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.

Van de politie wordt in beginsel verlangd dat zij zich vreedzaam van haar taken kwijt. Bij de uitoefening daarvan kan zij echter geconfronteerd worden met personen die deze frustreren, en genoopt worden geweld te gebruiken. Dat levert veelal een strafbaar feit op, dus rijst de vraag hoe recht gedaan moet worden aan de omstandigheid dat geweld gebruikt werd door een overheidsfunctionaris, onder moeilijke omstandigheden. De Wet geweldsaanwending opsporingsambtenaar markeert de keuze voor een nieuw perspectief op politiegeweld.

The structural vulnerability of the port of Rotterdam to organized crime is dealt with in this article from a broader, historical perspective. Using examples from ports in Italy and the United States, among others, the author shows how at the end of the last century local criminal groups managed to gain a dominant position in the handling of good flows. The author discusses various research reports that have been published over the years on the import of drugs into the port of Rotterdam and other European ports. Drug traffickers turn out to respond very flexible to stricter controls by simply moving to alternative ports or opting for transferring drug loads to small fast boats in open water. The author emphasizes that ports should not be studied as isolated transition points, but must be considered as nodes in networks that extend far inland and abroad. This is the only way to see the broader strategic and tactical options for stopping or reducing drug trafficking. In addition, attention must be paid to the problem of corruption among port workers, police and customs officers.

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.

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.

While studies on trust in the police are numerous, this is much less the case for other policing actors. It is important to examine this in the light of the increasing number and diversification of policing actors and their legitimacy. Using a survey, 894 youngsters were asked to evaluate their trust in actors involved in the policing of urban nightlife areas: the police, door staff, and CCTV. Results showed that people tend to trust human actors of surveillance more compared to technological actors, however different (demographic and contextual) factors nuance this pattern.

This article relates the geographical allocation of Courts to access to justice. Travel distances within the Dutch system are higher than in surrounding countries, but still not extremely high. The scale of the Dutch Court organizations however, is extreme. On average, a Court location that handles small claims has jurisdiction over a territory with over half a million inhabitants. This large number of inhabitants automatically translates to large numbers of cases, and large bureaucracies, employing 500 to 1,000 people (judges, court staff, support) each. Do travel distances to the Courts actually have an impact on the use of the Court system? Two recent studies find no support for a popular belief that defendants will be less determined to defend themselves when the travel distance to the court is longer. They do show however that the number of cases brought to Court by local plaintiffs drops when ‘their’ local court closes down.

This contribution focuses on military assistance of the Dutch police with forensic expertise by the army (not being the Dutch gendarmerie, the Koninklijke Marechaussee). The assistance basically consists of helping with search activities, with analysis and observations, all key functions within policing. The central question is: to what extent is this specific military assistance an example of plural policing? Today the armed forces are an essential part of a wider security policy, because the various types of national and international security are increasingly interconnected. This stresses the importance to involve the army in social (national) security. The forensic military assistance the authors studied does, however, not comprise law enforcement or patrolling in public spaces. With that in mind, this kind of assistance cannot automatically be labelled as plural policing. On the other hand, the military assistance contributes to a safe society and from that point of view it is an example of plural policing.

There are different types of banning orders (criminal, administrative and private banning orders) and also various procedures for imposing these orders. According to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (EctHR) it is unlikely that the private banning orders can be labelled as a criminal charge. The nature of the private banning orders is not punitive. These orders are to be regarded as recovery sanctions. However, applying the ‘Engel criteria’ will lead to the conclusion that some criminal banning orders are to be considered as a criminal charge. Accumulation between criminal and private law banning orders might be troublesome, but it is possible. It is recommended that the Public Prosecution Service is cautious when it comes to demanding a criminal banning order, when a private banning order has already been imposed.

Verkrijging door extinctieve verjaring van beperkte zakelijke genotsrechten door middel van inbezitneming is een onderwerp waarover verwarring en onzekerheid bestaat. Is dit in de praktijk eigenlijk wel mogelijk? Deze bijdrage beschrijft de (on)mogelijkheden waaronder het recht van erfdienstbaarheid, het recht van opstal en het recht van erfpacht door middel van louter inbezitneming kunnen worden verkregen.

The most important mechanism for crime prevention is just the presence of guardians. Some counter arguments against this thesis are discussed and rejected. By manipulating the presence of guardians it is possible to influence the level of prevention. It is argued that a large scale evaluation of such measures is wanted.