The aim of this study was to investigate the scale and network structure of prostitution in the northern provinces of the Netherlands. This study tries to answer three research questions – using a social network analysis – about (1) the size of the prostitution network, (2) the formation of subgroups, and (3) key positions within the networks. The findings show that approximately two thirds of the researched prostitution networks is still unregistered, while there are indications that the outcome of the estimate is in line with the actual situation. Furthermore, results show that prostitutes have a tendency to form subgroups on the basis of the same nationality, which indicates that homophily plays a role in the formation of subgroups. The identification of the actors who occupy key positions in the network were based on the key player problem (KPP). A striking finding was that organizers of prostitution (such as pimps) did not have a central position in the networks. These findings provide insight into the way in which prostitution is registered, and provide points of departure for interventions to disrupt the network or, on the contrary, to strengthen it.

Since 1997, the Criminal Cases Review Commission of England, Wales and Northern Ireland has served as a state-funded post-conviction body to consider claims of wrongful conviction for those who have exhausted their rights to appeal. A meticulous organisation that has over its lifetime referred over 700 cases back to the Court of Appeal, resulting in over 60% of those applicants having their convictions quashed, it is nonetheless restricted in its response to cases by its own legislation. This shapes its decision-making in reviewing cases, causing it to be somewhat deferential to the original jury, to the principle of finality and, most importantly, to the Court of Appeal, the only institution that can overturn a wrongful conviction. In mandating such deference, the legislation causes the Commission to have one eye on the Court’s evolving jurisprudence but leaves room for institutional and individual discretion, evidenced in some variability in responses across the Commission. While considerable variability would be difficult to defend, some inconsistency raises the prospects for a shift towards a less deferential referral culture. This article draws on original research by the author to consider the impact of institutional deference on the work of the Criminal Cases Review Commission and argues for a slightly bolder approach in its work

A question that has preoccupied sociolegal scholars for ages is whether law can change ‘hearts and minds’. This article explores whether non-discrimination law can create social change, and, more particularly, whether it can change attitudes and beliefs as well as external behaviour. The first part examines how sociolegal scholars have theorised about the possibility and desirability of using law as an instrument of social change. The second part discusses the findings of empirical research on the social working of various types of non-discrimination law. What conclusions can be drawn about the ability of non-discrimination law to create social change? What factors influence this ability? And can non-discrimination law change people’s hearts and minds as well as their behaviour? The research literature does not provide an unequivocal answer to the latter question. However, the overall picture emerging from the sociolegal literature is that law is generally more likely to bring about changes in external behaviour and that it can influence attitudes and beliefs only indirectly, by altering the situations in which attitudes and opinions are formed.

Throughout the last decade several cyclists have published memoirs in which they account for their doping use. In previous literature such autobiographical accounts have been characterized as attempts of fallen sports stars to sanitize their spoiled public image. In contrast, the analysis in this article will show that the accounts are of relevance when it comes to understanding the problem of doping in professional cycling. Their accounts break the omertà regarding doping, providing insights about the motivation and opportunity structures behind doping and how such structures are endemic to the system of professional cycling.

This conference paper submitted on the occasion of the 8th International Conference on Information Law and Ethics (University of Antwerp, December 13-14, 2018) that focused on modern intellectual property governance and openness in Europe elaborates upon the Text and Data Mining (TDM) issue in the field of scientific research, which is still-by the time of composition of this paper-in the process of discussion and forthcoming voting before the European Parliament in the form of provision(s) included in a new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. TDM is included in the proposal for a Directive of the European parliament and of the Council on copyright in the Digital Single Market-Proposal COM(2016)593 final 2016/0280(COD) that was submitted to the European Parliament.

This article relies on the premise that to understand the significance of Open Access Repositories (OARs) it is necessary to know the context of the debate. Therefore, it is necessary to trace the historical development of the concept of copyright as a property right. The continued relevance of the rationales for copyright interests, both philosophical and pragmatic, will be assessed against the contemporary times of digital publishing. It follows then discussion about the rise of Open Access (OA) practice and its impact on conventional publishing methods. The present article argues about the proper equilibrium between self-interest and social good. In other words, there is a need to find a tool in order to balance individuals’ interests and common will. Therefore, there is examination of the concept of property that interrelates justice (Plato), private ownership (Aristotle), labour (Locke), growth of personality (Hegel) and a bundle of rights that constitute legal relations (Hohfeld). This examination sets the context for the argument.

