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.

Little is known about (former) partners of 1%motorcycle club members. Social professionals working with victims of domestic violence in shelters have regular encounters with these mostly female (ex-)partners. In this exploratory contribution we wonder what is known about domestic violence amongst people with (ex-)partners of 1%motorcycle club members and the consequences of the involvement of a motorcycle club for tackling this violence. Based on thirteen semi-structured interviews with social professionals working in a shelter, external professionals and (ex-)partners, the link between domestic violence and membership of a motorcycle club could not be verified. What this research does show is that safety is the number one priority in working with these (ex-)partners. Furthermore, it shows how complex it is to assess the seriousness of potential threat coming from these 1%motorcyle clubs. Further research on domestic violence in environments associated with organised crime and the cooperation between the judiciary system and social professionals is needed to improve safety and wellbeing for this specific group.

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.

Qualitative research in an immigration detention center in the Netherlands shows that detained unauthorized migrants consider the entry procedure in Immigration Centre Rotterdam procedurally just. These migrants are generally positive on the fairness of the entry procedure as their safety and welfare are guaranteed and existing procedural justice criteria are respected. However, they believe that immigration detention in itself is illegitimate and that they do not deserve to be detained. This shows that the focus on procedures and interactions is insufficient to understand the perceived legitimacy of immigration detention if shared values and consent with the legal basis of immigration detention are lacking.

People like to make comparisons between humans and other animals when they think a comparison helps them to make a point (e.g. that some human behavior can or cannot be considered to be ‘natural’) or to have a laugh when animals act in ways that are seen as funny or cute. There are a lot of misunderstandings about the feasibility of these kinds of comparisons and this chapter deals with the way in which meaningful use can be made of studies into animal behavior, using research into chimpanzee behavior (and specifically research into chimpanzee conflict regulation) as an example. The conclusion is that there are three ways in which ethological studies into non-human animal behavior can be relevant for an increased understanding of human behavior: by using ethological methods of systematic observation, by asking relevant research questions and by generating new hypotheses.

Racism is related to the process of ‘othering’. Individual people or groups can be described as ‘other’ by depicting them as ‘beasts’. In another form of othering accusations of maltreatment of other than human animals play an important role: awful people abuse innocent animals. Next to that concepts like ‘genocide’ and ‘slavery’ are nowadays used in order to describe the way humans treat other animals. All of this influences the debate on racism.

Sexually transgressive behavior occurs in all sections of society, including sports. That includes behavior from making sexual comments to rape. A risk factor is the culture that can prevail in sports, also known as a disruptive culture. There is normalization of deviant behavior. The top sport culture is particularly vulnerable to unacceptable behavior. In this article we will consider the phenomenon of grooming by the coach – the conscious and movement that induce the minor to engage in sexual contact. Within top sport, the opportunity for (sexually) transgressive behavior will be the determining factor. While grooming in recreational or recreational sport is often by isolating (vulnerable) children from the group, grooming can occur in top sport because of the intensity of the relationship, which is in any case of a more closed nature and can be strengthened by the strong performance-oriented top sport culture. In both cases, an alert, open environment is necessary to create a safe sports climate.

This article states that the social and political context in which restorative justice is situated, needs more attention. The polarized rhetoric of populists with their plea for more state control and repression does not fit with the restorative approach with its emphasis on inclusion and social responsibility of active citizens. The author suggests that the paradigm of ‘positive security’ as coined by Marc Schuilenburg and others could function as a base for an alternative, more constructive and inclusive ‘big story’ on crime and security that is more akin to restorative justice. Aspects of current social protest movements as the MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter and climate demonstrations could be integrated in this ‘big story’, also to prevent that restorative justice is viewed only as a quick fix to soothe symptoms and not address political and social root causes of injustice. In this way, the international restorative justice movement could widen its scope.

