In the Netherlands, over the past 25 years mayors have had an increasing number of formal powers, based on administrative law, to fight against crime and disorder. Now, the Dutch mayors have the power to impose a restraining order, to close houses in case of drugs and/or drugs trade, or to decline a request for a permit when it might be used for illegal activities.
To implement these measures, the local government is highly dependent on (information provided by) the police. At this moment we do not have much information about this cooperation between local government and the police in the management of crime and disorder. This paper is based on an empirical study concerning this issue. It shows that the inter-organizational cooperation between local government and the police may differ strongly, however this cooperation still often depends on central factors and circumstances. An important factor is the (growing) distance between the police and local government in regard to the local approach of problems of crime and disorder. A significant number of local police officers concentrates mainly on the maintenance of law and order by criminal law enforcement instead of the implementation of administrative measures. As a result, local government is often unsatisfied about the contribution of the police. For example, the quality of the information provided by the police is often perceived as insufficient. In some cases local governments try to diminish the degree of interdependency with the police and to strengthen their own position in the local safety domain.

The operational leader, the ‘gold commander’, fulfils a crucial function in crisis- and disaster management in the Netherlands. He is held responsible for the total coordination of all collaborating emergency services and supports/advises the Mayor, the Commander in Chief. Unfortunately, this function has never been very effective in practise, as shown by many evaluations. From a scientific point of view, it is easy to understand why the operational leader cannot be effective in the Dutch crisis management organisation. The operational leader has no authorities and has been seated in an emergency operation centre far from the Mayor. This article examines why this issue has not been solved, despite 30 years of studying and adjusting the Dutch crisis management organisation.

This contribution reports on a delimited part of a larger, exploratory study, the main question of which was: How do aldermen perceive threats, what are their behavioral intentions and what is the influence of threats on the process and the outcome of decision-making? This question was answered with the help of Q-methodology, semi-structured interviews and case studies. This article discusses the results of the Q-methodology and the semi-structured interviews. The case studies will be reported separately later on. Through the Q-methodology three patterns in perception were found in dealing with threats: ‘combative and decisive’, ‘vulnerable and thoughtful’ and ‘down-to-earth and accepting’. The interviews show that it usually concerns instrumental threats that are deliberately used to influence decision making, which usually take place in the private sphere and vary from verbal aggression to physical violence. Most threats come from individuals, but some come from groups, in some cases there is a relationship with criminals. In the cases reviewed, the consequences in the private sphere are far-reaching, there are indications for the influence on public functioning (from hardening to great caution). There is almost always a report, a fuss in the media can affect the authority of the official.

In today’s society, full use is made of online banking. This makes safety and security of online banking an important issue. Two significant threats to users of online banking in The Netherlands are phishing and malware attacks. In this study, an end-user perspective is adopted to study customers’ perceptions regarding safety and security of online banking. A unique feature to this study is that we explore – besides other predictor variables – the relationship between online banking fraud victimization and risk perception. We have made a distinction between three types of victimization: 1) self-experienced victimization, 2) victimization of acquaintances, such as family and friends, and 3) having heard of stories in the media about online banking fraud victimization. Based on a secondary analysis of data from 1200 Dutch users of online banking, collected through an online survey, we conclude that participants perceive their risk of online banking fraud to be small. In general, participants have little experience with victimization, both themselves (2.3%) and in social settings (29.6%). Three quarters of the respondents (75.6%) are aware of victimization of online banking fraud by means of media coverage. Direct and indirect victimization, however, have almost no influence on risk perception regarding online banking fraud. Risk perception is mainly determined by perceived vulnerability, that is, the estimated probability of becoming a victim of online banking fraud. Furthermore, perceived severity or impact of online banking fraud and the degree of trust in online banking contribute to some extent to risk perception. In total, 64.0% of variance in risk perception was explained by the predictors perceived vulnerability, perceived severity, locus of control, trust in online banking, (in)direct experiences with victimization (self, acquaintances and media) and demographic variables (gender, age, educational level and work status). The results of this study may help to improve communication about risks regarding online banking.

