The aim of the present research was to gain insight into the topic of ‘task-related rule-breaking behavior’ (TRB) among Dutch police officers. TRB is a more refined alternative for the concept of noble cause corruption and has been defined as: police officers breaking rules or formal agreements for the purpose of acting in a manner that contributes to the lawful police task. Qualitative research has been conducted within one of the ten regional police forces in the Netherlands. Results show that TRB appears to be a relatively common phenomenon during policework. Behaviors are categorized in sixteen categories and five overarching outlines. In addition, attention is given to several important factors that could be related to TRB being distinguishable between police officers’ individual responsibility and organizational factors. To handle TRB, it is recommended to pay attention to the police officers’ approach of judging and rationalizing their own behavior, their level of knowledge, and social skills. Furthermore, organizational structure (i.e., spam of control) and police leadership may, among other factors, play an important role in encouraging TRB. Especially the way supervisors deal with police officers’ professional autonomy needs specific attention in order to reduce TRB. Autonomy needs guidance in the form of clear orders followed by feedback and coaching. Also, an active form of ethical leadership is needed. An action framework is presented that could be helpful to supervisors to judge and thereby reduce forms of TRB.

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.

Victims who suffer severe damages due to the act of a violent crime can request state compensation from the Dutch Violent Offences Compensation Fund (VOCF). VOCF workers who decide on these requests use their discretionary powers to translate the VOCF’s rules and policy into concrete actions. This study investigated (1) to what extent these VOCF workers match Lipsky’s definition of street-level bureaucrats and (2) what routines and heuristics they use to deal with time and information constraints. On the basis of document analysis and interviews, we found that the decision makers of the VOCF can to a certain extent be seen as street-level bureaucrats. To make decisions timely, some of them use routines such as the ‘downstream orientation’. This means that they award requests for compensation if they think that the applicant would be able to successfully contest a rejecting decision. To deal with a lack of information, they sometimes include a review clause in the text of a rejection decision. The use of heuristics was not found among the lawyers who decide in first instance, but in case of appeal hearings heuristics such as the affect and representativeness heuristic seem to play a role in the decision-making process. Future research should investigate whether these routines and heuristics lead to disparities in outcomes.

There is casuistry, where on the one hand it is the turn of the professionals from the investigation, enforcement and prosecution and on the other hand the turn of the social workers from the social domain. This is the case, for example, when domestic violence occurs in circles that are also involved in organized crime. In theory it is possible that the professionals involved work together, but it is also not impossible that they will get into each other’s waters because they have a different vision of the problem to be tackled and, of course, also have to fulfill other roles and tasks based on their positions. A professional must be able to handle complex situations of this kind.

The Mobile Security Monitor (MSM) is a form of migration policing in the border areas of the Netherlands, carried out by the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee (KMar). The MSM has a complex legal and policy framework, merging migration control aims with certain elements of crime control. This raises the question how the officers carrying out the MSM interpret the exact aim of the instrument and their own accompanying powers and what this means for the way they carry out their task. Our results show that many officers see ‘catching criminals’ an important part of their job and that in order to achieve this, they sometimes make ‘creative use’ of their wide-ranging powers. Although similar results have been found in research with the police, KMar officers differ because of their ability to combine migration law and criminal law powers. This fits in with the process of crimmigration and the broader tendency of ad-hoc instrumentalism, which refers to a way of thinking about law and legal procedures in which the formal distinction between legal domains is considered less important and criminal justice actors can freely choose the most effective instrument to deal with the situation at hand. This means that the formal ground for a decision is not always transparent, especially not for people that are subjected to the MSM. Moreover, criminal law enforcement contains many more legal and procedural safeguards than administrative controls.

Although group workers in juvenile correctional facilities (JCFs) are restricted in their actions by many rules and regulations, they still have the opportunity for tailor-made actions. Based on Lipsky’s (2010) theory of ‘street-level bureaucracy’ this article explains what this discretion means for group workers in JCFs and how they deal with it. Based on 24 interviews with group workers, this article outlines how they exercise discretion in a context where group dynamics and dealing with emotions affect their actions to an important degree. In addition, this article describes how group workers deal with dilemmas they encounter.

The editorial introduction to this special issue on street-level bureaucracy (36 years after the publication of Michael Lipsky’s book) draws attention to the important role of frontline workers in the implementation of policy in practice. The two narratives as distinguished by Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2000) – that of government as an institution and that of the frontline workers themselves – are discussed in the light of the use of discretionary power by the frontline workers. The various dilemmas that the frontline worker encounters while doing so are briefly introduced and the role of the emergence of New Public Management and the resulting public-private partnerships since the eighties discussed.

This article aims to explore the driving factors behind the process of crimmigration, the merger of crime control and migration control. By analysing the legal and policy framework governing the so-called ‘Mobile Security Monitor’ – the discretionary immigration checks carried out by the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee in the borderlands with Belgium and Germany, the research explores the extent to which the framework might leave room for crimmigration-based decisions on the street level. As the article shows, the dual nature of the Mobile Security Monitor as both an instrument for immigration control and crime control combined with an important name-change and the ongoing securitization of migration in Europe seem to create a favourable environment for crimmigration.

Since 2007 the police and the public prosecution service in the Netherlands can apply special investigative powers in case of ‘indications’ of a terrorist offense. To investigate signs of terrorism, a suspicion is no longer needed. The underlying assumption behind this extension is that the ‘old’ legislation offers insufficient opportunities to investigate signs of terrorism in an early phase. In this article we examine this assumption about the action space of investigating officers. For the period 2007-2011, we examined how investigating officers responded to signs of terrorism in practice, what investigative powers they used, and how they – as street level bureaucrats – handled their discretionary authority. The research shows that police and judiciary officials are very well able to investigate signs of terrorism with the already existing powers, and that they have made little use of the new ‘indications’ criterion