and in 1971 he briefly led the Catholic People's Party and its parliamentary group. From 1972 to 1994 he was a member of the Council of State. He was known as a negotiator and a builder of consensus.