Undermining has become a buzz-word in Dutch politics and security governance. On national and local level there is great concern about the disappearing lines between the legal and illegal world, which affects the democratic order and rule of law in the Netherlands. Hence, everything possible should be done in order to combat the creeping threat of undermining. However, what is undermining actually? And why has the concept become so popular now? In this contribution, the authors will consider those and other relevant key questions about the rise and effect of the undermining concept to provide more conceptual clarity. By critically reflecting on undermining as a speech act, that is ‘underminization’ (cf. securitization), and based on empirical research, the authors suggest that there are two discourses at work that hinder the effectivity of the concept: one is specifically focused on the drugs industry with its illegal activities and one broadens the concept into unlawful and undesired developments that interfere with societal stability. The authors conclude that the concept of undermining may mobilize at policy level, yet seems to paralyze at operational level.

The ‘condition of superdiversity’ creates a dazzling perspective that matches the image of a networking society without unambiguous collective entities. Society consists of a caleidoscopic set of identities, relationships, languages and gods in a context of permeable geographic areas. That brings many problems, but the country that is aware of this diversity does have ultimately the best papers for the future.

The Western world seems to be a secular one. Although secularization has long roots, from the sixties onwards the role of religion in public life has diminished. How did that affect the crime and security issue? Criminological literature learns that there is a two-sided relationship: (1) in a religious context there is an inhibiting effect of being religious; and (2) religion can also legitimize or neutralize criminal or violent behavior – for example in the case of Islam-related terrorist acts. Secularization did indeed contribute to the rise of crime; in nowadays secular context religion can – the other way around – legitimize criminal behavior. The author argues that secularization also has facilitated the growth of the security issue as such. Fear of crime was the driving force behind a process in which secularization resulted in securitization of Western society.

Community policing is a common strategy in the Dutch police organization: working in a geographically bounded area, in close proximity and engagement with the local population. The use of Twitter by local police-officers is an increasingly popular way of communicating in this context. Prior research has indicated that there is a positive relation between the use of Twitter by the local police officer and citizens’ confidence in the police. But what factors determine this confidence and how can it be strengthened by using Twitter? This article examines the nature of police tweets and shows how tweets can contribute to improving the degree of confidence between citizens and the police. To determine what factors influence confidence we made use of the model of trust and confidence by Jackson and Bradford. This model differentiates between ‘effectiveness’, ‘fairness’, and ‘engagement’. These three factors are used to explore the way tweets might influence confidence in policing. The empirical research included interviews with three police officers who twitter actively, as well as interviews with 30 ‘followers’ living in the neighbourhood where the police officer works. Also an analyses has been carried out of the tweets made by the police officers in one year, 3.506 tweets in total, by categorizing the tweets according to the model of Jackson and Bradford. We conclude that the model of Jackson and Bradford is useful to explore the possible relationship between the use of Twitter and citizens confidence in the police. Using Twitter by the local police officers seems to make a possible contribution to the degree of confidence in the police. Our categorization of Twittermessages allowed us to give practical recommendations to local police officers how to use Twitter in order to improve confidence among citizens. The data also suggest that followers appreciate the fact that local police officers show their knowledge of current affairs in the neighbourhood.

Nightlife violence is gaining increasing attention and is a substantial part of all violent incidents. In this article we explore the assumption that going out in metropolitan clubs and bars creates a specific moral setting, where the aim is to let yourself go. The main question in this article is to what extent the moral setting of going out contributes to nightlife related violence. We explored this issue by analyzing the case of Amsterdam, in particular the two famous squares, Leidseplein and Rembrandtplein, and de Wallen (red light district). With regard to the moral setting we distinguish between physical, social, professional and normative aspects of the moral setting. Each of these aspects has been described in academic literature as potentially contributing to violence. On that basis a checklist has been developed that was used for observations in nightlife venues that are known for either a high or low disproportionate amount of violent incidents. By comparing the two categories we were able to identify elements of the moral setting which, supported by the literature, can be expected to contribute to the prevalence of nightlife violence. Elements which we discovered that occur more frequently in venues where many incidents occur are visitor density, the loudness of the music, the presence of smokers, the overall comfort, the opportunity to dance, the presence of drunken visitors and their degree of intoxication, overtly sexually charged behavior, opportunities for the staff to observe, security at the exit, the number of bouncers, and whether visitors were searched or not before they entered the venue. Whether situations actually developed into violent conflict depended on one of three possible causes, namely miscommunication, conflict with authority or unsolicited advances. Policymakers can use these insights in order to try to manipulate violence stimulating factors.

