This article explores the intersection of two criminological perspectives—cultural criminology and narrative criminology. Taking inspiration from Mills and Fleetwood’s article, ‘Prepping and verstehen: A narrative criminological perspective’, where the authors contend that stories complement the pursuit of criminological verstehen, this article draws attention to other ways in which cultural criminology and narrative criminology are imbricated, taking notice of commonalities in cultural criminology’s analysis of media looping and narrative criminology’s identification of cycles of storytelling practice and lived experiences. A consideration of Donald Trump’s attempts to control narrative is used to develop an argument regarding cultural criminology’s and narrative criminology’s joint questioning of linear sequencing and mutual recognition of circulating fluidity

In this article, we focus on how the education system can be used to promote equality in the context of changing people’s hearts and minds – values, morals and mindsets. The duties contained in the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000 (‘Equality Act’) bind private and public schools, educators, learners, governing bodies and the state. The Equality Act calls on the state and all persons to promote substantive equality, but the relevant sections in the Equality Act have not been given effect yet, and are therefore currently not enforceable. We set out how the duty to promote equality should be concretised in the Equality Act to inter alia use the education system to promote equality in schools; in other words, how should an enforceable duty to promote equality in schools be fashioned in terms of the Equality Act. Should the relevant sections relating to the promotion of equality come into effect in their current form, enforcement of the promotion of equality will take the form of obliging schools to draft action plans and submit these to the South African Human Rights Commission. We deem this approach inadequate and therefore propose certain amendments to the Equality Act to allow for a more sensible monitoring of schools’ duty to promote equality. We explain how the duty to promote equality should then play out practically in the classroom to facilitate a change in learners’ hearts and minds.

Criminology, as an inherently interdisciplinary field, has built on anthropology (and other social sciences) in its development. This contribution addresses the question which insights in criminology have most been inspired by anthropology. First, it looks into the ‘criminal anthropology’ of Lombroso; then it embarks on an appreciation of the ethnographic research design within criminology (as first adopted by the Chicago School); and, finally, it assesses the link between anthropology, and cultural and global criminology. I conclude that anthropology has been valuable to our discipline on four levels: methodologically (in the importance of the ethnographic research design), theoretically (in its role in the development of symbolic interactionism and structuralism, for example), geographically (in the global scope of anthropological research), and analytically, in its experience with ‘doing ethnography’ in economically, politically and culturally embedded ways.

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.

The Court of the Astana International Financial Center is a new dispute resolution initiative meant to attract investors in much the same way as it has been done in the case of the courts and arbitration mechanisms of similar financial centers in the Persian Gulf. This paper examines such initiatives from a comparative perspective, focusing on their Private International Law aspects such as jurisdiction, applicable law and recognition and enforcement of judgments and arbitration awards. The paper concludes that their success, especially in the case of the younger courts, will depend on the ability to build harmonious relationships with the domestic courts of each host country.

This article looks at how normative questions, i.e. ‘what should the law be?‘, are approached in modern labour law scholarship. A distinction is made between internal and external normative frameworks for analysis, whereby internal frameworks are made up of principles, values or standards that are part of the law and the external frameworks are made up of theories outside of law. As a functional legal field, labour law can also benefit to a great deal from empirical research. However, the article argues that empirical facts by themselves have a limited normative value and that we need a normative framework in order to answer normative and evaluative questions. Therefore, the aim of the article is to review, clarify and evaluate the internal normative framework of labour law.

Bill Cosby, Jimmy Savile and Gerrit Achterberg lived in different periods, in the US, UK, and the Netherlands. They were heroes because of what they accomplished during their professional careers but all three turned out to have committed serious crimes. Disclosure is painful, not only for the hero who comes to fall but also for the community that finds itself redefining moral standards when losing a celebrated insider. For this reason, the crimes of these three men have been concealed and kept secret for years. In comparing the three cases, this article tries to find out who decides on keeping the hero on his feet, how this is done, and if this changes over time.

In the introductory article of this special issue on the downfall of popular heroes, some relevant aspects in relation to the general theme are explored. Who are considered to be heroes and which elements are relevant to understand the process heroes may go through when they start sliding on the slippery slope, and, eventually, fall into the abyss of disgrace? What is the role that (social) media play in the demolition of their reputation and how do heroes perceive their own downfall and respond to it? The theoretical concept that is used in this article is Howard Becker’s master status and, in particular, the notion that the master status of a fallen hero surpasses and contaminates all other statuses, previously possessed by an individual.

It is common knowledge that the police in executing its duty as “rule enforcer” disposes of certain discretionary powers. Because of the heavy workload and the often ambiguous legislation, the police officer needs to decide on a selective basis when, how and towards whom he/she will act. These discretionary powers are present in proactive identity controls and already provoked strong reactions in the past. The media accused the police of over-controlling certain minority groups. With this ethnographic study into the Belgian practice of identity controls, in which we observe and interview police officers, we wish to get a better view of the way in which identity controls are executed. Although the research is still ongoing, we have already been able to establish that the decision-making process is based on a police feeling which police officers claim to have and which is formed by (a combination of) different triggers attracting their attention.

In the introductory article of this special issue on ‘moral entrepreneurs’ in the 21st century, we situate different notions of moral entrepreneurship. Particularly foregrounding Howard Becker’s definition, we discuss its origins and use in subsequent research. The question that we’ve put forward in the ‘call for papers’ for this special issue is to what extent the notion is relevant in contemporary research and who is considered as ‘moral entrepreneur’. The research papers discuss ‘entrepreneurial’ practices of university ethic commissions, medical professionals, police officers and the leaders of cannabis social clubs. We conclude that the underlying rationales and discourses of moral entrepreneurs that the authors identify, reflect contemporary neoliberal ideals.

