This article focuses on mobile organized criminal groups that travel through Europe and commit a broad range of property crimes. The study aims to explore the perspective of individual group members. Information was gathered from fifteen criminal investigations that were carried out in the Netherlands in recent years (2013-2016). The study shows that members of these crime groups view their criminal activities primarily as ‘work’. It is work that is characterized by conflicts and consensus. Conflicts often have to do with the stolen loot and reveal disagreement about leadership, rules and obedience. Rows and threats of violence go along with feelings of fear and distrust. At the same time gang members belong to an international deviant community with a shared common way of life and feelings of togetherness. Performing within this international community gives the possibility to attain social status and to express success and richness. These contractive emotions and symbolic meanings characterize the everyday life of gang members and motivates their daily practices.

This empirical study examines how criminal investigative police officers (re)construct a criminal case and the vulnerabilities of their logic.The investigation process is analyzed through Goffman’s framing and interaction theories. While Goffman’s theories have been widely applied to other disciplines, such contributions remain rare in criminology. Here, they shed light on how detectives understand and give meaning to the situation surrounding the criminal case they encounter. The results indicate that this approach shows promise for improving our understanding of the investigative process, if complemented by other theoretical views.

Valid interpretation of quasi-experimental effect evaluation studies using propensity score matching is in need of a more detailed coverage of non-matched cases in both experimental and comparison group. The argument is illustrated using a number of recent Dutch criminological studies.

Eyetracking enabled the authors to study eye movements of 23 participants who looked at crime scene photographs. The authors measured the emotions elicited by the photographs, as well as perceptions of seriousness and the sentence that participants would give the perpetrator of the crime. Also, individual differences in disgust sensitivity were taken into account. Results show a positive relationship between disgust sensitivity and both the proportion of fixations as well as the number of fixations on gruesome aspects of the photos (the blood and the wound), emotion ratings of the photographs, perceptions of seriousness, and the sentence given. Implications, limitations, and future directions of the research are discussed.

This paper examines the relationship between imprisonment length and registered recidivism. The data come from a unique longitudinal and nationwide study of Dutch male prisoners, serving an average of 4.1 months of confinement (N=1,467). Ideally an experimental design would be appropriate to examine the influence of different sentence lengths on recidivism. In order to approximate such a design using observational data, we adopt a propensity score methodology to control for selection bias in the dose-response relationship. Using a six-month follow-up, we do not find significant differences in post-release recidivism between men who spent shorter or longer periods of time in confinement. We discuss the pros and cons of the methodology applied as well as potential implications of the findings.