The editorial introduction to this special issue on street-level bureaucracy (36 years after the publication of Michael Lipsky’s book) draws attention to the important role of frontline workers in the implementation of policy in practice. The two narratives as distinguished by Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2000) – that of government as an institution and that of the frontline workers themselves – are discussed in the light of the use of discretionary power by the frontline workers. The various dilemmas that the frontline worker encounters while doing so are briefly introduced and the role of the emergence of New Public Management and the resulting public-private partnerships since the eighties discussed.

Studies indicated that detainees are not always allocated to treatment programs based on official guidelines. Street-level bureaucracy theory suggests that this is because government employees do not always perform policies as prescribed. This study aimed to assess whether this also applies to the allocation of offenders to treatment in Dutch penitentiary institutions. This was studied among a group of 541 male prisoners who participated in the Recidivism Reduction program. The results showed that official policy guidelines were, in most cases, not leading when referring detainees to behavioral interventions. Instead, treatment referrals were influenced by a broad range of risk factors, as well as the length of an offender’s sentence.

The image that criminal enforcement of organized crime is difficult, is commonly reflected in the media and popular debate. Commentators often argue that organized crime is punished less severely than possible, due to the complexity of the offences, time constraints, and the increased interconnectedness between legal and illegal activities, which creates difficulties to find sufficient evidence to convict offenders. Using data from the Dutch Organized Crime Monitor, this article focuses on the ways in which offenders of organized crime are ‘treated’ by the criminal justice system and on the discrepancies between demanded sanctions and the actual sanctions executed in cases of organized crime.