Scientific misconduct takes place at the heart of higher education organizations. Organizational culture (meso level) shapes scholars’ behaviors and perceptions (micro level) about what should be problematized while conducting research and teaching. In this paper it is argued that there are organizational mechanisms at place by which organizational goals (funding) and professional goals (recognition) become indistinguishable. The mechanisms are: pressure, loose social control, scarce resources and lack of alternatives. Scholars may strategically react to these mechanisms by accepting, fitting in, resisting or giving up. It is at the heart of these mechanisms and strategies that problematic behaviors may emerge.

The article takes as its point of departure some of the author’s multidisciplinary projects. Special attention is given to the question of whether the disciplines united in the various research team members already constituted a kind of ‘inter-discipline’, through which a single object was studied. The issue of how the disciplinary orientations of the research team members occasionally clashed, on methodological issues, is also addressed.
The outcomes of these and similar multidisciplinary research projects are followed back into legal practice and academic legal scholarship to uncover whether an incorporation problem indeed exists. Here, special attention will be given to policy recommendations and notably proposals for new legislation. After all, according to Van Dijck et al., the typical role model for legal researchers working from an internal perspective on the law is the legislator.
The author concludes by making a somewhat bold case for reverse incorporation, that is, the need for (traditional) academic legal research to become an integral part of a more encompassing (inter-)discipline, referred to here as ‘conflict management studies’. Key factors that will contribute to the rise of such a broad (inter-)discipline are the changes that currently permeate legal practice (the target audience of traditional legal research) and the changes in the overall financing of academic research itself (with special reference to the Netherlands).

Social network analysis (SNA) has taken its place in the field of criminology, although among Dutch criminologists the emphasis remains on conceptual contributions. Meanwhile, the world of criminal investigation and intelligence has witnessed the development of a blossoming SNA-practice. The emergence of big data makes SNA an indispensable tool to exploit the oceans of data in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, when it comes to employing SNA, academia and the investigations and intelligence domains remain separated. While Dutch analysts adopt scientific ideas and concepts, they rarely contribute to the body of literature; confidential SNA reports remain inaccessible. Shedding light on over forty SNA related internal police studies, this article bridges the gap between Dutch academic criminologists and ‘pracademics’ in law enforcement.

Over the course of time the European Union has increased its powers considerably. Currently, almost all food safety regulations in the member states rest on European law. Despite this common legal base, several differences between member states still exist. This article compares the way Scottish and Dutch authorities deal with a particular item of European food law: the development of national guides to good practice for hygiene and for the application of HACCP principles by the food industry. The results of this investigation are consistent with the conclusion of Falkner et al. that the implementation of EU law in both the Netherlands and the UK depends on domestic issues. The dominant issue in Scotland (and the UK) is the FSA objective to bring consistent food controls and independency from industry which results in the development of governmental guidance. The prevailing issue in the Netherlands is making industry responsible for food safety which helps explain the extensive use of industry guides. This study shows that in order to understand what happens on the ground it is important to look beyond transposition or direct effect and also to investigate the implementation of regulations and to dig deeper than just their transposition.

This editorial offers an introduction to the current issue.

Prison policy in Belgium and the Netherlands is changing rapidly. While Belgium struggles with a persisting prison overcrowding, the Netherlands strongly cuts back on the prison system and is closing an increasing number of prisons. This introductory article to a special issue on detention starts with a short outline of recent changes in Dutch and Belgian prison policy, focusing on developments in detention capacity and prison population. Subsequently we present an overview of empirical criminological research in the Netherlands and Belgium, situated within the international literature, with a specific focus on studies regarding life in detention and effects of detention on prisoners' lives and on their social environment. Finally, we reflect upon existing detention research in both countries, e.g. in terms of gaps in research topics and methodology, and discuss some future developments.

