On the occasion of the publication of a collection of articles by Stanley Cohen in 2016 (edited by Tom Deams), René van Swaaningen pays a tribute to this important, thought-provoking and pioneering thinker in criminology. He takes Cohen’s adage that we as critical criminologists always have to balance between intellectual scepticism and political commitment as a starting point for an analysis of his work. Cohen’s rejection of criminology as a liberal project may have led him to defining himself as an ‘anti-criminologist’, yet at the same time Cohen has been able to transform the discipline as such into a more power-critical direction. Two of Cohen’s key-contributions to criminological theory, those on moral panics and on denial, are discussed and related to each other. Whilst adopting Foucault’s analyses of power as a constructing practice, Cohen, in his work on social control, rejects the pessimist implications of Foucault’s work, in which human agency is defined away. In this essay, the relation of Cohen’s work with that of his mentor David Matza is also discussed, as well as is his great and ironic style of writing.

Positive criminology criticizes punitive measures, repression, crime control and the ‘politics of fear’, and re-values positive concepts as trust, solidarity, well-being and ‘ontological security’. In this book-review it is argued that many of these positive terms are beyond the scope of criminology and that peace and peace-making are more appropriate terms that can be used within a criminological context. Peacemaking criminology provides a basis for constructive approaches to conflicts and disorder; it may also outline the contours of the peace-making function of the law and the peacekeeping tasks of judges and police officers.

Ever since the creation of silent movies, directors aim to shock the audience with explicit scenes of violence. Yet, little attention has been given to the evolution of horror movies. In order to create ‘monsters’, ‘dark locations’ and ‘explicit scenes of violence’ directors have to experiment with storylines and new techniques, if they want to shock the audience. The aim of this paper is to examine whether or not horror has become more violent (more extreme) throughout film history. Hence, we will discuss the historic evolution of horror movies in mainstream cinema (films that reached a large audience) and cult cinema (films which have a select, mostly fan based, audience).

Based on a new book edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen The Poetics of Crime. Understanding and Researching Crime and Devience Through Creative Sources (Ashgate, 2014), Dina Siegel analyzes the ways in which social scientists can find inspiration in art, music, literature, photography and dance. She discusses how these fields can enrich criminological research by introducing new analytical instruments and skills and to discover new research fields, meanings and emotions in crime-related issues.

In this article I focus on the academic environment in which social psychologist Diederik Stapel worked and developed his career as a con academic. He published over 50 articles with fabricated data in top tier journals. This article is based on interviews with Stapel himself and document analysis. Especially, I pay attention to his socialization as an academic in his years at the University of Amsterdam, where he did his PhD (1986-2000). In my description of how social psychology developed in the nineties in Amsterdam it becomes clear that there was a strong emphasis on competition and publishing articles in top tier journals. Stapel conformed to this culture of competition and published almost as much as the two leading full professors of his department during the period 1995-2000. In the early nineties Stapel discovered that the use of questionable research procedures (QRPs) was common in social psychology. He realized that without using these procedures it was hardly possible to get good results and publish frequently in top tier journals. Though Stapel resented this partly and was disenchanted by this experience, he did integrate QRPs in his daily academic practice. He actually raised the issue of QRPs in a lecture in Oxford when he received the Jos Jaspars Early Career Award of the EAESP, but there was hardly any substantive response to his presentation. The academic culture in which Stapel developed his career can be described as ‘indifferent tolerant’. Though Stapel does refer to the circumstances which influenced his academic fraud, he does state that he himself is responsible for his massive scientific misconduct.

Compartmentalization refers to a process by which groups of people are put apart from others. In these compartments violent acts could be committed with complete impunity. Although many genocidal periods are discussed, this book is actually about the Holocaust and what the author calls ‘compartmentalization of the personality’. How can it be explained that Nazis felt no regret or guilt? What are the personality traits of these mass murderers? What are their personal motives? According to the author these criminals cannot be termed ‘ordinary people’ who were brought to killings by the situation they were in or pressure exerted on them. Individual choice and self-selection play a role.

The recent exhibition The Crime Was Almost Perfect in the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, curated by Cristina Ricupero, focused on the dynamic relation between art (aesthetics) and crime (ethics). The review discusses the representations of crime in (some of) the exhibited art works and analyzes the ways in which the artists play with their (conflicting) meanings, ambivalences and ambiguities.