While reflecting on gender issues transgender persons and their issues are often neglected. Government institutions on various levels don’t know how to handle their gender nonconformity as neither male nor female. Also they are often targets of inappropriate police and judicial measures. Transgender persons are often sceptical and cautious when interacting with those professionals: a fair and respectful treatment is not to be expected. In this article the author takes on to explore this blind spot. She presents the results of a survey on the transgender discrimination and violence by police and judicial institutions in Germany. The author points out that this is a result of the ongoing structural discrimination of gender non-conform persons in a binary gender system. This topic is part of her PhD thesis on the experience of discrimination and violence of gender non-conform persons in general. Her qualitative study is based on narrative interviews and a group discussion with gender non-conform persons in Germany.

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.

As we move towards constructing narratives regarding the future outlook of global governance, constitutionalisation among them, the hope is that whatever shape this world order takes it will, somehow, forestall or hinder the possibility of a hegemonic order. This article tries to deconstruct the notion of hegemony and claims that as it currently stands it is useless in doing its critical work since every successful narrative will end up being hegemonic because it will employ the ‘hegemonic technique’ of presenting a particular value (or value system), a particular viewpoint, as universal or at least applying to those who do not share it. The only way for a narrative in this discourse not to be hegemonic would be for it to be either truly universal and find a perspective that stems from nowhere and everywhere – a divine perspective – or purely descriptive; the first being an impossibility for fallible beings and the other not worth engaging with since it has nothing to say about how things should be structured or decided in a specific situation.

David Brotherton – professor of Sociology at John Jay College of the City University of New York – was named Critical Criminologist of the year in 2011 and is known for his work on the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation and his research on Dominican deportees. By using excerpts of a lengthy interview with Brotherton, a personal and detailed account is presented which sheds light on the roots of his work, his (scientific) influences and especially his highly engaged methods of critical ethnography.

This article analyses a criminal family. It is not the individual, but the family as a social entity that is central to this approach. The Van D.’s are a family of eleven brothers with a collective history of crime. Raised with anti-authoritarian norms, violence, alcohol and a strong sense of loyalty, they were known as an ‘army of brothers’ dominating the streets of H-town. The criminal family as object of study proves valuable in understanding the influence of contextual factors, subculture, and stigmatization. In the case of the Van D.’s, blood ties create cohesion and conflict at the same time.

The tendency to revalorise emotions in the response to offending, seems to face a dilemma. On the one hand, experiencing crime and reacting to it inevitably are imbued by emotion. On the other hand, giving way to emotions in responding to crime entails the risks of disproportionate and unequal justice. This article argues that there is a fundamental difference between the emotions promoted to be included in the response to crime and the emotions feared as a risk to overwhelm good and proportionate jurisprudence. The first ones focus on the needs of the immediate stakeholders of the offence and seek their (re-)inclusion. The second type of emotions focuses on the criminal act and seeks to keep the threat it represents under control through punishment and incapacitation. It is a socio-ethical choice to promote the inclusionary approach. Whereas the rehabilitative approach has addressed the needs of the offenders only, the restorative tendency addresses the needs of both the victim and the offenders in a more balanced way. This balance also helps to avoid that respectful responses to crime degrade into norm erosion. The option for revalorising inclusionary emotions in the response to crime through restorative justice is located as a next phase in the civilisation process, described originally by Elias.

In this article attention is paid to the thoughts and feelings which underlie criminal law and restorative justice, as well as the question whether those thoughts and feelings have to be regarded as rational or irrational. For this purpose, the author has firstly examined the relationship between thinking and feeling from the perspective of the so-called cognitive emotion theory as put forth by the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum and the Dutch philosopher Mirjam van Reijen. In addition, this contribution also addresses the ideas of the Stoics, Spinoza and Schopenhauer, since the aforementioned theory goes back on the ideas of these philosophers. These philosophers depart from the view on man and world in which interconnectedness plays an important role – as the opposite of separateness. This view which reflects the mystic-religious perspective on man and world forms an important connecting thread in this article, as this turns out to have direct consequences for the idea about the (ir)rationality of certain thoughts and feelings, as well as for the (ir)rationality of criminal law and restorative justice. Special attention is paid to emotions that are relevant within the context of criminal law and restorative justice – which include anger, resentment, hatred, fear and compassion. After having explained – on the basis of the cognitive emotion theory – how thinking and feeling relate to each other and which thoughts and feelings – on the basis of the perspective of interconnectedness – have to be considered as (ir)rational, the article examines whether punishment is (ir)rational and whether the regular theories which legitimate punishment (i.e. retribution and prevention theories) are ‘rationalities of something irrational’. Furthermore, it is assessed whether the thoughts and feelings behind restorative justice are (ir)rational. The article concludes with a suggestion in which the main findings of this contribution are summarized, in order to stimulate discussion.

