From its beginning in 2002, the Dutch Journal of Safety Studies (JSS) has wanted to be a platform for Dutch and Belgian academic articles about all facets of safety and security. Furthermore the journal wants to be a platform for multidisciplinary articles in which safety and security issues are studied from different and complementary perspectives or academic fields.This article provides a content analysis of all 129 JSS-articles. The analysis shows that the focus of JSS is on matters of social safety (and less on the more ‘technical’ safety issues) and on the organization of safety (functioning of organizations or networks and/or the effectiveness of measures) and less on safety as such. Over the years, a few changes have taken place. (1) In the field of social safety the focus has shifted somewhat from ‘the organization of safety’ towards safety as such. (2) Although the proportion of articles from Belgium is small (5,4%), it has increased over the years. (3) Authors from Dutch universities of applied sciences have published no more than 4 articles (3,1%), the first one of which appeared in Volume 6. After some years, these authors discovered the JSS as a platform for their work.JSS covers a wide range of subjects in the field of safety and how it can be organized. Although most articles stem from criminology and/or public management, JSS contains articles from different academic fields such as criminology, communication, law, psychology, engineering, public management, medical science, etc. However, in one and the same article one does not often find a combination of really different academic perspectives, such as engineering and psychology or informatics and criminology. If the JSS aims to be a truly multidisciplinary journal, it should contain more articles of this kind over the next ten years.

Internal and external security are traditionally considered to be distinct concepts that allow police organizations and tasks to be differentiated from those of the military. Internal security is then viewed as oriented towards the maintenance of the order within a state and to be exercised against fellow citizens with a limited use of violence. External security deals with the protection of the territory and is exercised against foreign enemies, may include the use of excessive violence. In practice, however, the boundaries between these concepts and between police and military aims and tasks have become blurred. The extension of the security concept, a change in the nature of interventions on foreign territory and a shifting image of the enemy create an overlap between internal and external security issues and actors. This evolution seriously challenges the existing legal and normative frameworks that rely heavily on assumptions based on the distinction between internal and external security.

This contribution focuses on ‘fear of crime’ research. Departing from the classic distinction between crime and victimization as objective threats, on the one hand, and fear of crime as a subjective and emotional interpretation of that threat, on the other hand, the research tradition is confronted with the so-called fear victimization paradox. This paradox emerges from the observation that fear of crime is greater among women and elderly people, while these groups actually are less at risk of becoming a crime victim. It has immersed the research tradition in a dominant debate on the rationality of the fear of crime, with two opposing paradigms: rationalist and symbolic.Whilst both the paradox and the different paradigms in the debate offer a view at the core of fear of crime research, and illustrate how similar empirical observations can lead to differing explanations, and policy implications for that matter, we argue that the fear victimization paradox and the rationality debate surrounding this paradox, has occupied the bulk of research on fear of crime with what is essentially a nonsensical and redundant debate.

This paper deals with the question of how a partly privatized security sector could be regulated. A central aim of this regulation should be the control of security as a public good. Three models of regulation are analyzed. The current practice of this regulation in the Netherlands shows a serious lack of effectiveness. One of our main conclusions is that neither the state nor the private sector is able to enforce this regulation on their own. However, it is assumed that the state should have a central and integrated regulatory role in this field, with more attention paid to the practical implementation of it, with the power and will to sanction private agencies if necessary. In addition managers of private security companies should adopt a role as public managers with a public moral duty. Regulation of security is faced with a double problematic, not only the horizontal fragmentation of the field, but also the vertical fragmentation, often resulting in a serious gap between managers and those in the field, both in the public and the private sector. This implies that the regulation should not only rest on the state and on self-regulation by the sector at management level, but also on the promotion of a practical ethic for security workers to steer and regulate their daily work.

The author provides a discussion of the articles in this issue of the Tijdschrift voor Veiligheid (Journal on Security) on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. He notes that there is an increasing hybridising, subjectification and fragmentation in the security area. The increasing interweaving of security politics seems to apply least to a common approach in ‘social security and physical safety issues’ (crime control and disaster and crisis management), while exactly this was aimed for in so-called integral security politics. According to the author that is the case because of ‘the moral pin’, which plays a dominant role in crime, but not in safety issues. The entanglement of forms of security identified by the author has a normative basis – it comes from the social order of an increasingly complex society. For the future an ever greater responsibilisation can be expected, in which the perception of security becomes even more important than it is now already. Not a big orchestrated security policy, but jazzy structures will then determine the prospects.

Since 2001, the Netherlands have broadened their array of antiterrorism legislation and policies. However, there is hardly any insight into the level of public support for them. This article assesses the Dutch public opinion on four measures that were recently made effective: enhanced possibilities for stop-and-search, broadening of possibilities for special investigative resources, increased obligations for identification, and body scans in airports. Two randomly selected, comparable groups were asked different questions about these issues: attitudes or willingness to pay. The results show that respondents have positive attitudes towards newly introduced antiterrorism measures, yet simultaneously, they have low willingness to pay. Both groups were also asked how they would allocate an imaginary fixed budget to various criminal justice policies and tax rebate. These results show similar relations for both attitudes and willingness to pay, suggesting they both measure the relative importance assigned to antiterrorism policies. A right political orientation predicts both positive attitudes and high willingness to pay. Furthermore, people with high income have higher willingness to pay. The results underline the necessity to pay attention to the subtleties underlying public opinion on crime control.