In het straf(proces)recht is het zwijgrecht een fundamenteel recht voor de verdachte. De redenen om gebruik te maken van het zwijgrecht kunnen zeer divers en uiteenlopend zijn: van schuldige tot en met onschuldige, alle gradaties daartussen. Omdat de rechter normaliter niet weet wat de reden is, roept de auteur van het artikel op om niet langer gebruik te maken van het betrekken van het zwijgen van een verdachte in de bewijsvoering. Welbeschouwd is dat – bewijsrechtelijk gezien – ook helemaal niet nodig. Het voorkomt in elk geval (de schijn van) een afbreuk aan de wezenlijke belangen die aan het zwijgrecht ten grondslag liggen.

Tegenwoordig bestaat meer aandacht voor burgers die om uiteenlopende redenen niet goed in staat zijn om zich aan juridische normen te houden, in het bijzonder ook aan strafrechtelijke normen. Het gaat om mensen wier cognitieve vermogens tekortschieten en/of die een onderontwikkeld vermogen van zelfcontrole hebben. Deze ontwikkeling kan worden beschouwd als een zekere mate van erkenning dat de maatschappij – en de overheid in het bijzonder – medeverantwoordelijk is voor het scheppen van de bestaansvoorwaarden waaronder mensen zich kunnen ontplooien tot verantwoordelijke burgers. In dit artikel betoog ik dat deze gedeelde verantwoordelijkheid niet alleen geldt voor de ontwikkeling van de mentale capaciteiten die nodig zijn om de normen van het recht te kunnen volgen, maar ook voor het bieden van toegang aan burgers tot de materiële normen zelf.

De komst van volledig zelfrijdende of autonome auto’s doet vele juridische vragen rijzen doordat zelfrijdende auto’s geen bestuurder hebben. Deze vragen rijzen onder meer ten aanzien van de toepassing van bepalingen van het RVV 1990 en de WVW 1994 die de bestuurder als normadressaat hebben. Daarnaast komen aspecten van cybersecurity aan bod in dit artikel. Er wordt in deze bijdrage onder meer een voorstel tot wijziging van artikel 6 WVW 1994 gedaan, om zo te voorzien in een bestuurderloze toekomst.

The aim of this study was to provide more insight in prevalence and aetiology of juvenile frequent offending, employing police registered data as well as self-report information. We combined data about 519 youths that participated in a self-report study in the region of The Hague with police register data (the HKS system) from the police unit of The Hague. The results indicate that a substantial part of youths that report a large amount of offenses themselves are not formally known as ‘juvenile frequent offender’. Causal factors derived from four major criminological theories can be found in a more pronounced way among juvenile frequent offenders than among youths that incidentally commit offenses. In general, there are similarities between the characteristics of juvenile frequent offenders defined by police register data and those defined by self-reports, but, on average, frequent offenders that are known by the police spend more time unstructured socializing with friends. We conclude that research using the method of self-report is well capable to find juvenile frequent offenders, and that this method also leads to useful information about the causes of their delinquent behaviour.

Young people’s delinquent behavior remains a social problem of concern to parents, local residents, teachers, police officers and administrators. With respect to effective interventions, the dominant focus is on ‘what works’. Relatively little is known about ‘who works’. In this study, based on a survey of 679 vmbo-pupils, it was investigated to what extent receiving ‘sternness with love’ from a professional may contribute to mitigating delinquency. For this research, unique graphically supported measuring instruments were developed that enable participants of the target group – including those who suffer from mild intellectual disabilities – to independently fill out the questionnaire. The results based on regression analyses suggest that there is no support for the supposed contribution of the interaction between sternness and love or of the three-way interaction between delinquent friends, sternness and love in explaining the variance of delinquent behavior. The results further show that having delinquent friends is related to participants’ delinquency. The results of these analyses also suggest that the relevant professional’s approach with ‘sternness’ or with ‘love’ moderates the relationship between delinquent friends and committing theft.

