It has been proposed that when people perceive their treatment by criminal justice actors as more procedurally just, they will be more likely to comply with the law. Existing research mainly focused on the police or the judge. This longitudinal study examined how prisoners experienced their treatment by five different criminal justice actors using data from the Prison Project. The prisoners were most positive about the procedurally fair treatment by their lawyer and least positive about the treatment by the police. Additionally, the perceived treatment by the police was associated with the treatment by other actors at subsequent moments.

The ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp are among the main European ports of entry for the import and further distribution of cocaine. Earlier research underlines the interchangeability of these ports regarding the criminal networks trafficking cocaine into Europe. In this contribution, the interchange­ability of these European sea ports regarding cocaine trafficking is questioned. Based on empirical research, and applying the routine activity approach, the Port of Rotterdam and the Port of Antwerp are compared with respect to their physical characteristics, the potential, motivated offenders, as well as the existing public and private security measures.

In recent years, the authorities have dismantled several encrypted phone providers. These providers stored millions of messages about covert activities that were overtly exchanged between criminals. This type of communication offers a unique insight into serious organized crime and the people involved. Based on one such intercepted encrypted phone network, called PGP-Safe, we carried out a social network analysis on the Dutch-speaking synthetic drug market. Three findings stand out. Firstly, three-quarters of all accounts (N=4,158) are interconnected in a giant component, resulting in a criminal small-world effect. Secondly, the network appears to be robust. As a consequence, the removal of central accounts will hardly have any impact on the network as a whole. Thirdly, the majority of the accounts within the synthetic drug market is involved in poly-drug trafficking. The Dutch synthetic drug market is much more closely intertwined with other drug markets than is commonly known.

This paper concerns the question whether in the period 2011-2017 displacement effects occurred from the Netherlands to Belgium in the context of synthetic drugs production, cannabis cultivation, and retail of illicit drugs, and if so, how these may be explained. We conclude that displacement took place in modi operandi of retail drug dealers. This is explained foremost by the policy of banning non-residents from Dutch coffeeshops in border region municipalities. Dealers and traffickers responded by switching to local distribution in Belgium as well as deliveries by drug couriers. The synthetic drugs and cannabis cultivation markets show minor changes in modi operandi, but no changes occurred in choosing production locations. Displacement effects in the context of organized drug crime must be explained from a range of factors. Reality is therefore more complex than assuming that government interventions are the main cause of a balloon effect.

In order to advance our understanding of digital drug markets on social media, this article examines the trustworthiness of cocaine dealers on Telegram Messenger. Based on an exploratory netnography, we illustrate that digital dealers on Telegram Messenger use a number of sales tactics to attract potential customers, emphasizing the quality of the goods and service and (competitive) pricing strategies. These sales tactics include various signals that seem intended to appear as trustworthy as possible to potential customers. Seen from the perspective of signaling theory, our study highlights the ambiguity of these signals that, depending on the online observer, could both signal trustworthiness and untrustworthiness.

This article describes traits of the hitherto underexposed transit trade of cocaine via the Netherlands, based on a qualitative social network analysis of a diversity of data. Research findings show that the transit trade via the Netherlands is dominated by poly-drug trafficking. It is noteworthy that streams of predominantly mono-drugs are entering the Netherlands, while mainly streams of poly-drugs are leaving the country. Our research furthermore shows that cocaine intended for European markets may be transited via the Netherlands to European countries to which the cocaine was initially imported. This is what we refer to as ping-pong trade. Another characteristic of the transit trade of cocaine via the Netherlands is that the actors involved, mainly coordinate parts of the cocaine supply chain. Although different groups within the cocaine distribution chain collaborate, this does not necessarily mean they actually know each other. Taken together, the organization of the distributive trade of cocaine is in this article positioned as an interdependent transnational network of networks (NoN). We suggest that future research into the transit trade of cocaine should apply such a transnational NoN perspective to fully grasp the interdependence of the micro and meso levels of the trade and, in so doing, ultimately comprehend the effect this may have on the macro level.

Criminological research has emphasized the importance of procedural justice of authorities during encounters with citizens. Theory and prior research propose that the procedurally just treatment by the police influences, possibly via legitimacy, citizens’ willingness to cooperate with authorities in the criminal justice chain. This article tests the hypotheses of procedural justice theory using Dutch data of the European Social Survey (N=1,616). The results show an association between the procedurally just treatment of citizens by the police and cooperation with criminal justice authorities. However, this association has not been explained by the legitimacy of the police.

This qualitative study examines how criminal careers in cybercrime start and can be explained. Based on offender and expert interviews, the authors conclude that traditional factors linked with the initiation, such as a maturity gap (for juvenile offenders) and opportunism (for adult offenders), in combination with different types of (online) disinhibition – social, technical, situational and psychological – can explain the start of a criminal career. Features of the digital context appear to play a major role in the development of a criminal career and this requires more online supervision and education about – among other things – legal alternatives and the risks and boundaries of the online environment.

This article contains the results of a crime script analysis regarding the processes of human trafficking and human smuggling in Curaçao. The crime script analysis was conducted using data from five criminal investigations of human trafficking and seven criminal investigations of human smuggling. The results show that human trafficking in Curaçao consists of labor exploitation and sexual exploitation in bars, cafes and clubs. Young women are recruited from Colombia, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic to work as waitresses, trago girls and/or prostitutes. Once they arrive on the island, the women are dependent on the perpetrators and are subjected to exploitation In this research, two types of human smuggling have been witnessed. The first type consists of Venezuelan smugglers who transport fellow Venezuelan nationals to Curaçao by boat in exchange for payment. The second type of smugglers are Curaçao locals who rent out rooms to Venezuelans that reside on the island illegally.

