This article examines how Dutch-Moroccan juveniles from the Schilderswijk in The Hague, a neighborhood known as relatively unsafe, experience neighborhood watch and how they cope with it. Does neighborhood watch make juveniles to reduce or to continue their deviant behavior? The authors found that particularly neighborhood watchers from their own ethnic community (‘residential fathers’) have a positive influence on juveniles. Juveniles tend to obey them more because they feel treated with understanding and respect. Also they feel uncomfortable when realizing that supervisors from their own community might know their parents and families and might tell them about their deviant behavior. The role of the family in reducing deviant behavior of migrant juveniles was not yet mentioned in the literature.

The article is an ethnographical study of a program called ‘Community Governs’ (Buurt Bestuurt) in Rotterdam’s neighborhood Hillesluis. ‘Community Governs’ is a community-based program which goal is to solve crime and disorder problems. The article investigates the role of the local government in this program. Three different roles are discerned: (1) performance, (2) procedural justice, and (3) participation. The results indicate that to the residents of Hillesluis the performance by the local government is the cornerstone of ‘Community Governs’.

In the concluding article of this special issue on civilian participation in public security it is argued that this term covers many different phenomena, from neighborhood watchers cooperating with the police to extremist militia. Much of the literature on civilian participation implicitly and wrongfully has an instrumental perspective. The participation of civilians in public security however, is much more than just an instrument of public administration or the police. Not all activities of citizens in the field of public security are decent or according to the perspective of the administration and the police. Moreover, there is no consensus on what public security exactly means, while the motives of people to get involved in public security activities differ greatly. Mobilizing citizens on the basis of fighting crime bears the risk of producing differences and conflicts in society instead of creating open, tolerant and inclusive communities.

This article gives an overview of the changes in the Dutch marital property regimes during the last twenty years. This is preceded by a discourse sketching the reasons for this legal modernization trajectory and the history of the community of property and standard prenuptial agreements.

In this article attention will be paid to the radical societal changes in respect of informal cohabitation. The rate of extramarital child birth has increased to over 50% of all first-born children. Family law is traditionally focused on marriage, which was for a long time the only acceptable relationship type. The question addressed in this article is whether the law of parentage and the law of parental responsibilities should be reformed in order to meet the needs of modern families.

Within the context of a recent call for the strengthening of the legal position of grandparents with regards to visitation rights, this article presents a brief review of major conceptual notions and empirical findings within the literature on grandparent-grandchild relationships. Three major topics for understanding the intergenerational relationship are addressed: the historical context, the importance of the relationship, and changes over individual time.

This article analyses continuity and change in family life in the Netherlands over the last decades. The authors consider three characteristics of families: (1) family types, (2) maternal employment, and (3) parent-child time. Analyses are based on data from the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Dutch Time Use Study. The results indicate that there is both continuity and change. Although two married individuals giving care to their children is still the most common family type, alternative family forms have become more popular, including unmarried cohabiting parents and single-parent families. Furthermore, the division of labor is still strongly gendered: Dutch mothers’ participation on the labor market is limited and they still hold the main responsibility for children. Moreover, children are still most likely to grow up in a household with both a father and mother. There are also indicators of change. Maternal employment is much more prevalent than in the 1970s and fathers’ involvement with children increases.

The identified trend of changing family relations and establishing a family without being traditionally married, probably does not apply to the entire Dutch population. Islamic law requires that people get married before children are born. Among Muslims, this standard is still followed on a large scale. Marriages which may be validly established according to Islamic law, however, will not always be recognized in the Netherlands. Examples include the unregistered marriages and polygamous marriages. This has implications for the way in which questions of parentage and custody of children that were born out of these marriages, are answered. In this article it will be argued that the law, where it concerns issues of parentage and custody, provides insufficient protection to the category of those unrecognized Islamic marriages.

Adhering to a strict interpretation, Data Protection by Design (DPbD) can conflict with the needs of law enforcement in their fight against terrorism and criminality. An illustration of this tension can be found in the case of FBI vs. Apple, where the FBI wants Apple to help bypass security on an iPhone in order to gain access to data. The FBI needs the help of Apple – or third parties – to get such access, for which they might need to create new legal mandates. However, private parties like Apple, may want to design their products in such a way that evading and breaking the security of the system is not possible, as consumers demand secure and privacy friendly devices. This article adds to this debate by posing DPbD as an argument in favor of private parties not to cooperate in making their products less secure and less privacy friendly. This argument is especially relevant when a similar case unfolds in the EU under the new regime of the General Data Protection Regulation in which DPbD is explicitly embedded.

