Criminology has traditionally focused on urban areas where crime visibly concentrates. However, since the 1990s, attention for ‘rural criminology’ has steadily increased. First, rural areas are confronted with partly different and less visible crime problems, such as environmental crimes. Second, public actors such as enforcement and other agencies are less present and ‘available’ in rural areas, and people on average trust the government less to provide support when necessary. This chronicle presents an overview of international and Dutch research in the context of rural criminology. The paper addresses cultural differences between urban and rural areas, high-volume crimes, gender-related violence, alcohol and drug abuse, environmental crime, and enforcement in rural areas.

In this paper we describe the first results of a recent cohort study conducted at Ghent University and focus on the applied study design. Existing cross-sectional studies regarding sexual victimization are not able to make causal statements about its risk and outcome factors. This cohort study aims to answer these questions. Results of this study confirmed that students are often confronted with sexual assault and seldom consult existing support services. This paper emphasizes the advantages of a longitudinal design within victimological research including the possibilities and difficulties that accompany it.

For co-victims of severe traffic offenses in the Netherlands, peer support is offered. However, no research into the meaning of peer support for this specific group of victims has been conducted. In this study, nineteen narrative interviews with co-victims of traffic offenses were collected. These interviews show that through dialogue and the sharing of experiences, as well as the care and support for each other, peer support offers the possibility to work on the meaning-making of the traffic offense and its aftermath. The article ends with policy implications and steps for follow-up research.

A well-established body of epidemiological research suggests that the prevalence of mental health problems (mental disorders, psychological distress, and substance use) in prisoner populations far exceeds that of non-incarcerated people in the surrounding community. Poor mental health in prisoners is associated with multiple adverse outcomes, including suicidal behaviour. In the past decade, novel data in Belgium and the Netherlands have been published on this topic, which have not been synthesized to date. The aim of the current systematic literature review was to provide an up-to-date overview of the mental health of prisoners in Belgium and the Netherlands. Based on 24 empirical studies conducted in 1997-2018, the authors conclude that people with mental health problems are overrepresented in Belgian and Dutch prisons, providing both a challenge and a public health opportunity to address the mental health care needs of a vulnerable and hard-to-engage population. Investing in the prevention and treatment of mental health problems not only benefits the prisoners concerned, but equally, society at large.

This study explores the influence of police detention centres environments on police suspects’ psychological wellbeing and sleep problems. Results showed that suspects detained in a police cell experience a decreased psychological wellbeing, that they sleep poorly, and that their psychological wellbeing is related to sleep problems. Implications for police detention in relation to suspects’ psychological wellbeing and sleep problems, as well as directions for future research on police detention centre environments, are discussed.

This paper empirically investigates whether the Flemish local income tax base yield in 306 Flemish municipalities is sensitive to changes in the local crime level between 2000 and 2014. There are two underlying assumptions. First, in a Tiebout world, rational voters holding the local government accountable for the safety of its citizens move when the local level of security becomes too greatly alienated from what they want it to be (first assumption). If migration is due to crime, the wealthier citizens are expected to move first. Consequently, the average income per capita and thus the income distribution will be affected, which in turn will influence the local income tax base yield (second assumption). By confirming both assumptions, evidence is presented for a relation between changes in local crime rates and the income tax base yield of Flemish municipalities, occurring through household mobility.

Collective violence around football has been a topic of research since the 1980s. In the Netherlands, in recent decades the size and severity of this problem have decreased sharply and the number of incidents has stabilized due to measures taken. At the same time, these measures have resulted in an increase of football-related incidents outside stadiums and on other days than match days. Confrontations based upon prior mutual agreements, so-called arranged confrontations, are an example of this. Based on multiple research methods, in this article the underlying causes of arranged confrontations and processes influencing individual participation are addressed. Results show that this type of collective violence and partaking in it has various causes and explanations. These fit with extant research literature in the area of group crime and collective violence and are incorporated in the recently developed initiation-escalation model.

Although group workers in juvenile correctional facilities (JCFs) are restricted in their actions by many rules and regulations, they still have the opportunity for tailor-made actions. Based on Lipsky’s (2010) theory of ‘street-level bureaucracy’ this article explains what this discretion means for group workers in JCFs and how they deal with it. Based on 24 interviews with group workers, this article outlines how they exercise discretion in a context where group dynamics and dealing with emotions affect their actions to an important degree. In addition, this article describes how group workers deal with dilemmas they encounter.

