What is the current nature and extent of money laundering on the art market in times of an increasing financialization of art? This article introduces the problem of money laundering through art and reflects on the associated risks of financial crime. Drawing on two recently published research reports the article describes art market and art financialization practices that may facilitate money laundering. It presents an overview of relevant rules and regulations and points to the challenges of preventing art-based financial crimes.

This contribution treats debt recovery as an important cause for the emergence and worsening of the debt problem. It is explained that when a bailiff seizes wage, the debtor often has too little left to live on. In addition to seizure of wage, the bailiff can also seize the bank account or seize household goods in order to sell these. The author describes how this can lead to new debts and what legislation is being prepared to modernize this situation. In case of problematic debts, multiple creditors are collecting from the same debtor, which requires coordination. The recovery by creditors facilitated by the current rules focuses on the claims of individual creditors. However, as soon as problematic debts are involved, an integrated approach is necessary, in which the common interest, the interest of all creditors and that of the debtor, takes precedence over self-interest.

In the Netherlands a large number of households is overindebted. Despite the economic prosperity, 20% of the households has to deal with large debts. Dissatisfaction with the position of debtors has grown in recent years. Numerous initiatives are being launched to improve their position. New legislation is provided for and municipalities are starting up all kinds of pilots. There is momentum for improvement. It is important that all initiatives are coordinated. In addition, it is also important to investigate what the legislation and initiatives yield.

In this article we analyze how organized crime offenders use IT to handle their money flows. How and to what extent do offenders use IT-facilitated possibilities, such as bitcoin, to launder their money? The empirical data consist of thirty large-scale police investigations. These thirty cases are part of the Organized Crime Monitor, an ongoing research project into the nature of organized crime in the Netherlands. One of the most striking findings is the fact that cash is still king – even for online drug dealers who get paid in digital currencies.

Jihadist networks have become a serious threat to Europe’s internal security and are therefore a policy priority. But what do we know about these networks and how should we counter them? This study focuses on the modus operandi of jihadist networks between 2000 and 2013 and gives an empirical insight in the organizational structures, activities, and involvement mechanisms of jihadist networks in the Netherlands. The data are derived from 28 police investigations, 51 interviews with police investigators, public prosecutors, lawyers, imams, and staff members from Asylum and Detention Centers. The findings show how jihadist networks have changed over the years and how this development has affected the way jihadists operate.

Over the last decades the number of people who have been detained on the suspicion of terrorism has significantly grown. This has resulted in an increased scholarly interest in the topic of prisons and terrorism. However, the main focus of academic research has been the period of incarceration. Especially the question whether terrorists should be isolated from other prisoners has received considerable scientific attention. What happens after their release still remains opaque. In this article some preliminary insights will be shared on particular aspects of the societal reintegration of former suspected terrorist detainees. It presents some of the obstacles, dilemmas and opportunities. These insights where obtained through semi-structured interviews with both professionals and former detainees with a jihadist background.

This article gives a compact overview of developments in national and European law regarding same-sex partners. Over the last decades, new legal family formats (such as registered partnership and de facto union) have been made available in a growing number of countries. The number of countries that have opened up marriage to same-sex couples is also growing. Authors of comparative family law have proposed various classifications of the new legal family formats. Meanwhile, an increasing number of EU laws now acknowledge non-marital partners. The European Courts have been asked several times to rule on controversial differentiations between different legal family formats or between same-sex and different-sex partners. In the case law of the European Court of Human Rights one can find examples of affirmative eloquence which suggest that more steps towards full legal recognition of same-sex families could be expected.

In 2014, almost all countries of the European Community have revised their National Accounts. Besides the introduction of some important methodological and theoretical improvements, now income from illegal activities are included in the estimates of the national income. For the Netherlands the inclusion of illegal activities has increased gross national income by some 0.4%. This is less than the overall average for the European Community.

Both in public policy and in scientific research, the concept of access to justice has been subject to change. In the seventies access to justice was mainly understood as access to a lawyer and a judge. In the nineties the perspective widens to alternative forms of dispute resolution, self-help and juridification of problems. The present article focuses on access to justice for citizens who experienced civil and administrative problems. Firstly, it illustrates the change in public policy with respect to dispute resolution. Secondly, it describes the shifting views on access to justice in empirical research. Furthermore it presents the results of socio-legal research into the dispute resolution of citizens and discusses what these results tell us about access to justice.