In England & Wales the coalition-government has opted for a localisation of the police service. The government dissociates itself from the New Labour policy of centrally-imposed targets, aims to reconnect the police and the people, and carries out a radical democratic renewal: since 2012 citizens have the possibility to choose their own Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) in their region. This new administrator is reigning over police chiefs and is responsible for the management of security policies in the region. That is the main reason why the English police reform diverges fundamentally from developments in other European countries in which centralizing tendencies prevail. The question is whether the radical changes in England & Wales have a beneficial impact on the local embedment of the police. Are citizens more willing to commit themselves with the local police? In the first part of this paper we examine which developments have taken place in the English police, what the localisation-agenda has achieved so far, and which problems it faces. In the second part we discuss the question which lessons can be learned from the English renewals. Would it be a good idea to introduce PCC’s in the Netherlands? Is democratization the best way to strengthen community involvement? How to stimulate local accountability?

It seems common knowledge among criminologists that our societies have to be understood in terms of securitization. This means that security is the defining and organizing concept in (social) policy making. In the Netherlands the process of securitization can be characterized as rather contingent. According to the author, it can be typified as ‘pragmatic securitization’. It is driven by the desire to show decisiveness and being in control of complexity of social order, rather than by ideology. Under the pressure of the economic crisis there is a growing interest in self-organization, civic power and civil society. These themes emerge along the issues of security and control. Is it possible then that security is exchanged by another big social theme?

People vary in their perceptions and opinions, and that seems to be the case for the way they perceive anti-social behavior too. Scientific literature concerning the fear of crime hypothesizes diversity in the public’s perception of anti-social behavior and crime. But this fear of crime research tradition has been criticized repeatedly for its conceptual and methodological arrears. The focus has particularly been narrowed to ‘fear’ of ‘crime’, being measured by surveys. So, it is not very surprising that there has not been a thorough empirical focus on the assumed diversity in the perception of crime and anti-social behavior. To fill in this gap, the main research question in this article is: which differences in the perception of anti-social behavior exist within contemporary Dutch society? Using Q-methodology, five different factors were found in the perception of anti-social behavior. These factors have been labeled respectively: ‘disaffected residents’, ‘untroubled liberals’, ‘anxious communitarians’, ‘concerned spectators’ and ‘non-averse professionals’. These factors showed the empirical reality of the assumed diversity in the public perception of anti-social behavior. In all of these factors, people seem to address crime and anti-social behavior to a decrease of social standards and values in Dutch society, instead of worrying about chances and consequences of personal victimization. This was even the case for people who signalized crime and anti-social behavior in their own neighborhood. What really stands out is that people strongly agreed about the unacceptability of crime and anti-social behavior. People seem to have an aversion against these rude types of behavior. Altogether this image does not comply to the mainstream image of a ‘crime fearing society’. People do not seem to fear crime, but they seem to be worried and agitated about the moral conditions of the Dutch society in a wider framework. This might be a more reassuring illustration than a ‘crime fearing society’, but this proposition needs further and additional quantitative assessment.

The author provides a discussion of the articles in this issue of the Tijdschrift voor Veiligheid (Journal on Security) on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. He notes that there is an increasing hybridising, subjectification and fragmentation in the security area. The increasing interweaving of security politics seems to apply least to a common approach in ‘social security and physical safety issues’ (crime control and disaster and crisis management), while exactly this was aimed for in so-called integral security politics. According to the author that is the case because of ‘the moral pin’, which plays a dominant role in crime, but not in safety issues. The entanglement of forms of security identified by the author has a normative basis – it comes from the social order of an increasingly complex society. For the future an ever greater responsibilisation can be expected, in which the perception of security becomes even more important than it is now already. Not a big orchestrated security policy, but jazzy structures will then determine the prospects.

In the fight against human trafficking it is very important that victims are willing to report incidents and otherwise cooperate with the criminal proces. In practice there are serious problems with the attitude of the victim towards the suspect and with the consistency and solidness of the testimonies of the victim. In a study to explore this problem we found that the perspectives of the victims were not on the same wavelength with the perspective of the criminal law. In order to illustrate this great gap, in this article we present a case-study.

The main question of this article is why the existing diverse populist movements have at least one feature in common: Crime, security and harsher punishments are high on their political agenda. The author points out that the rise of criminality in the last 20 years is a real basis for the growing anxiety among the population about insecurity. This anxiety is reinforced by the blown up media attention for crime issues. The dominance of the security issue is further explained and enhanced by cultural factors like individualisation, migration and the rise of a vitalist culture characterised by a geografical and normative boundlessness. In this context norm violations are always lurking and contributing to an insecure, complex and chaotic society. (In)security has become the common denominator to which all grievances can be reduced. The creation of new structures giving reassurance could provide a democratic alternative for the unevitable authoritarian tendency in state policy caused by the rise of populism. This type of social order should be understood in terms of arrangements of institutions and of tuning stakeholders to one another. Taking this longing for security among the population seriously means also to stop addressing civilians as consumers and start urging them to act like co-responsibles.