This article presents findings from a longitudinal study of 81 young recidivists examined over fifteen years. By the age of 25, 50 percent had desisted for at least three years. 60 percent had had no new police contacts during the last two years. Four stages could be distinguished in the desistance process. Apart from a small number of explicit persisters, all of the young adults did consciously consider whether the benefits of their criminal activities outweighed the disadvantages. With just a few exceptions, the decision to quit was not motivated by an altruistic goal, nor by extreme fear, but mainly motivated by the feeling of being too old for criminal life and by striving for a pleasant self-esteem. It is concluded that when young adult recidivists give up crime, this must be seen as an extreme and extremely late form of maturation.

Steering on public values in Dutch smart cities, let alone their regulation, is complicated. This article situates this difficulty in the vested interests that Dutch local authorities have in public-private smart city projects, and in the fact that public values are narrowly defined in relation to the technology; not in relation to a vision for the city in which its communities thrive. A way out of this deadlock, the article proposes, is to understand smart cities in the Netherlands beyond the typically Dutch consensus politics (the ‘polder’) and, instead, as part of a broader (urban) governance tendency to push urban technologies through the recital of fixed urban problems and public values. Consequently, state regulation of the (Dutch) smart city should principally enable (local) public and political involvement in defining urban problems and urban dreams, and thus in deciding the public values that are at stake.

Incidents involving persons with ‘confused behavior’ are an important and topical theme in Dutch society. The police are often the first to be involved in these incidents because they are the only public organization that has a 24/7 presence on the streets. In 2019, the police registered 96,000 reports of persons who showed confused behavior. It is therefore not surprising that the police have repeatedly drawn political-administrative attention to this situation and indicated that the limits have been reached. That raises the question of how police officers deal with a situation that has actually grown above their heads in daily practice. In this research, based on the theory of street-level bureaucracy introduced by Lipsky, it was investigated how police officers in The Hague use their discretion to cope with this difficult reality.

In previous observational studies among operational police officers, some officers stated that if a victim is not willing to (officially) report a crime to the police, they are not able to police these cases. This rather cynical and fatalistic statement raises several questions. What do police officers mean when they say this? What do they actually do in those cases and why? In this paper we try to answer these questions based on explorative qualitative interviews with several police officers in two police teams in the Netherlands. The results show that even though police officers recognize these statements among their colleagues, they do not agree with them and in practice police officers show a lot of effort and involvement in these cases. In fact, police officers have several possible strategies available to deal with these cases. Which strategy they opt for depends on various pragmatic, organisational and moral considerations.

In the Internet era, banking fraud has become a common way of stealing money. According to victim surveys, this offense has already led to significant numbers of victims. In this article, the authors focus on illegal bank account withdrawals, which are an indication of identity fraud. For this they use data on 636 victims who were surveyed in the LISS panel. Using the concept of ‘capability to act’, as used in the WRR report Why knowing what to do is not enough (2017), the authors model which type of victim takes action to get the stolen amount reimbursed and which type of victim succeeds in doing so. They expect that the less educated and people with low self-control more often refrain from contact with authorities (bank, police) and therefore more often receive no compensation and remain with higher residual damage. The results show that approximately four in five victims of unauthorized bank debits are fully compensated. For the group of victims for whom this is not the case – remaining with residual damage – most of the hypotheses are confirmed.

Online fraudsters seem to adapt to new digital opportunities. While the academic literature about phishing mainly focuses on phishing through emails, fraudsters also appear to use new means of communication and platforms to find and deceive their victims. Based on analysis of 728 police reports from the period from June 20th to August 20th 2019, this article provides a descriptive study on the new phenomenon of payment request fraud on the Dutch advertisement platform Marktplaats.nl (similar to eBay). The article will provide a thorough description of the crime script and its success factors. As fraudsters now use new means of communication, it will also be assessed to what extent they use new persuasion techniques, and to what extent victims may have different characteristics. The research, therefore, focuses on the modus operandi, persuasion techniques used by the fraudsters, and victim characteristics.