For social scientists undertaking critical research on elites in organisational contexts securing access is a challenging exercise that may rely on the use of several access strategies over extended periods. This process is further complicated by the existence of research ethics frameworks that establish boundaries to access strategies, posing dilemmas on how to best balance access needs with a commitment to ethical practices. This article focuses on such dilemmas – or the ‘ethics of access’ – through a reflection on PhD fieldwork during 2016-2017 in Luxembourg spent researching the European Investment Bank. The paper will conclude by calling for an overhaul of existing frameworks in order to foster more research on elites.

Multi-national corporations are increasingly facing attention and disapproval by different actors, including authorities, public and (non-) commercial organizations. Digital globalization and especially social media as a low-cost, highly interactive and multidirectional platform shape a unique context for this rising attention. In the literature, much attention has been devoted to top-down approaches and strategies that corporations use to avoid stigmatization and sanctioning of their behaviour. Reactions to corporate harm are, however, seldom researched from a labelling perspective. As a result, corporations are not considered as objects towards whom labelling is targeted but rather as actors who hamper such processes and who, as moral entrepreneurs, influence which behaviour is labelled deviant. Based on theoretical analysis of literature and case studies, this article will discuss how the process of labelling has changed in light of the digitalized, late-modern society and consequently, how the process should be revisited to be applicable for corporate deviance. Given a diversification of moral entrepreneurs and increasingly dependency of labelling and meaning-making on the online sphere, two new forms of labelling are introduced that specifically target institutions; that is bottom-up and horizontal labelling.

If, as criminologists, we really want to contribute to solutions for the great challenges of our time, we should be…surfing more. In a dynamic environment full of contradictions, we should be constantly in motion, moving left and right between different theoretical-normative perspectives as well as between methodological perspectives. This paper clarifies that surfing movement with some illustrations. It then proposes three goals for a criminological research agenda that should help us address the great challenges: actual (as opposed to superficial) relevance for practice, causal ambitions and multidisciplinarity. The paper concludes with some reflections about the organization and funding of criminological research.

In this contribution, I describe several key developments that have been fundamental to the development of criminology in the past 50 years. Next, I sketch the contours of several more recent developments, paying particular attention to three technologies, virtual reality, smartphones and wearables that will leave their imprint on the field. These developments will also imply a shift from the study of criminality to researching criminal behaviour.

We analyze two citizen collectives of ‘professional city makers’ who have shaped participation in circular area development in anticipation of the Dutch Environment and Planning Act. The activities of professional city-makers form an interesting new phenomenon that requires attention as well as the implications: it is precisely through the professionalism of the city-makers’ efforts that there is a regular tension in the participation process between their role as citizen and professional in their contact with the government. We therefore discuss how the participation of professional city-makers in area development exposes different paradoxes that must be taken into account in the further implementation of the Environment and Planning Act. In short, we argue that participation in the Act is presented in a traditional way and does not fit the new role of citizens in area development in the 21st century.

A rapidly growing field of research and practice, restorative justice has primarily found its gravitational centre within the criminal justice system, as an alternative of dealing with the aftermath of crime. Less explored remains the application of restorative justice in complex, urban, or intercultural contexts, an application which raises a whole set of conceptual and practical challenges. This article is based on an action project which aimed to research conflict narratives in intercultural contexts and transform them through restorative praxis. Mostly used in educational, organizational, and health care settings, action research remains an underused but a highly interesting methodology for criminology and criminal justice research. Its alternative epistemology makes it particularly apt for scientific projects that aim both at investigating crime and justice related issues and at engendering change, either at the level of criminal justice or communities. Although action research has focused mostly on creating change at the level of practical knowledge, when conceived in a critical manner, action research aims not only at improving the work of practitioners, but also at assisting them to arrive at a critique of their social or work settings. Practice concerns at the same time problem setting or problem framing. By zooming into one of the case studies of the project, more specifically the social housing estates in Vienna, I focus in this article specifically on the tensions and dilemmas created by processes of engagement in a problematizing approach to the context and to practice. During these processes, together with other social actors, such as inhabitants and professionals, we named problems (in our case social conflicts) and framed the context in which we addressed them. I argue that participatory forms of inquiry, such as action research, should actively reframe rather than merely describe contexts and problems they work with.

Both major disasters and smaller incidents at chemical companies impact the environment. Seveso regulations aim to limit the impact of the chemical industry on man and the environment. This leads to the expectation that violation of these rules is predictive of incidents. In the current study, incidents at chemical companies are predicted from the company’s history of rule violation, previously reported incidents and corporate characteristics. Analysis of three years of inspection data and of six years of reported incidents, shows that the company’s branch and previous reported incidents predict the occurrence of an incident. The company’s history of rule violation, however, does not. Future research is needed to examine the different possible explanations for these contra intuitive results.