Food fraud is as old as mankind but has advanced in the last decades. Fraud regarding the gross composition of food has progressed in the direction of the addition of unconventional adulterants. Furthermore, consumers are more and more interested in how and where their foods are produced and pay price premiums for organic foods, fair trade, animal welfare considering, and sustainable food products. Since these products are very similar to their conventional counterparts in terms of composition, they provide an additional challenge. The knowledge regarding occurrence, type of meat fraud, causes and damage caused to the sector is limited. There is a need for extensive identification of the vulnerabilities and criminogenic factors. These insights offer leads for detection and prevention. The article deals with a first step into the inventory of these vulnerabilities and factors affecting meat fraud, by assessing fraud risks related to products, companies and the meat supply chain.

This article examines the importance of the social evidence base in relation to the development of the law. It argues that there is a need for those lawyers who play a part in law reform (legislators and those involved in the law reform process) and for those who play a part in formulating policy-based common law rules (judges and practitioners) to know more about how facts are established in the social sciences. It argues that lawyers need sufficient knowledge and skills in order to be able to critically assess the facts and evidence base when examining new legislation and also when preparing, arguing and determining the outcomes of legal disputes. For this reason the article argues that lawyers need enhanced training in empirical methodologies in order to function effectively in modern legal contexts.

In this interview with prominent representatives of the British Acas and the Belgian Social Mediators Service important developments in the ADR labour practice are discussed. In particular, the impact of the financial crisis and the ever advancing globalization process on the labour negotiating climate is the centre of attention.

Whistleblowing research should more explicitly focus on underlying motives for the decision to report on organizational misbehavior. Arguably, these motives are connected to the factors that can explain the decision whether or not to blow the whistle. Reporting for egoistic reasons can probably be explained by other factors than reporting for altruistic reasons. This article aims to enrich the whistleblowing literature by proposing grid-group cultural theory as an alternative approach. This theoretical framework could provide more insight into reporting decisions by identifying various motives for such decisions and linking them with elements in the organizational culture that could explain them. As an illustration, the theory is applied in an ethnographic study in two investigative teams of the Belgian federal police. More research is, however, needed to fine-tune the conceptual framework and to test the preliminary findings of this empirical study.

In this article on the social production of the book Outsiders, I will situate its production in the daily practice of the social worlds in which Becker was involved. Therefore I focus on the relations, interactions and situations which were relevant for the form, content and success of Outsiders. For data, I use fragments from my email communication with Howard Becker, the collected interviews and other publications which show that Becker seeks to demystify Outsiders. My main contribution is that I use Becker’s own words to demystify the ethnographic practice of Outsiders and describe its mundane backstage reality, which is described by Fine as ‘the underside’ of ethnography (1993).

Deze bijdrage doet verslag van een multidisciplinair wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar herstelbelemmerende factoren van de schadeafwikkeling en een experiment met een website om de schadeafwikkeling te verbeteren door empowerment van het slachtoffer. Een volledig verslag is te vinden in het proefschrift van N.A. Elbers, Empowerment of injured claimants. Investigating claim factors, procedural justice and e-health, 2013.

Irregular immigrants were disproportionally present in jihadi movements in the Netherlands between 2001 and 2005. By analyzing closed police files and interviewing imams and personnel from Asylum Seeker Centers and Detention Centers, this paper claims that the attractiveness of jihadi movements can be explained by a combination of pragmatic and ideological factors. Jihadi movements are able to fulfil the needs of the irregular immigrants in a pragmatic way, in which crime is an important feature. In addition, the results show that irregular immigrants are searching for meaning, which the jihadi movements can offer. Nonetheless, the salafi-jihadi ideology does not seem to be the core factor to most of the illegally residing immigrants that expresses the attractiveness of the jihadi movements.

