After 25 years of tergiversations, the new federal law Belgium adopted in 2006 finally transformed its juvenile justice system into a hybrid model. In addition to discussing this top-down criminalization, this paper also stresses the trends in sanctions in the two linguistic communities. These trends will then be contextualized within broader movements: the maintenance of a welfare model oriented toward an ideal of activation; the presence of a liberal-conservative divide where discourse is split between the issue of protecting minors’ rights and punishing delinquency; and the return of the victim, encouraging a restorative approach counter-balanced by the weight of a victim consciousness that has a punitive character.