In legal education, criticism is conceived as an academic activity. As lecturers, we expect from students more than just the expression of their opinion; they have to evaluate and criticize a certain practice, building on a sound argumentation and provide suggestions on how to improve this practice. Criticism not only entails a negative judgment but is also constructive since it aims at changing the current state of affairs that it rejects (for some reason or other). In this article, we want to show how we train critical writing in the legal skills course for first-year law students (Juridische vaardigheden) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. We start with a general characterization of the skill of critical writing on the basis of four questions: 1. Why should we train critical writing? 2. What does criticism mean in a legal context? 3. How to carry out legal criticism? and 4. How to derive recommendations from the criticism raised? Subsequently, we discuss, as an illustration to the last two questions, the Dutch Urgenda case, which gave rise to a lively debate in the Netherlands on the role of the judge. Finally, we show how we have applied our general understanding of critical writing to our legal skills course. We describe the didactic approach followed and our experiences with it.

Unlike criminal career research into the criminal behavior of natural persons, longitudinal research into rule violations by corporations is still scant. The few available studies are mostly limited to US corporations, and suffer from either a small sample size or a short follow-up period, limiting the generalizability of their findings. The present study uses longitudinal data on rule violating behavior of 494 Dutch chemical corporations derived from yearly inspections (N=4.367) of the relevant safety and environmental agencies between 2006 and 2017. The study aims to gain insight in the patterning of rule violations by Dutch chemical corporations, and the extent to which these patterns are associated with sector and corporate characteristics. The results show that rule violation is common among Dutch chemical corporations. A small minority of chronically violating corporations however, is responsible for a disproportional share of all observed rule violations. Using group-based trajectory modelling (GBTM) we distinguish several longitudinal patterns of rule violations in our data. Available sector and corporation characteristics are only weakly associated with the patterns of rule violations identified.

Women are less likely to commit criminal acts than men. This gender gap appears to be particularly pronounced in white-collar crime. This systematic literature review examines existing theories, such as the situational hypothesis and the ‘gendered theory of focal concerns’ and evaluates to what extent they find support in empiricism. The results seem to offer the most support to the ‘gendered theory of focal concerns’. This nourishes the hypothesis that with an increase of women at positions in the upper tiers of the company ladder a decrease in the prevalence of white-collar crime can be expected. However, it is also possible that the explanation of corporate crime does not lie in a lack of femininity, but in a lack of gender diversity. Furthermore, limited access to informal criminal networks, the ‘old boys networks’, seems to play an important role in the gender gap of white-collar crime.

In this introductory article we will discuss some of the recent developments in corporate crime research in the Netherlands and Belgium since 2008. In doing so, we will answer the following three questions: (1) What are the most important developments in the way research on corporate crime has been carried out? (2) What are key themes in corporate crime research? (3) What are the most important blind spots in research into corporate crime? We will conclude with some avenues for future research on corporate crime and its enforcement.

In recent years, there has been growing policy support for expanding worker ownership of businesses in the European Union. Debates on stimulating worker ownership are a regular feature of discussions on the collaborative economy and the future of work, given anxieties regarding the reconfiguration of the nature of work and the decline of standardised employment contracts. Yet, worker ownership, in the form of labour-managed firms such as worker cooperatives, remains marginal. This article explains the appeal of worker cooperatives and examines the reasons why they continue to be relatively scarce. Taking its cue from Henry Hansmann’s hypothesis that organisational innovations can make worker ownership of firms viable in previously untenable circumstances, this article explores how organisational innovations, such as those embodied in the capital and governance structure of Decentralised (Autonomous) Organisations (D(A)Os), can potentially facilitate the growth of LMFs. It does so by undertaking a case study of a blockchain project, Colony, which seeks to create decentralised, self-organising companies where decision-making power derives from high-quality work. For worker cooperatives, seeking to connect globally dispersed workers through an online workplace, Colony’s proposed capital and governance structure, based on technological and game theoretic insight may offer useful lessons. Drawing from this pre-figurative structure, self-imposed institutional rules may be deployed by worker cooperatives in their by-laws to avoid some of the main pitfalls associated with labour management and thereby, potentially, vitalise the formation of the cooperative form.

Whether and under which conditions restorative justice can be applied to cases of corporate violence is explored starting from the phenomenon of corporate violence, defined as acts committed by corporations in the course of their regular activities but with harmful consequences for people’s health. Specific characteristics of different types of corporate violence are presented, as well as victims’ needs, experiences and expectations. The applicability of restorative justice, but also the need of its rethinking, is discussed through an analysis of the role of its key actors and the concepts of participation and restoration.