Providing access to justice is a major challenge for any judicial system. Canada has gone to great lengths to meet this challenge over the past thirty years, in part by developing alternative dispute resolution methods. Unfortunately, results have been mixed. Canadian society is currently preparing to renew its vision of access to justice and the contribution of dispute resolution methods in meeting that challenge. What lessons can we learn from Canada’s experience? What are the new directions and initiatives for access to justice? Our paper suggests that the Canadian experience can make two contributions to the access to justice debate. First, we suggest that the notion is evolving in the legal community from an institutional perspective to a contextual vision of access to justice. Second, we point out an evolution of alternative or appropriate dispute resolution methods toward a participatory justice movement. Our paper proposes a new Canadian perspective on access to justice and dispute resolution methods.

This article seeks to describe a paradigmatic view on legal research, based on the thought processes underlining Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in particular as how revolutionary change is coming about through a reflexive attitude towards developments that do not fit in the prevailing assumptions in an existing paradigm or research methodology. It allows for a description of ‘normal legal research’ and the assumptions upon which normal legal research is based. It also allows for an explanation as to how these assumptions are no longer exclusively valid but carry with them limitations in the face of structural developments at the level of society. An important feature of the paradigmatic view, then, is that it is able to take issue with these developments by incorporating social theory in our understanding of law.

Within the Dutch National police force, the central security and protection division is responsible for the protection of the royal family, (foreign) heads of state and certain people who are threatened. During the past few years, the division has undergone a focus shift towards a more proactive service, based on intelligence. The main priority is to prevent attacks instead of the classical view of resisting and/or withstanding attacks. To make this development possible, the division has had to evolve into a learning organisation. The article focuses on the learning process and the challenges that have been overcome. Furthermore, future developments, that can either pose a chance or a possible threat to the on-going process, are taken into account.

Elbers et al. studied the impact of being involved in a compensation process on the health of the claimant/plaintiff. Although there is some evidence that being involved has a negative effect on health, there is contradictory evidence concerning the explanatory factors. The authors review various empirical studies, pinpoint the contradictory conclusions and analyse their methodological strengths and weaknesses. Studies concerning the influence of claim settlement processes on the wellbeing of claimants offer insights from which suggestions can be derived for improvement of the position of claimants.

The central question of this article is whether biographies can be a source for criminological research on white-collar crime and how they can contribute to the explanation of white-collar crime. To answer this question, 35 Dutch biographies were studied. Following the legal ambiguities of white-collar crime, not all of these biographies are about criminal offences. And following the dominant anthropomorphic approach to corporate crime, some of these are corporate biographies. Many biographies confirm current criminological explanations of the causation of white-collar crime. Yet, biographies also offer additional insights, for instance about the causal relevance of the private life of white-collar offenders.

Crime suspects followed by the police move well across various police regions and national borders. As a result, police forces independently collect information on the same people. It is essential that whenever possible, accurate information is shared between various police forces and e.g. investigation teams. Developments in the field of ICTs have opened many possibilities for this, long ago. However, information exchange hardly improved. In this article it is argued that apart from the quality of existing ICT-applications, there are also organisational problems creating obstacles for information sharing. The article starts with a brief history of intelligence-led policing in the Netherlands, followed by an overview of the obstacles for information sharing within the Dutch police. It concludes with similarities between police reforms based on new ICTs in the Netherlands and the USA.

Globalization is commonly cited as an important factor in theorising legal phenomena in the contemporary world. Although many legal disciplines have sought to adapt their theories to globalization, progress has been comparatively modest within contemporary analytical jurisprudence. This paper aims to offer a survey of recent scholarship on legal theory and globalization and suggests various ways in which these writings are relevant to the project of jurisprudence. This paper argues, more specifically, that the dominant interpretation of globalization frames it as a particular form of legal pluralism. The resulting concept – global legal pluralism – comes in two broad varieties, depending on whether it emphasizes normative or institutional pluralism. This paper goes on to argue that these concepts coincide with two central themes of jurisprudence, namely its concern with normativity and institutionality. Finally, this paper reflects on the feasibility of constructing a ‘general’ and ‘descriptive’ jurisprudence in light of globalization.