In this article, I am using Becker’s concept of moral entrepreneur to analyse the role of pain specialists in the labelling process, which has led to the normalisation of the use of opioid painkillers in the United States and ultimately to the death over 200.000 Americans. In general, the literature on labelling centres on crusading reformers, and the criminalisation and stigmatisation of transgressive behaviour. Here I will focus on the moral entrepreneurship of medical experts. What was their role in the normalisation process of opioid painkiller use and are there any similarities with the strategies of crusading reformers? My findings, based on qualitative analysis of documents such as newspaper articles and academic publications, show that, with two exceptions, pain specialists use the strategies of moral crusaders. First, in their narratives, pain specialists represented themselves as neutral objective experts without the emotional stance of moral crusaders. The second exception, which is related to the first, is that there was less emphasis in their narrative on creating villains, as they could not blame openly standard medical practice because they needed the support of the established medical world in order to normalise and legalise opioid painkillers.

For quite some years now, crimes of ‘the powerful’ have been studied by criminologists. While researching crimes of ‘the powerful’, researchers aim to maintain and safeguard their integrity and ethics. However, there seems to be a friction between, on the one hand, ethics of the researchers themselves and on the other hand, ethics (policies) of universities. Obviously, not only do they have to justify their actions and decisions to themselves and ‘science’ as a whole, they must justify their research to ethics committees (EC’s) of universities. It could result in complex and difficult situations when researchers suspect that EC’s themselves may be instruments and products of the powerful groups they are studying. In that case, EC’s might undermine ethics and research integrity themselves. What do certain EC- ‘conditions’ look like for research ethics and to which extent do they have to be adjusted or reconsidered when criminologists are researching ‘the powerful’? The key question that will be answered in this contribution is as follows: how can criminologist (re)act ethically responsibly when confronted with (un)ethical committees? To answer this and other relevant questions, after reviewing literature, we reflect on a biographical study of a legal arms trader. We then elaborate on the ‘ethics creep’ (Haggerty, 2004) that seems to haunt social sciences nowadays.

The maxim ‘law in books and law in action’ relays an implicit dichotomy, and though the constitutive nature of law is nowadays commonly professed, the reflex remains to use law in books as an autonomous starting point. Law however, it is argued in this article, has a storyline that commences before its institutional formalisation. Law as ‘a continuous process of becoming’ encompasses both law in books and law in action, and law in action encompasses timelines both before and after the formal coming about of law. To fully understand law, it is necessary to understand the entire storyline of law. Qualitative studies in law and society are well equipped to offer valuable insights on the facets of law outside the books. The insights are not additional to doctrinal understanding, but part and parcel of it. To illustrate this, an ethnographic case study of local bylaws regulating an ethnically diverse public space of everyday life is expanded upon. The case study is used to demonstrate the insights qualitative data yields with regard to the dynamics in which law comes about, and how these dynamics continue for law in action after law has made the books. This particular case study moreover exemplifies how law is one of many truths in the context in which it operates, and how formalised law is reflective of the power constellations that have brought it forth.

Human traffickers are usually depicted in public discourse as evil villains: the crème de la crème of organized crime. Although this image has also been dominant among scholars for a long time, it has become increasingly controversial. On the one hand, this debate is fueled by discussions amongst criminologists on criminal networks, on the other hand by the expansion of the legal definition of the crime since 2005. Apart from exploitation in the prostitution sector, various other forms of human trafficking are distinguished now, including labor exploitation. This article explores the question of which organizational forms play a role in labor exploitation. Through a review of the empirical research literature on labor exploitation, the authors show that in the field of labor exploitation, there is probably less involvement in criminal syndicates or criminal networks that maintain contacts with other criminal networks. In many cases, labor exploitation is committed by individuals or family businesses, or smaller loosely organized networks that are not necessarily embedded in other criminal networks. For researchers and policy makers alike, it is therefore advisable not to approach labor exploitation exclusively from the perspective of transnational organized crime.

This article starts off with an exposé of what ‘theoretical innovation’ means in the social sciences. The development of criminology is considered to be a result of (1) historical and cultural developments, (2) political-economic developments, (3) developments in other academic disciplines and (4) reactions to or specifications of other theoretical perspectives in criminology itself. Paradigm shifts in criminology are characterised by an individualistic and positivist aetiological turn in its early days; a sociological turn towards a ‘criminology of the lawmaker’ from the late 1950s on; and a return to positivism in the neoliberal and neoconservative turn of the 1990s. The new century ushers in a new epistemological break in criminology, in which globalisation, global warming, migration, human rights and the implications of cyberspace ‘force’ criminologists to overcome their anthropocentric and colonial character biases.

In this article notions from literature on covert and illegal networks are applied to business cartels. Comparable to most criminal networks, cartel participants need to communicate in order to coordinate their activities, whilst under the risk of getting caught. Previous studies however show cartels can remain hidden from outsiders for long periods of time. Based on an analysis of fourteen Dutch cartel cases, this article addresses the question how cartels can remain hidden from outsiders for long periods of time. The analysis shows cartel participants communicate predominantly centralized and frequent. Moreover, the results show that not concealment but social embeddedness provides a strong explanation for the longevity of secrecy regarding cartels.