In recent years, big data technology has revolutionised many domains, including policing. There is a lack of research, however, exploring which applications are used by the police, and the potential benefits of big data analytics for policing. Instead, literature about big data and policing predominantly focuses on predictive policing and its associated risks. The present paper provides new insights into the police’s current use of big data and algorithmic applications. We provide an up-to-date overview of the various applications of big data by the National Police in the Netherlands. We distinguish three areas: uniformed police work, criminal investigation, and intelligence. We then discuss two positive effects of big data and algorithmic applications for the police organization: accelerated learning and the formation of a single police organization.

This chronicle discusses the importance of Bruno Latour’s work for criminology, paying attention to the role of technology and our relationship to nature. The author proposes to criminalize ecocide and advocates the use of restorative justice in dealing with environmental crimes.

‘Antropocene’ is a wellknown concept among those that are concerned about the Earth’s future. Nevertheless, there is a heated scientific debat about the start of this era in history and the name ‘antropocene’in itself. In this contribution it is stated that that debate is helpful in raising important questions about the desatrous influence of mankind on live on this planet. Criminologists should take a stance and address these questions as well. This contribution includes a manifest that contains points for further action for criminologists.

In this article, we analyze which aspects of performance theory and the procedural justice-based model are explaining the trust of shopkeepers in the police and local government. Utilizing a survey of 156 shopkeepers and 94 semi-constructed interviews with shopkeepers, which are located at the South Shopping Boulevard in Rotterdam (The Netherlands), the study finds that shopkeepers have a relatively high trust in the police and local government. This is surprising because various attempts in the past 30 years to revive the high street by the government have failed to improve its bad image, as dwindling visitor numbers, poor turnover, limited range of retailers, empty shops and high crime and offence levels show only too plainly. The findings also highlight that ethnic minority respondents have more trust in local government than Dutch shopkeepers. The explanation therefor is sought in the dual frame of reference theory.

This article deals with the relationship of smart security technologies to broader modes of exercising power and subjugating individuals. It claims that the notion of psychopower is precisely what is missing from post-Foucaultian accounts of the smart city. In the article psychopower is defined as the manipulation of our consciousness in order to channel our desires toward ‘normal’ social behavior, drawing a line between what is ‘acceptable’ and what is ‘unacceptable’. Psychopower raises a series of concerns related to its democratic legitimacy and accountability as behaviorally informed conditioning of the mind runs the risk of constant surveillance, where human agency is diluted in a techno-utopian vision that promises to improve city-wide efficiency, decision-making, and security.

In this article Bas van Stokkom and Marc Schuilenburg discuss work and life of the Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan. The article is based on an interview the authors conducted with de Swaan as well as themes that de Swaan developed in his published work. The article discusses in particular themes such as violence and compartimentalization, the work of Norbert Elias, and public sociology.

This article starts off with an exposé of what ‘theoretical innovation’ means in the social sciences. The development of criminology is considered to be a result of (1) historical and cultural developments, (2) political-economic developments, (3) developments in other academic disciplines and (4) reactions to or specifications of other theoretical perspectives in criminology itself. Paradigm shifts in criminology are characterised by an individualistic and positivist aetiological turn in its early days; a sociological turn towards a ‘criminology of the lawmaker’ from the late 1950s on; and a return to positivism in the neoliberal and neoconservative turn of the 1990s. The new century ushers in a new epistemological break in criminology, in which globalisation, global warming, migration, human rights and the implications of cyberspace ‘force’ criminologists to overcome their anthropocentric and colonial character biases.

In this article the author reports on an ethnographic research conducted on the Collective Shopping Ban, a measure taken in the Netherlands in an effort to make shopkeepers co-responsible for maintaining safety and security. By describing the practice of the Collective Shopping Ban in The Hague, he investigates how the involved shopkeepers are dealing with offenses like theft, nuisance, intimidation, and vandalism. The author describes the sociological background of banning orders and what the banning of people means in terms of purification of public space.

There have been little to no empirical research conducted on trust of Dutch citizens in the police. This study is a step towards filling this gap. We used semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and observations to examine to what extent citizens’ trust in the police is determined by perceptions of the effectiveness of the police to reduce crime and disorder and perceptions of procedural justice. Research was conducted in Bloemhof, a superdiverse neighbourhood in Rotterdam. The results indicate that in superdiverse neighbourhoods perceived responsiveness is the cornerstone for explaining police trustworthiness. Implications for policy reform are discussed.

In this article, I report on an ethnographic research project conducted in 2013-2015 in Rotterdam’s neighbourhood Hillesluis on ‘Community Governs’, a community-based program which goal is to solve neighbourhood crime and disorder problems. By making use of the CLEAR model, the article focuses on three factors of effective participation of citizens: ‘Enabled to’, ‘Asked to’, and ‘Responded to’. The results indicate that making residents of a deprived neighbourhood responsible for the governing of safety and security issues is extremely difficult. It also becomes clear that the participants don’t believe that their involvement is making a difference in the neighbourhood. An importantly explanation for this is that the participants are not provided enough information to make the right decisions about which safety problems need to be tackled.

The article is an ethnographical study of Rotterdam’s experience with a program called ‘Community Governs’ (Buurt Bestuurt). Community Governs, a Dutch version of the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS), is a community-based program which goal is to solve neighbourhood crime and disorder problems. Community commitment and involvement are a main component of this program. The article emphasizes the effects that this program had on three levels of trust (performances, intentions and skills) of the residents in police officers and municipal service agencies as partners in the fight against crime and disorder. The results indicate that a ‘positive exercise’ of liberty through political participation of civilians is difficult to realise in poor, inner city, neighbourhoods.

Criminology has come under the spell of thinking negatively about safety and security. It’s focus merely lies on themes such as control, punishment and exclusion. Much interest therefore goes to public policing, private security, CCTV camera’s, anti-social behaviour orders, gated communities and prisons. Of course, this definition of security and security governance as the protection of citizens against crime and disorder must not be rejected out of hand. Without a minimum level of security, society would fall apart in chaos and despair. At the same time, however, we feel increasingly uncomfortable about the dominance of current negative – control and risk-oriented – approaches to (in)security as they overlook positive interpretations associated with trust, community and care. This introduction therefore provides an overview of academic literature that nuance, counter or resist hegemonic and negative meanings of security. In so doing, our aim is to introduce a positive turn in criminology’s interests and concerns regarding crime and disorder problems.

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’.

Protected living in some sort of gated community is popular. However Dutch protected living differs from, for instance, the living in American gated communities, the development tends to social discussions whether it is undesirable or not. Safety seems in the Netherlands not the first reason for protected living. Here, domestic and aesthetic reasons are much more important.