Early literature on female perpetrators of World War II focused on labelling the accused as deranged psychopaths, thereby distinguishing the group of perpetrators from the vast subdued and ‘normal’ population. While this perception has changed over the past decades, the perception of female perpetrators has remained limited either way, women are denied having a lot of agency when perpetrating crimes in conflict. Similar to the ‘mad Nazi’-theory these narratives imply that female perpetrators are different from ‘ordinary’ women, as their actions collide with notions of ideal femininity. This empirical research has shown that in the case of female perpetrators of World War II in the Netherlands it seems that they can be seen as ordinary women operating in extraordinary circumstances. In this study, a special group of female war criminals is described. Against the background of early post-war imaging of such women and more recent research on female perpetration during wartime, an analysis of Dutch perpetrators who received severe punishments after the War, is made. Based on unique historical data, the criminal career of these women as World War II perpetrators is analysed. The outcomes show that a notable part already had a criminal record before the war and that the perception of who they were and why they acted the way they did needs reconsideration, since they were not psychologically weak and incompetent. They were generally young, unemployed and low educated and they planned and committed their crimes of treasons in order to create better living conditions for themselves. In fact, one can claim that these women are likely to be ordinary people influenced by dispositional and situational factors.

Criminology traditionally focuses on the human experience. However, several criminologists have seriously criticized this anthropocentric perspective. In their view from a criminological perspective humans and other than human animals should be given equal attention. Although they advocate a non-speciesist criminology, they are not trying to fundamentally change criminology as we know it. Instead, their appeal is to not consider other than human creatures as passive objects and solely from the perspective of their usefulness for humans. Yet, this objective poses substantial methodological challenges to criminologists.

Annually hundreds of victims make use of their right to speak in court. Victims often expect this will result in more punitive sentences. According to judges this is unlikely. This experiment among law students examines the influence of victim impact statements (VIS) on the sentencing outcome. Furthermore the effect of how the statement is delivered is examined. Is there a difference between the VIS as document in the case file and one delivered by the victim in court? Does it matter if the victim still has visible injuries? Study findings indicate that neither the presence of a VIS, nor the mode of delivery and visible injuries affect sentence length.

Tore Bjørgo was one of the initiators to gather an international group of researchers to join forces casting light on the subject of counter-terrorism. Together with John Horgan he edited a volume Leaving Terrorism Behind. In this article he focuses on the push- and pull factors influencing the decision to dissent from terrorism. It also discusses the ways in which counter terrorism policies can influence these processes.

Filicide, the murder of a child by a parent, is a dramatic event. The gravity increases when the perpetrator resorts to committing or attempting suicide. It is assessed to what extent filicide-(para)suicides can primarily be understood as homicidal or suicidal behaviour, or as a separate category of lethal violence. Parents committing filicide-parasuicide differ from filicidal parents and other suicidal parents in sociodemographic, individual and offence-related characteristics. Filicide-(para)suicide seem to constitute a category of lethal violence, different from both filicides and parasuicides.