The Dutch aftercare for former prisoners is strongly developing. This article describes lessons from international experiences with aftercare for former prisoners in three areas of life: alcohol and drug problems, work and housing. Moreover, it discusses which lessons are especially relevant for the Dutch system. The analysis of the literature shows to what extent and under which conditions voluntary aftercare can affect reintegration and recidivism. Conclusions are that various aftercare programs do affect recidivism to some extent, but that the level of success differs substantially across programs and across subpopulations of former prisoners. Both programs that start during detention and continue after release and programs that combine multiple services (e.g. housing services and drug treatment) are most successful. Work programs have the strongest effects for older individuals. In all three areas of aftercare studied in this article, the strongest program effects were found for subpopulations with the highest risk of recidivism. The review also shows that communication between organizations and the integration of services are very important for the success of aftercare programs.

In this contribution the author reviews: Risico’s en redelijkheid. Verkenning naar een rijksbreed beoordelingskader voor de toelaatbaarheid van risico’s, by I. Helsloot, R. Pieterman & J.C. Hanekamp.

In this contribution the author reviews: Integrale veiligheid als reflectieve praktijk, by Sjaak Khonraad.

Since the legalization of the prostitution sector, not only has the combating of human trafficking through criminal law been substantially fortified, but also the administrative approach to human trafficking in that sector. This integral approach of human trafficking, in which administrative and criminal law measures complement each other, is necessary to combat this harrowing type of crime. The criminal law-administrative approach offers good footholds for a more forceful reaction to human trafficking. Besides the preventive effect administrative measures can have as a complement to criminal law, administrative supervision can also be useful to obtain criminal law information. However, that brings several new dilemmas with it that are connected to the phenomenon of the blurring of spheres. Under certain circumstances, the blurring of spheres between a criminal law and an administrative approach can lead to an improper use of competencies. We conclude that in the manner in which the prostitution sector is currently supervised, the legal protection of the citizen against actions of the supervisor is inadequately guaranteed. That does not mean that information that is obtained through administrative supervision may no longer be used in criminal cases. It is to be recommended however that several changes be made to current practice, which may prevent the improper use of supervisory competencies in prostitution controls.

In this contribution the current security debate in France is dissected as if it were a play in different acts. President Sarkozy, the political producer, has launched a public ‘schizophrenic’ discussion in which criminologists/sociologists act and quarrel on the edge of a knife. This debate can only be understood in reference to French criminological history, politics, structures and scientific particularities. The contents of this criminological theatre of war can enrich criminological discussion in the Netherlands and Belgium.

In this article the authors debate the subject fire alarm system.

In this contribution the author reviews: Politiewerk aan de basis: stevig en nuchter, by Edward J. van der Torre.

Teenagers between twelve and eighteen years of age are protected by Dutch criminal law against sexual encounters that can be described as ‘voluntarily’. If teenagers are approached without force or approach a person themselves autonomously they are thus protected against such contact, but they could have played a sexual active role nevertheless. How do the alleged offenders in these criminal cases make contact and how are the punishable interactions possible considering the facilitative role of the victim? This paper will deal with the way the officials of the police and justice departments value sexual contacts with youngsters in a diverse range of settings. The crucial question is how the professionals dealing with the protection of youngsters and at the same time safeguarding the legal rights of offenders come to their juridical deliberation.

In this article the author debates the subject fire alarm system.

In this contribution the author reviews: Idealen op drift. Een pedagogische kijk op radicaliserende jongeren, by M. van San, S. Sieckelink & M. de Winter.

In this contribution the author reviews: Verkenning cybercrime in Nederland 2009, by E.R. Leukfeldt, M.M.L. Domenie & W.Ph. Stol.

The ‘Shortlist troublesome youth groups’ is a compact survey that enables police-officers to categorize problematic youth groups on a general level. The ‘shortlist’ results in three categories. The least troublesome groups are labelled ‘annoying’, the more serious groups are referred to as ‘disturbing’ and the most serious ones are called ‘criminal’ youth groups. As a quick scan, the shortlist tool has originally been developed in order to prevent criminalization of youth. It has now become a compulsorily used instrument for all 25 police services in the Netherlands. The shortlist is seen as the central starting point that should ultimately lead to the implementation of multidisciplinary interventions to tackle the specific problems that the youth groups cause.This article briefly discusses the highly subjective judgements of perceptions of disorder in society. Against this background this article describes the aim, the benefits and limits to the use of the shortlist. This analysis is based on fifteen years of experience with the annual listing of troublesome youth groups by means of the shortlist at the Haaglanden police service.This contribution concludes that the shortlist is a useful instrument that enables police officers to efficiently categorize problematic youth groups. Several changes by the Haaglanden police service with regard to the content as well as to the procedure further optimized the use of the shortlist. However, its global characteristic hampers evaluation of local safety interventions on the group. Also, comparisons of results between police services are not possible just like that. For those purposes (evaluations and comparisons) additional, i.e. more detailed information on the groups are to be gathered. The shortlist-methodology consists of further steps that include more in-depth analyses.Having said this, the shortlist is a valuable quick scan tool that enables professionals to swiftly categorize problematic youth groups.

The fight against organized cannabis cultivation is an important topic within Dutch law enforcement. No longer the sole responsibility of the police, the current trend is for the police to work alongside local government, companies providing energy, housing associations and the Inland Revenue. Together they unite their strengths to deal more effectively and resolutely with the problem. Although different studies have been conducted concerning the (effectiveness of) the fight against cannabis cultivation, there is not much known regarding the way actors experience the fight from ‘within’, that is: the interactions, perceptions and transformations of agreements and premises which are enacted on the ‘molecular level’ of the cooperation. In two large Dutch cities, we have researched, on the basis of semi-structured interviews and observation, how parties implement their role within the integral fight against cannabis cultivation. The results reveal that the execution is more complex and uncontrollable than previously considered. The cooperation turns out not to be deductive, structured and ‘organized’; but rather flexible, dynamic and ‘self organizing’ in character.