The Financial Action Task Force reported that money launderers may operate in professional money laundering networks. Whether such money laundering networks operate in the Netherlands is unclear. In this article the authors therefore explore whether professional money launderers collaborate in network structures and the business-like manner in which they offer their services. Business-like refers to their involvement in multiple cases, the amount of repeat customers, and excludes family relations. The research is based on Dutch police registrations of 236 professional money launderers. Our results suggest that professional money laundering networks are indeed active in the Netherlands and that money launderers in these networks offer their services in a business-like manner to a varying extent. An important caveat to the current findings is that the criminal cases analyzed predominantly pertain drug-related offenses, leaving the existence and professionalism of money laundering networks in other types of crime, like large-scale fraud, a question open for future research.

The current study investigates the relationship between the Dark Triad personality traits (consisting of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism) and three different forms of aggression: online aggression, overt aggression and relational aggression. The sample consisted of 1,051 adolescents between 12 and 16 years old. Results show that psychopathy and Machiavellianism are positive predictors of the three forms of aggression, while narcissism is a positive predictor of online aggression only.

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.

In this study we examine whether parental monitoring remains a protective factor in the lives of emerging adults, as well as the extent to which monitoring in other settings replaces the protective role of the parents. We use data collected for the TransAM project, a longitudinal survey of 970 emerging adults (18-24 years) to examine monitoring in a range of different contexts using an instrument based on Stattin and Kerr’s parental monitoring scale (2000). Results indicate that whilst parental control plays a protective role in the first years of emerging adulthood, we find no evidence that monitoring in other settings replaces the protective role of parents. However, monitoring of the self, i.e., self-control, has an increasingly strong relationship with delinquency during emerging adulthood.

A recent rehabilitation theory, the ‘Good Lives Model’ (GLM), states that interventions that work towards a higher well-being can reduce recidivism risk more sustainably by promising a happier, pro-social life, rather than just a less harmful one. Although the GLM theory appears promising, limited empirical research has examined its underlying assumptions, applicability and its effectiveness. Research into the GLM with youth is even more limited. Therefore, in the current study, we investigate the main etiological assumptions of the GLM in a large group of adolescents between 14 and 18 years old from the general population (N=5.776), by means of self-report survey data on well-being, primary human goods and delinquency. The results show that a lower subjective global well-being is related to delinquent behavior. Especially the primary human goods of relatedness and working towards a financially stable future appear to be important goals for interventions aimed at rehabilitation of juvenile offenders.

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.

This article investigates whether cyber delinquent behaviour of school friends, other offline friends and online contacts is related to cyber delinquent behaviour of individuals, and whether this relation differs for cyber dependent, cyber enabled and traditional crime. We used both direct and indirect measures of cyber delinquency of friends. We employed data from the first wave of a large-scale study on the causes of online delinquency among Dutch juveniles (n=889; mean age=16.8 years). The results suggest that both direct and indirect measures of levels of friend delinquency were related to levels of individual cyber offending. However, indirect measures had a stronger association with individual online delinquency than direct measures. This suggests that respondents make incorrect estimates of their friends’ levels of online delinquency. Moreover, no differences were found in the strength of the relation between individual online offending and indirect measures of online offending of school friends, offline friends and online friends. This suggests that friends of different types all play an important role in individual online offending.

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.

Given that the social life of youngsters develops more and more online, attention for cybercrime has grown as well. However, no Flemish data is available yet. This study uses data from two representative samples of the Flemish youth to research the prevalence and risk profiles of on- and offline crime. Compared to offline crime, online crime is relatively limited. In addition, results showed that online offenders had the least severe risk profile, while offenders of both on- and offline delinquency had the most severe profile. For victimization, it appeared that it is important to consider individual types of offences, since complex differences were found between various crime types. These results indicate a limited, but not ignorable, occurrence of online crime, and a difference in risk profiles for offline and online crime.

Studies investigating peer influence on risk behaviors, such as antisocial behavior and substance abuse, mostly study the amount of change in which adolescents adapt their risk behavior to become more similar to their friends. Onset of risk behavior, changing form having no experience to having any experience with risk behavior, has been studies far less. This study investigates friends’ influence on the onset of risk behavior and their influence in changes in risk behavior. Hypotheses were tested using SNARE (Social Network Analysis of Risk behavior in Early adolescence) data (N=1.144), containing information on risk behavior (i.e. antisocial behavior, alcohol use, and tobacco use) and friendship networks at three timepoints during the first year of secondary education (M_age= 12.7; SD=0.47). Analyses, using longitudinal social network analysis (RSIENA), showed that although adolescents adapt their risk behavior to become more similar to their friends, they are not influence in by their friends in the onset of risk behavior. These findings suggest s more nuanced role of friends in the onset of risk behavior. Interventions aiming at friends might benefit from differentiating between the onset and further (dis)continuation of risk behavior as these friendship influence processes might be less relevant for the onset of risk behavior.

In this paper we describe the first results of a recent cohort study conducted at Ghent University and focus on the applied study design. Existing cross-sectional studies regarding sexual victimization are not able to make causal statements about its risk and outcome factors. This cohort study aims to answer these questions. Results of this study confirmed that students are often confronted with sexual assault and seldom consult existing support services. This paper emphasizes the advantages of a longitudinal design within victimological research including the possibilities and difficulties that accompany it.