In recent years the total number of violent robberies in the Netherlands has gone down sharply, but the number of robberies on private homes doesn’t decline. Especially robberies on private homes of the elderly are notorious for the level of violence used by the attackers, while the loot is often negligible. In this article the authors investigate this offense. Chances of becoming a victim are very small, but people who are robbed in their own homes often face severe violence. On the one hand these high violence levels and consequential injuries are related to the age of the victims: the elderly resist the attackers more than younger people do, and because of their age they are more vulnerable to physical attacks. On the other hand the high levels of violence are typical of (all) robberies on private homes: the unknown space and the unpredictable behavior of residents contribute to this. Most of these robberies are poorly planned and executed. This also explains why so many of these incidents turn nasty. The elderly are not specially targeted, the reasons they are robbed do not differ from other robberies on private homes: the attackers expect an easy accessible and substantial loot. In many cases both assumptions turn out to be wrong. Risk factors and prevention options are discussed.

All EU Member States developed anti-money laundering policies based on EU directives and FATF recommendations. While uniformity in this policy area is needed for international cooperation, the different countries are facing different money laundering challenges and interpret the goal of anti-money laundering policy quite differently. This article analyses the money laundering threat in each EU Member State and the effectiveness of the corresponding policy reaction. Furthermore, the authors identify four types of anti-money laundering policy in the EU and classify each country in one of the four types by using the statistical method of cluster analysis.

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.