In the last five years the number of armed robberies on jewelry stores in the Netherlands has increased again and reached an all-time high in 2010. In this article, recent developments are discussed. The absolute number of these robberies is not very large, but in terms of the chance of being robbed, jewelry stores belong to the most threatened in retail. In general, armed robberies on jewelry stores show a pattern very similar to robberies on other retail targets. About two third are hit-and-run robberies, committed by offenders who live nearby and are generally known to the police as repeat offenders. A smaller portion of these robberies is committed by offenders operating more professionally. In the last ten years there were no big changes in the way these crimes were committed. Contrary to other types of robbery this crime is often profitable. The size of the loot is relatively high. In recent years the price of gold has dramatically increased. This might be considered an independent risk factor. Nevertheless, it's too simple to assess the recent increase of armed robberies on jewelry stores as a direct consequence of this development.

This essay charts the changing status of the death penalty in western societies, from a cultural universal three hundred years ago to a prohibited penalty today, and offers a sociological explanation for that great transformation. The ability to impose the penalty of death is an elementary particle of state power. That power was frequently and spectacularly deployed in early modern Europe as states asserted a monopoly on legitimate violence and absolutist rulers deployed force to subdue their enemies. Once states consolidated their infrastructural power, the ostentatious killing of subjects became less necessary. As liberal politics limited the legitimate use of state violence and established legal protections for individuals, and as cultural change softened state power, the death penalty became increasingly problematic. The character of state power, and the balance between liberalism and democracy, civilized refinement and humanitarian sensibility, explains the pace and extent of death penalty change in specific western nations.

Is the design of a city a decisive factor in the development of violent behavior by its inhabitants? The discussion following the 2005 riots in the French suburbs shows that many blame the concept of La Ville Radieuse and its most famous founding father, the architect Le Corbusier, for the social degeneration of the banlieues. For some critics, like the British author Theodore Dalrymple, this ‘totalitarian’ architecture symbolizes the evil of the welfare state with its social security, mass immigration, egalitarism and its elites with their blindness for the threat to the western Enlightenment values coming from these ‘black’ suburbs. However, the truth of urban development is that cities are fundamentally unpredictable. After several generations a building will be used in a completely different way than perceived, by people whose existence one wasn't aware of and in a social context one couldn't have predicted. This ‘natural’ development is labeled as the failure of a project, often leading to a policy of repression and demolition. However, local politicians, project developers and architects should realize that it's not their actions that determine the development of cities, but the way the inhabitants use and interpret their environment. They create their own city. Instead of replacing the inhabitants by demolishing their houses, we probably have no other choice than getting to know these quarters better and renovate these together with and for the local inhabitants.