During the 1990s the Serbian government entered into a symbiotic relationship with criminals and paramilitary units which led to a normalization of crime and violence. While society usually inhibits people from criminal behavior, in Serbia this process was reversed. Propaganda contained the neutralization techniques that allowed people to condone and even approve of violent and criminal behavior. The reversal of the moral order became part of Serbia’s popular culture in which criminals who had committed many atrocities during the war, like Arkan, were honored. In this way, Arkan served not only a military and strategic purpose but also a political one, by generating support for the war.

This contribution focuses on ‘fear of crime’ research. Departing from the classic distinction between crime and victimization as objective threats, on the one hand, and fear of crime as a subjective and emotional interpretation of that threat, on the other hand, the research tradition is confronted with the so-called fear victimization paradox. This paradox emerges from the observation that fear of crime is greater among women and elderly people, while these groups actually are less at risk of becoming a crime victim. It has immersed the research tradition in a dominant debate on the rationality of the fear of crime, with two opposing paradigms: rationalist and symbolic.Whilst both the paradox and the different paradigms in the debate offer a view at the core of fear of crime research, and illustrate how similar empirical observations can lead to differing explanations, and policy implications for that matter, we argue that the fear victimization paradox and the rationality debate surrounding this paradox, has occupied the bulk of research on fear of crime with what is essentially a nonsensical and redundant debate.

This article departs from a crime prevention perspective following the definition of crime prevention as adopted by the European Union Crime Prevention Network (EUCPN). This approach handles a broad notion of community involvement in crime prevention, including non-judicial measures and models of intervention. Through its participatory approaches, restorative justice has the potential of mobilising and reinforcing social capital and, therefore, of contributing to effective crime prevention and control. The community oriented approach is illustrated by the model of crime prevention and its possible connection to restorative justice as being developed in Hungary and promoted through various actions of the EUCPN.

Fifty years ago Tijdschrift voor Criminologie, the Dutch Journal for Criminology, appeared for the first time. It has now developed into a peer reviewed journal with quantitative and qualitative research of high quality. Youth and life course criminology, research into organised and organisational crime, criminographical research, and research into violence are strongly represented nowadays. Changes in the journal reflect more general developments in criminology in the Netherlands and Belgium. In the last 10-15 years the discipline has become more internationally oriented and professional, and scientific backgrounds of criminologists have become more diverse.

In Western languages those affected by crime are universally labelled as the sacrificed ones. This label is inspired by the suffering of Jesus Christ and evokes images of helplessness and meekness. It acts as hidden justification for the marginal, self-effacing role of victims in criminal procedure and restorative justice. The author argues for deconstruction of the stereotypical victim label and the creation of more space in criminal procedure for victims as autonomous parties. In his view the recent innovation in Dutch law of a limited Victim Impact Statement still gives victims insufficient voice. He also argues for a reconceptualisation of restorative justice practices as a supplement to the criminal trial rather than as a substitute.

Based on a prize-winning master thesis in criminology, this article describes how the Rwandan Government chose to bring to justice all suspects of (crimes during) the 1994 genocide. Accordingly, it was decided to turn to Gacaca, the traditional Rwandan method of dispute resolution, in order to reach reconciliation as well as justice. A field study indicates that, when asked whether they think Gacaca can lead to reconciliation and justice, the majority of Rwandans think it can. However, six determinants of reconciliation have been deduced from the interviews. Because Gacaca can only have a clear positive impact on one of these factors – the need to meet – Gacaca can not be considered as an appropriate mechanism to achieve reconciliation in Rwanda. It also appears that justice is not a determinant for reconciliation.