Hesdy Gerges is a heavyweight kickboxer whose career was interrupted because of his involvement in an cocaine transport. This article is analyzes the biography of this top fighter, describing the macro context of an expanding market for full-contact martial arts, the meso level of the gym and its relation to the criminal milieu, and the fighter and his body on the micro level. Hesdy is used to set an example, and since it takes more than seven years to reach a verdict, the impact on his private life and his career as a fighter is large. The study is based on participant observation and 33 interviews, twenty of which with the protagonist.

The contribution of sport to reintegrating offenders receives limited attention, both in science and in the practice of probation and the prison system. From the perspective of desistance, this literature study concluded that sport can contribute to the development of individual capital, social capital and an alternative identity. However, the effect of sport is not necessarily positive. There are risks of negative influence or the reinforcement of problem behaviour. In counselling offenders, sport should be combined with other interventions to reduce recidivism. A personalized approach is required, based on the risk-need-responsivity model.

Criminology, as an inherently interdisciplinary field, has built on anthropology (and other social sciences) in its development. This contribution addresses the question which insights in criminology have most been inspired by anthropology. First, it looks into the ‘criminal anthropology’ of Lombroso; then it embarks on an appreciation of the ethnographic research design within criminology (as first adopted by the Chicago School); and, finally, it assesses the link between anthropology, and cultural and global criminology. I conclude that anthropology has been valuable to our discipline on four levels: methodologically (in the importance of the ethnographic research design), theoretically (in its role in the development of symbolic interactionism and structuralism, for example), geographically (in the global scope of anthropological research), and analytically, in its experience with ‘doing ethnography’ in economically, politically and culturally embedded ways.

Multi-national corporations are increasingly facing attention and disapproval by different actors, including authorities, public and (non-) commercial organizations. Digital globalization and especially social media as a low-cost, highly interactive and multidirectional platform shape a unique context for this rising attention. In the literature, much attention has been devoted to top-down approaches and strategies that corporations use to avoid stigmatization and sanctioning of their behaviour. Reactions to corporate harm are, however, seldom researched from a labelling perspective. As a result, corporations are not considered as objects towards whom labelling is targeted but rather as actors who hamper such processes and who, as moral entrepreneurs, influence which behaviour is labelled deviant. Based on theoretical analysis of literature and case studies, this article will discuss how the process of labelling has changed in light of the digitalized, late-modern society and consequently, how the process should be revisited to be applicable for corporate deviance. Given a diversification of moral entrepreneurs and increasingly dependency of labelling and meaning-making on the online sphere, two new forms of labelling are introduced that specifically target institutions; that is bottom-up and horizontal labelling.

Loïc Wacquant conducted ethnographic research in the ghetto of Chicago and describes the route to social mobility that black boxers try to follow as they train in the gym and build body capital. Based on similar research methods, this article compares the black boxers to two episodes of kickboxing in Amsterdam. Wacquant is not hopeful when it comes to social mobility of the boxers, as he sees their boxing careers as confirmation of their low position in society. In the first Dutch episode, kickboxers manage to combine body work in the gym with working in the nightlife economy. They make money but are unaware of the danger of getting involved in criminal activities, and a number of fighters end up in prison or even dead. Currently, kickboxing is very popular with young Moroccans. Having seen what went wrong in the previous episode, Moroccan trainers keep a close watch on their pupils, and make sure they realize that what happens outside and after kickboxing is what really matters.

How can technological tools contribute to supervising and reintegrating offenders in society? Globally, technological tools for supervision are broken down into so-called first generation (GPS tracking) and second generation (smartphone and sensor technology). An overview is given of what is globally known about the effectiveness and assumed mechanisms of action of first-generation technical tools. Then it is explored what added value second-generation technical aids can have and to which working mechanisms they could connect. Smartphone and sensor technology have the potential to contribute to the rehabilitation functions of the supervision, inter alia because they offer possibilities for more personalized supervision and for the combination of supervision and treatment. Although initiatives have been started in this regard and research is ongoing, hardly anything is known yet about the effectiveness of these new technological applications. The reliability and safety of IT, as well as ethical and legal aspects also require attention.