Law enforcement around the world, including the Netherlands, is currently experimenting with predictive policing: policing based on crime predictions. Big Data on past crimes and the help of sophisticated machine learning enable police to use reliable predictions about when and where the next offense will take place. If the effectiveness of policing actions is stored in the system, it can also predict which intervention is most effective. This is called prescriptive policing. The authors explain how these methods work, how reliable and effective they are and which associated risks can be identified. The authors emphasize that legal, ethical and organizational safeguards are necessary for a responsible implementation.

The potential perils of robots and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) have been a subject for discussion since the 1950s. Nevertheless it seems that society is still not prepared for the great impact of the rapid advancement of AI in the last decennium and the many ethical dilemmas involved. How can moral, social and legal values be integrated in the designing process of AI technologies? Is it imaginable that these AI systems would ever be considered as ethical entities? How to control these systems? The authors argue that we should not only analyze these problems, but also reflect on ethics itself. AI has the potential to change the way we live and work. But it is important to introduce restrictions and controls to guarantee our freedom, autonomy and fundamental human rights.

This article discusses the risks of the use of drones in airspace. The author describes the various applications of drones and the impact of drones on society. Which laws and rules apply in the Netherlands for the use of drones? What changes should be made so that public safety is guaranteed while the development of beneficial forms of drone use can continue to flourish?

The article provides a critical overview of data-driven urbanism and smart cities focusing in particular on the relationship between data and the city, and critically examines a number of urban data issues, including: the politics of urban data; data ownership and control, data protection and privacy, dataveillance, and data uses such as social sorting and anticipatory governance; and technical data issues such as data quality and veracity of data models and data analytics. Whilst data-driven urbanism provides a set of solutions for urban problems, it does so within limitations and in the service of particular interests.

The Dutch National Police deploys video technology, for instance body-worn video camera (bodycams), drones, helicopters with cameras, and mobile units for surveillance. Four types of video technology are discussed: CCTV, bodycams, smart cameras and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR). These four types will be the most prominent applications of visual technology in the coming years, according to ‘Vision on sensing’, published in 2015 by the National Police. The potential benefits of video images for prosecution and in the courtroom are discussed in a separate paragraph, followed by a survey of recent changes in the laws regulating this technology.

Research into radicalization and terrorism assumes that violent individuals have political or religious intentions and motivations. However, what ‘political or religious motivations’ exactly are changes through time. A rigorous conceptual demarcation of ‘radicalization’ and ‘terrorism’ runs the risk of overlooking societal and political changes leading to a variety of violent outbursts that may have more in common than assumed at forehand. Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s concept of ‘the radical loser’ is used as an example of a broader conceptualization that can function as a category enabling interconnected and interdisciplinary research into different manifestations of violence, both in their differences and their similarities. Whether or not terrorists, school shooters and violent lone actors are fundamentally different categories should be a topic of academic enquiry instead of being taken for granted.

Jihadist networks have become a serious threat to Europe’s internal security and are therefore a policy priority. But what do we know about these networks and how should we counter them? This study focuses on the modus operandi of jihadist networks between 2000 and 2013 and gives an empirical insight in the organizational structures, activities, and involvement mechanisms of jihadist networks in the Netherlands. The data are derived from 28 police investigations, 51 interviews with police investigators, public prosecutors, lawyers, imams, and staff members from Asylum and Detention Centers. The findings show how jihadist networks have changed over the years and how this development has affected the way jihadists operate.

Over the last decades the number of people who have been detained on the suspicion of terrorism has significantly grown. This has resulted in an increased scholarly interest in the topic of prisons and terrorism. However, the main focus of academic research has been the period of incarceration. Especially the question whether terrorists should be isolated from other prisoners has received considerable scientific attention. What happens after their release still remains opaque. In this article some preliminary insights will be shared on particular aspects of the societal reintegration of former suspected terrorist detainees. It presents some of the obstacles, dilemmas and opportunities. These insights where obtained through semi-structured interviews with both professionals and former detainees with a jihadist background.