Samenvatting

This special issue reflects about big data applications in policing. Terpstra and Salet (2020) refer to this development as ‘one of the greatest changes within the police about the past decade’ (p. 25). Beside attention to this topic in Dutch literature (e.g. Janssen et al., 2020; Spithoven & Beerends, 2019), the relevance of the subject is also internationally recognized (e.g. Brayne, 2021; Ferguson, 2017; Ridgeway, 2018). In this special issue, we examine – with a view to the past, present and future – how big data could be used in policing in the Netherlands and Belgium. This special issue is not about empirical big data applications, for that we would like to refer to specific studies (e.g., Rummens et al., 2021); in this issue we especially want to outline the breadth of this research area.