This article describes and judges on the development of three ‘social-safety arrangements’ in a new developed neighbourhood in the city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Based on different research methods, three key issues are defined: youngsters hanging around on the streets annoying residents and little children, families showing anti-social behaviour, and youngsters showing signs of criminal behaviour. Together with all responsible ‘players on the pitch’ the current policies were discussed and expanded with additional strategies. The development of these arrangements consists of four stages: an objective diagnosis of the area, a more detailed analysis to determine the most urgent social safety issues, determining all actors involved and their role in the system, and, finally, a broad discussion with all actors to determine shortcomings in the current policies and interventions. Social safety arrangements can best be regarded a research-based policy instrument that provides detailed insight in the roles and positions of all actors and helps policymakers translate this knowledge into local policies.

Bespreking van oraties die op het gebied van toezicht plaatsvinden.

Hans Boutellier is giving a panoramic overview of important changes in society. As worked out in his recent book De improvisatiemaatschappij (The improvisation society) he describes that society has evaluated into a network society in which social ordering is primarily a matter of self-organizing mechanisms. The aim for self-ordering would be a possibility for a further growth of restorative practices, but at the same time we are dealing with a penal-populist culture. In that culture citizenship, dialogue and self-ordering are suspect and – paradoxically – safety is expected to be delivered only by the state.

The coordination in public safety has been assigned to the municipality. The central question in this article is whether the municipality is equipped to fulfil this task successfully. In this study we investigated a metropolitan security network against drug and alcohol nuisance. Questionnaires were administered among 36 organisations dealing with these nuisance problems. The social network analysis shows that the municipality is predominant in the security network. On the other hand there are several other organisations, such as the Police, health organisations and Housing Associations, that also take up a central position in the network. We also found that the municipality’s informal network is less well developed than its formal network. In contrast, the Police and several local health organisations often liaise informally with other organisations that ‘fight’ drug and alcohol nuisance within the network. Quite a number of organisations are in the position to obtain important information and to exert influence when organisations are unwilling to cooperate. Consequently, several organisations other than the municipality are suited to successfully complete the coordination in a security network.

This article explores the links between the concepts of security and community, questioning the conventional use and meaning of both. To begin with, it addresses the taken-for-grantedness of the thought that communities foster feelings of security, and that contemporary processes of migration, intensified worldwide communication, and ‘heterogeneization’ of habitats stimulate feelings of insecurity and nostalgia for ‘old-fashioned’ tight kinship. Subsequently, it criticizes the too lop-sided focus on insecurity in current debates, and asks attention for – community-based – positive feelings of security. In the next paragraphs, however, the problematic aspects of the idea of ‘community’ are discussed: its inadequacy in capturing current individualized ways-of-life, its exclusionary tendencies, its potentially exaggerated focus on social control, and its rejection of, and fear for, the outside world. Therefore, we assess the possibility to construe (‘strong’) community qualities in a situation of multiple, overlapping and porous populations of varied identity-relevance within overarching institutional arrangements of rule of law and of shared codes of conduct (as ‘weak’ ties). Finally, the argument is translated in suggestions for empirical research to be able to determine the fecundity of the ideas presented.

Public safety governance has been characterised in many ways. Literature mentions traditional sanctions for purposes of repression, policy programs aiming for prevention, as well as cooperation of public, private and hybrid organizations in addressing public safety problems. Very recently, a so called culture of precaution, in which problems of public safety are to be addressed at a very early – premature – stage, would have entered the scene. This potential culture of precaution is topic of this article. The article aims to indicate the empirical manifestations of a culture of precaution, as mentioned in literature, in contemporary public safety governance. The central question is as follows: to what extent and in what way is contemporary public safety governance on municipality level characterised by the precautionary principle? Five municipalities within the police region of Utrecht, varying in size from 40.000 to 300.000 citizens, have been studied; Amersfoort, Bunschoten, Utrecht, Woerden and Zeist. In total 153 measures addressing problems of public safety have been analyzed for characteristics of precaution. In order to do so, a model has been developed which locates precaution next to traditional strategies for addressing public safety. It will be demonstrated that a culture of precaution is not empirically present in public safety governance on municipality level. However, contemporary public safety governance does appear to posses some minor characteristics of the precaution paradigm.