In the early years of kickboxing in the Netherlands, a number of fighters got involved in criminal activities. Literature typically focusses on social learning, but as the inner city of Amsterdam in the eighties provides a specific setting, this article particularly describes a historical process. In the qualitative data from interviews, observations, and various documents, three questions: Who were these kickboxers? Where did they enter the criminal circles? Why did they go along with what happened there? It turns out, successful fighters easily came in contact with people from the underground, as they met in the gyms and in the night life where many fighters worked as bouncers. In a friendly atmosphere, the risks of seduction were hard to recognize for inexperienced fighters.

Bill Cosby, Jimmy Savile and Gerrit Achterberg lived in different periods, in the US, UK, and the Netherlands. They were heroes because of what they accomplished during their professional careers but all three turned out to have committed serious crimes. Disclosure is painful, not only for the hero who comes to fall but also for the community that finds itself redefining moral standards when losing a celebrated insider. For this reason, the crimes of these three men have been concealed and kept secret for years. In comparing the three cases, this article tries to find out who decides on keeping the hero on his feet, how this is done, and if this changes over time.

In the introductory article of this special issue on the downfall of popular heroes, some relevant aspects in relation to the general theme are explored. Who are considered to be heroes and which elements are relevant to understand the process heroes may go through when they start sliding on the slippery slope, and, eventually, fall into the abyss of disgrace? What is the role that (social) media play in the demolition of their reputation and how do heroes perceive their own downfall and respond to it? The theoretical concept that is used in this article is Howard Becker’s master status and, in particular, the notion that the master status of a fallen hero surpasses and contaminates all other statuses, previously possessed by an individual.

For quite some years now, crimes of ‘the powerful’ have been studied by criminologists. While researching crimes of ‘the powerful’, researchers aim to maintain and safeguard their integrity and ethics. However, there seems to be a friction between, on the one hand, ethics of the researchers themselves and on the other hand, ethics (policies) of universities. Obviously, not only do they have to justify their actions and decisions to themselves and ‘science’ as a whole, they must justify their research to ethics committees (EC’s) of universities. It could result in complex and difficult situations when researchers suspect that EC’s themselves may be instruments and products of the powerful groups they are studying. In that case, EC’s might undermine ethics and research integrity themselves. What do certain EC- ‘conditions’ look like for research ethics and to which extent do they have to be adjusted or reconsidered when criminologists are researching ‘the powerful’? The key question that will be answered in this contribution is as follows: how can criminologist (re)act ethically responsibly when confronted with (un)ethical committees? To answer this and other relevant questions, after reviewing literature, we reflect on a biographical study of a legal arms trader. We then elaborate on the ‘ethics creep’ (Haggerty, 2004) that seems to haunt social sciences nowadays.

Research on street culture in the Netherlands constitutes an area of relative paucity. Moreover, even less is known about the virtualisation of street culture. In this article, we draw on the social media accounts of a network of delinquent youngsters from Spangen, a neighbourhood in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. Analyzing tweets and images on social media, we found Goffmans (1959) notion of the ‘front’ in three main themes: the importance of the negative image of the locality, the communication of criminality, and emphasizing an oppositional relationship with the police. We argue that these results illustrate the performance of a street identity on social media.

Shipbreaking is the dismantling of discarded vessels to reuse parts and recycle secondary raw materials. The majority of discarded vessels ends up on Southeast Asian beaches, dismantled without regard for the environment or human health. Our case study analyses the environmental crime of shipbreaking by using the theoretical framework of state-corporate crime as a frame of analysis. We focus on Germany and Greece as countries of origin and Bangladesh as a country of destination. Our findings show that shipbreaking is the result of a complex criminogenic interplay of economic and political actors on national as well as international level.