Current trends in the delivery of legal services create the opportunity to develop a new generation of access to justice platforms. On the basis of two examples, the author illustrates how this can work. M-Sheria is a technology-based access to justice service that serves the poor in Kenya. It combines state of the art information technology (USSD, SMS, internet) and human technology (community paralegals and pro bono advocates) to help slum dwellers solve their legal problems. Rechtwijzer 2.0 is an internet-based platform that provides online human and technology-facilitated support to people with a legal problem in the Netherlands. These examples show how processes and professionals can be innovated to facilitate dispute resolution in delivering information and interventions just in time.

This article describes the social position of Central and Eastern European (CEE) migrants in the Netherlands, in particular their labour and housing position, using the results of recent Dutch research by three different groups of scholars. We cannot speak of a homogeneous group of migrants. The prevailing image of the hard-working labour migrant, doing low-qualified and often low-paid work (even though many of them are highly skilled) and faced with poor working and living conditions is largely confirmed by the available research. However, there are also knowledge workers (‘kennismigranten’) among the migrants from CEE-countries working in the Netherlands. In addition, the authors also found partners and children of previous migrants from CEE-countries, and students. This diversity of the new group of migrants from CEE-countries forms a challenge for local governments to find appropriate instruments to lead integration on the right track.

This article focuses on the activities and working methods of the Rotterdam social aid agency Bureau Frontlijn. It is based on the personal views and experiences of the author, Bureau Frontlijn director Barend Rombout, a former policeman who switched to social work in the disadvantaged districts more than ten years ago. The teaching of skills, coaching and training are key concepts in the work of Bureau Frontlijn. Many people suffering from a crisis because of unemployment, divorce, homelessness or early pregnancy are not adequately helped by state institutions, but instead get entangled in all kinds of bureaucratic procedures. What is needed in social aid is a more comprehensive and tailor-made approach. Even though individual responsibility is important, society has a moral obligation to protect the less privileged, because many of them have been in a disadvantaged situation since their birth or even earlier.

Academic perceptions of litigation rates are dispersed: they vary from observations of a ‘litigation explosion’ to empirical accounts of ‘vanishing trials’. In this article the authors study whether civil trials are increasing or vanishing in the Netherlands. To find out, the authors studied trends in the number of civil cases in the Dutch courts. First, they observed developments in the filings as well as the dispositions of civil cases over the past 25 years, taking into account the trial-likeness of the procedures. Second, they put the Dutch figures - including other indicators of legal activity - in a European perspective. The findings show that the number of court cases in the Netherlands is on the rise. This does not automatically imply, however, that the Netherlands are a highly litigious society. ‘Light’ versions of trials are predominant, as is efficiency in the management of cases. Moreover, the number of lawyers and judges is rather small compared to other European countries.

The question of social engineering is an important aspect of debates on security: up to what point can undesired behavior be corrected, prevented or diminished? To what extent is human behavior malleable? This article is a reflection on the development of social engineering, through the lense of the developments in the north of Amsterdam. It is an area that can be seen as a laboratory, a testing ground for the social democratic dream to create a new man, by uplifting and disciplining the urban poor. The central thesis is that the present redevelopment of Amsterdam Noord is predicated upon a shift in governmental strategy: from social engineering to spatial engineering. Location is arguably no longer used to uplift the population, presently the social composition of the population is being changed to uplift the location.

Trust between people and institutions is essential for the functioning of society. In this paper the author distinguishes trust and confidence. Confidence is the optimism or pessimism of consumers and investors about the future, about the Dutch economy and about the financial situation of their own household. Consumer confidence declined sharply after 2007, with negative consequences for the sales of houses and cars. A low level of trust is threatening for the functioning of institutions and society. Determinants of trust are: competence, stability, integrity, benevolence, transparency, value congruency and reputation. The first four determinants are ‘dissatisfiers’, while the last three are ‘satisfiers’. Financial institutions have to meet the criteria on the first four determinants without a compensation by the last three determinants. The last three determinants offer options for additional profiling, positioning and differentiation. The recovery of confidence will happen sooner than the recovery of trust. Confidence is related to general economic developments. The recovery of trust is a slower process, because of the integrity of persons and institutions. People want to see ‘proofs’ of a changed behaviour before they trust persons and institutions again. This means that a prolonged trust crisis is to be expected, even when confidence is already optimistic.