The theme of governing anti-social behaviour and incivilities in the public space became more important on the policy and research agenda over the last twenty years. This article describes the law on incivilities in Belgium, namely the ‘administrative communal sanctions’ (GAS). This law is studied in a broader context of contemporary crime control and its organizing patterns. The development of the politics of behaviour can be explained by different characteristics of the period referred to as the late modernity. In the dissertation ‘A culture of control?’ (Devroe 2012) we studied the application and the concrete strategies behind the governance of incivilities on a national and on a city level. The incivility law broadened the competences of the Mayor and the city council especially in the completion of anti social behaviour and public disorder problems in his/her municipality. Instead of being dealt with on a traditional judicial way by the police magistrate, the Mayor can, by this law; himself lay on fines until maximum 250 euro. We mention ‘city republics’ as this punitive sanction became a locally assigned matter, which means that one municipality differs from another in their ‘incivility policy’. Due to the split up of competences of the Belgian state arrangements of 1988, each municipality finds itself framed in different political and organisational executive realities. In this view, Mayors can be called ‘presidents’ of their own municipality, keeping and controlling the process of tackling incivilities as their main responsibility and determining what behaviour had to be controlled and punished and what behaviour can be considered as normal decent behaviour in the public space. Problems of creating a ‘culture of control’, creating inequality for the poor, the beggars and the socially ‘unwanted’ can arise, especially in big cities.

Police officers sometimes use creative ways in deploying their authorities when they deal with obstacles that hinder the pursuit for higher organizational goals or the common interest. By doing this, the boundaries of legislative rules might be stretched or even exceeded. This article reports the findings of a Dutch case study within the police into this phenomenon, which the authors described as the ‘creative use of authorities’. By means of observations and interviews within the researched police forces 57 cases were described and analyzed. The cases enabled a first categorization of distinctive forms of creative use of authorities with 4 essential core elements, that is: abstain from use, abuse, improper use and selective use of authorities.

Internal and external security are traditionally considered to be distinct concepts that allow police organizations and tasks to be differentiated from those of the military. Internal security is then viewed as oriented towards the maintenance of the order within a state and to be exercised against fellow citizens with a limited use of violence. External security deals with the protection of the territory and is exercised against foreign enemies, may include the use of excessive violence. In practice, however, the boundaries between these concepts and between police and military aims and tasks have become blurred. The extension of the security concept, a change in the nature of interventions on foreign territory and a shifting image of the enemy create an overlap between internal and external security issues and actors. This evolution seriously challenges the existing legal and normative frameworks that rely heavily on assumptions based on the distinction between internal and external security.

A part in Dutch penal law defines money laundering as ‘any person who acquires an object, possesses it, hands it over or sells it or makes use of an object, knowing that the object originates – directly or indirectly – from an offense’. Under object is meant any goods and any property rights. With this in mind, the author argues that whoever knows that money (the object) is derived from crime, but spends the money anyway, is committing a money laundering offense. Taking the argument one step further, it is therefore a reasonable hypothesis that a large number of wives or girlfriends of criminals, have been prosecuted for money laundering. That is, if the women knew that the money they spent was obtained through crime. To test the hypothesis, 62 cases dealing with organized crime were selected and analyzed. These cases largely focus on male perpetrators of drug crimes, money laundering, human smuggling and human trafficking. It turns out that the women often knew their male friends or husbands were involved in crime. The women also profited of these crimes because they used their friends’ expensive cars, lived in large mansions and often went shopping for luxury items. Still, hardly anyone was prosecuted for money laundering offenses. Several explanations were found, ranging from pity of officers, an overload of work, absence of direct proof or simply male chauvinist bias. Only if the women were actively involved in other crimes, would they find themselves prosecuted with (among others) money laundering offenses.

In measuring safety a difference appears to exist between ‘objectively measured safety’ and the subjective perception by the public. Objectively spoken the level of criminality in a neighbourhood may have gone down, but that doesn’t necessary mean that the people living there ‘feel equally safer’. Psychology gives a number of explanations for this phenomenon. For example, the knowledge, the differences in thinking styles and communication about safety with citizens play an important role. This should not be seen as a case of non-rational thinking, but rather of systematic irrationality. These people are not ‘dumb’, they have (sometimes hard-wired) ways of handling information about complex issues like safety that require them to take ‘mental shortcuts’ (heuristics) in order to estimate the risks they are exposed to. This paper will focus on some of the psychological laws that guide our risk perception and surprisingly enough, the ‘objective risk’ seems to be of relatively little importance if compared with other, more subjective factors. Many of the factors relate to the nature of information citizens are exposed to: a risk that this described in easy to imagine way leads to a different evaluation of that risk compared with a less conspicuous presentation. Also the level of expertise of the ‘receiving end’ must be taken into account. Lay-people have different ways to look at risks compared with experts in a certain domain. The discussion on how to improve safety is probably best served with a continuing debate between ‘rational, objective’ and ‘systematic irrational, subjective’ mental models, while recognising their respective strengths and weaknesses. These findings may assist policy makers in particular in the formulation of policy that, in addition to the security objective as such, also improves the perception of safety.