In dit themanummer wordt bijzondere aandacht gegeven aan sanctiewetgeving. In dit redactioneel wordt ingegaan op de mogelijkheden om betrokkenheid van ondernemingen bij ernstige mensenrechtenschendingen aan te pakken, naast het gebruik van de Sanctiewet. Verkend wordt wat de aard en omvang van dit fenomeen is en welke juridische en niet-juridische middelen worden ingezet om de betrokkenheid van ondernemingen bij ernstige mensenrechtenschendingen te voorkomen en wat daarvan het effect kan zijn. Vervolgens zullen de beschikbare juridische middelen en quasi-juridische reacties en het gebruik daarvan worden geïnventariseerd. Ten slotte wordt gereflecteerd op de mogelijke effecten van het gebruik van deze instrumenten ter preventie van de betrokkenheid van ondernemingen bij ernstige mensenrechtenschendingen.

In the past decades, organised crime internationalised rapidly as a result of increasing mobility and ‘open’ borders. At the same time developments in information and communication technology have led to modernisation of existing types of crime and the introduction of novel ones. Finally, criminals have benefited from increasingly diversified migration streams. In the Netherlands and Belgium, organised crime appeared on the agenda in the 1990s. For a long time emphasis was on ‘trade crimes’ i.e. trafficking in drugs and humans, as well as human smuggling, followed by the production of synthetic drugs and cannabis. More recently the Low Countries are confronted by more visible manifestations of organised crime, for example rapid growth of outlaw motorcycle gangs. Criminals also try to utilise their capital to invest in businesses and real estate and to influence local politics.

Throughout history people have committed theft, fraud and murder. However, the frequency and severity of crimes are not static, but varies across time and space. The ways in which people respond to crime also change over time: penalties such as banishment, corporal punishment and capital punishment were frequently imposed in early modern Europe, but do not exist here anymore. Our thinking about crime and crime control changed over time as well. In addition to so-called hard crimes such as theft and homicide, various kinds of conduct were – in some times and periods – labeled as criminal (adultery, fornication and blasphemy). In crime control, state formation resulted in the emergence and expansion and professionalization of police forces and judicial systems, which development was accompanied by increasing interactions and interplays between supranational governments, private crime fighters, and informal forms of social control. Criminologists study fluid phenomena which vary across time and space. This makes exchange of knowledge and research cooperation between historians and criminologists particularly fruitful, or as Paul Knepper put it: ‘From what has been done so far, one thing is clear enough: the most interesting criminology arises at the point that history and criminology meet’ (Knepper, 2013, 2081).

In this introductory article we introduce the subject of our thematic issue on ‘macro criminology’, and illustrate it with a short historical overview and examples of ‘typical macro criminological’ research. Successively we address the recent decrease in crime in many Western countries (the ‘crime drop’), the increased tendency to punish more severely in the last decennia (the ‘punitive turn’), and historical developments in homicide (‘history of violence’). After that we address an important theoretical and philosophical problem with regard to macro criminology: the balance between micro and macro factors in explaining macro phenomena. Finally, the contributions of this thematic issue are introduced.