This paper looks at how Dutch newspapers dealt with mental disorders and gender in their crime reports in 1930. The Psychopath Acts, which allowed special restriction orders (‘TBR’) to be imposed on mentally disturbed delinquents who were a danger to society, had just come into effect then. The newspapers did not present such TBR criminals as dangerous or mentally disturbed. Instead, the papers used ‘madness’ to explain apparently motiveless crimes such as killing one’s own children. Female perpetrators were no more likely to be labelled mentally ill than male perpetrators.

Some overestimation of crime risk is likely, but that does not mean that risk perceptions are not adjusted in line with changes in actual crime risk. Based on time series data, we show that crime risk perceptions are strongly related to rates of victimization. The conventional wisdom that the drop in crime since the 1990s did not result in an adjustment in risk perceptions can be easily refuted. The much discussed crime drop goes together with a much less discussed fear drop.

Prison policy in Belgium and the Netherlands is changing rapidly. While Belgium struggles with a persisting prison overcrowding, the Netherlands strongly cuts back on the prison system and is closing an increasing number of prisons. This introductory article to a special issue on detention starts with a short outline of recent changes in Dutch and Belgian prison policy, focusing on developments in detention capacity and prison population. Subsequently we present an overview of empirical criminological research in the Netherlands and Belgium, situated within the international literature, with a specific focus on studies regarding life in detention and effects of detention on prisoners' lives and on their social environment. Finally, we reflect upon existing detention research in both countries, e.g. in terms of gaps in research topics and methodology, and discuss some future developments.

In the Netherlands, not much research has been done on the ways that Dutch women experience and try to survive a detention abroad. The research, on which this article is based, did focus on Dutch female prisoners abroad, using an ethnographic research method. This study looks at the ways Dutch mulas experience their prison term in Peru and focuses on their strategies of survival. The ways these women react upon their detention can be traced back to existing literature on the importation theory and deprivation theory. Also it became apparent that various coping strategies are used to survive their Peruvian imprisonment. These coping strategies proof to be related to the life experiences of the women (importation theory) and the experienced prison environment (deprivation theory).

This article develops a victimological perspective on international criminal justice, based on a review of the main victimological characteristics of international crimes. These include the complicity or active involvement of government agencies, the large numbers of victims and the peculiar position of international crime victims who, at the time the crimes are committed, are usually not viewed as victims by the perpetrators, but placed outside the moral sphere or even depicted as perpetrators rather than victims.Key elements of this perspective concern the external coherence of the criminal justice reaction - the interlinking of criminal justice with other reparative efforts - as well as its internal coherence - the extent to which the procedures of international criminal justice are aligned with what it realistically can and should achieve. With internal coherence in mind, the article examines the victimological findings relating to the main rights of victims in the criminal procedure (recognition/acknowledgement, information/participation and compensation/reparation) and subsequently analyzes how the specifics of international crimes moderate them.

A period of labor market absence decreases the chance to get a job. Previous research showed that labor market positions of both incarcerated and temporarily unemployed people are worse after compared to before the (forced) time out of the labor market. It remains uncertain which mechanisms cause the negative association between labor market absence and employment outcomes. In this paper we investigate whether incarceration affects the time to employment differently than regular unemployment. Using an unique quasi-experimental design we conduct event history analyses in order to estimate to what extent job opportunities differ for a group of ex-prisoners (N=1,790) and a group of unemployed future prisoners (N=266). The results show that ex-prisoners find a job more quickly than unemployed future prisoners. Possibly, training, aftercare and the prison experience (deterrence) have a positive effect in the period right after release.

This research aimed to describe the remigration of Bulgarian women who had been exploited in prostitution in the Netherlands. The difficulties they encountered during their attempt to reintegrate in their environment of origin was one of the main points of interest. Files of Bulgarian women registered as victims have been analyzed in both the Netherlands and in Bulgaria. Interviews were held with current Bulgarian sex workers, former victims of trafficking and several professionals involved in the wellbeing of these women. In many cases remigration turned out to be a temporary situation as many women returned to the Netherlands later on. Partly for that reason it appeared difficult to keep track of their situation after they (initially) came back to Bulgaria. Many women encounter the very problems that contributed to the situation of trafficking in the first place. This makes it difficult to change their marginal position: prostitution remains a well paid option if the circumstances that have led to their exploitation in prostitution remain the same. This does not necessarily lead to repeated victimization, but at least to only a limited difference that reintegration programs can make.