About half (54%) of Dutch mental health care have patients who radicalize. This delivery room for radical losers deserves more attention. The GGZ will then have to emerge from the stalled discourse, that radicalization is not a psychiatric disorder. An important breeding ground for these and other ‘delivery rooms’ are apart from factors like social and psychological influences, and grievances about social, economic and health inequalities (Bhui et al., 2014), the wars that are initiated annually by the United States from 1798, with or without the help of the United Kingdom, the European Union and therefore the Netherlands. This article argues that ‘fire should not be fired with fire’. It is argued for the implementation of Activism of Hope (Lleshi, 2018) with its own grandfathers, such as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Finally, an action perspective for all young people in the tumultuous phase of adolescence is proposed for education- and care institutions.

Loïc Wacquant conducted ethnographic research in the ghetto of Chicago and describes the route to social mobility that black boxers try to follow as they train in the gym and build body capital. Based on similar research methods, this article compares the black boxers to two episodes of kickboxing in Amsterdam. Wacquant is not hopeful when it comes to social mobility of the boxers, as he sees their boxing careers as confirmation of their low position in society. In the first Dutch episode, kickboxers manage to combine body work in the gym with working in the nightlife economy. They make money but are unaware of the danger of getting involved in criminal activities, and a number of fighters end up in prison or even dead. Currently, kickboxing is very popular with young Moroccans. Having seen what went wrong in the previous episode, Moroccan trainers keep a close watch on their pupils, and make sure they realize that what happens outside and after kickboxing is what really matters.

Based on a retrospective analysis of six large scale and fatal fires in the Netherlands, an improvement in terms of meeting the needs of victims can be seen. A comparison of the legal settlement of these fires shows mayor differences in the fulfilling of different aspects of social justice that are identified in social psychology. Two victim needs commonly associated with retributive justice – financial compensation and a thorough, neutral investigation into the causes of the disaster – were fulfilled to a higher degree after the most recent fires than after those that occurred decades ago. The legal settlement after the New Year’s fire in Volendam (2001) appears – at least on paper – to have been more just from the victim’s point of view than the ones after the other incidents. Empirical research into the experienced social justice after the New Year’s fire can be valuable to assess the factors that can lead to a just settlement after disasters.

Crises and disasters can seriously affect the health, well-being and functioning of the people involved. From a governance perspective, it is important that public leaders and crisis managers are aware of what the psychosocial dimension of crisis management entails. The objective of the current contribution is to analyse dilemmas and challenges described in evaluations of crises that occurred in the Netherlands between 2012 and 2016. Thirty-six evaluations were analysed against the background of a theoretical framework combining crisis leadership tasks and psychosocial support principles along the crisis life cycle. Public leaders and crisis managers had to deal with classical crisis problems concerning coordination, collaboration and communication. Other recurring themes were linked to social media, and the tension between tasks such as meaning making (social recognition), account giving and learning. Moreover, the analysis illustrates how difficult it is to gain insight into the needs, problems and vulnerabilities of the individuals and groups affected.

The promises of Big Data, predictive policing and artificial intelligence hold a key position in the public debate for quite some time now. Optimists tell that it is possible to predict where criminal events will occur before they take place. This would implicate a major shift towards a crime and insecurity preventive society, feeding on our cultural longing for a secure future. Therefore we give algorithms and deep learning access to more and more aspects of our lives. But how realistic and desirable is the application of Big Data techniques in the area of security?
In this article we put focus on the research question ‘In which way can Big Data and predictive policing support good governance of security?’, that has led our study. By exploring the central concepts, the processes behind them and their results in the domain of public security, we conclude that there are only rather disappointing results from the application of these techniques: crime and insecurity have not dropped when the police and other organizations turned to Big Data techniques. Instead, many negative side effects occurred. We search for explanations in six central academic critiques on the application of these techniques in the area of security.
We have found several ways to guaranty principles of good governance in the application of Big Data techniques, but these require a firm paradigm shift on Big Data in general. The heuristics of security professionals should not be overshadowed by technological promises: the professional should always be in the loop, must understand the way predictions come into existence and must be able to correct flaws and bugs of (semi-)automated decisions. We conclude that safeguarding public security must remain human work in which Big Data techniques can assist.

Both major disasters and smaller incidents at chemical companies impact the environment. Seveso regulations aim to limit the impact of the chemical industry on man and the environment. This leads to the expectation that violation of these rules is predictive of incidents. In the current study, incidents at chemical companies are predicted from the company’s history of rule violation, previously reported incidents and corporate characteristics. Analysis of three years of inspection data and of six years of reported incidents, shows that the company’s branch and previous reported incidents predict the occurrence of an incident. The company’s history of rule violation, however, does not. Future research is needed to examine the different possible explanations for these contra intuitive results.

Within the group of Dutch foundlings, 28% are migratory foundlings: children coming from abroad to the Netherlands (inbound foundlings), and children going abroad from the Netherlands (outbound foundlings). According to the rational choice theory, there is at some point a rational decision behind human action, based on consideration of costs and benefits – terminology reminiscent of the origins within economic science. When viewed from that perspective, cross-border abandonment may be regarded to be a conscious effort to hinder detection. After all, abandonment of foundlings has been a criminal offence in the Netherlands since at least the Middle Ages. There is therefore also a vested interest in not attracting attention. Anyone abandoning a child and wishing to protect their identity will be attracted to locations that lack effective supervision, defined as guardianship within the criminological routine activities theory. However, the less familiar a location, the trickier it is to avoid visibility. Does the rational consideration of costs and benefits result in migratory foundlings being abandoned just over the border (in order that the perpetrators attract the least possible attention) or actually further inland (in order to detract from the cross-border activity, for example)? Is there a comparable choice in terms of distance when people abandon native foundlings – children found in their country of birth? Relevant questions indeed, as greater insight into such variables can support the direction taken by detection activities. This study is an exploratory analysis of the distance between the domicile or birth location and the abandonment location of cross-border foundlings. The results will then be compared with the distances in the case of domestic foundlings.

Between 2013-2017 there were many ISIS videos circulating. It was generally assumed that these videos would encourage young Muslims to radicalize and join ISIS. But what do we actually know about the imaginary world of young people? Do sociological aspects such as the economic, cultural and religious background play a decisive role in this? Can we use the films and TV series that young people see as an entry into their imaginary world? To what extent can image analysis provide knowledge that contributes to safety issues? Commissioned by the Department of Counterterrorism, Radicalization and Extremism (CTER) of the Dutch National Police, the IVMV Foundation invited, in a comparative pilot study, twenty Dutch youngsters (10 with a Muslim background and 10 police students) to share their viewing experiences with five trailers (3 Hollywood, 1 Netflix, 1 not explicit violent ISIS video) that touched on the ISIS issue. This resulted in a research report and a film (in Dutch as well as in English) that was presented in November 2017 (De Mare et al. 2017a; De Mare 2017b). A remarkable result was that their viewing experiences and feelings showed a lot of similarity.

Until recently, Dutch merchant ships could not rely on privately contracted maritime security staff to protect themselves against pirates. On the one hand, the argument prevailed that the State had to retain the monopoly on the use of force and, on the other hand, one also feared for the escalation of violence or international incidents. Nowadays, however, more and more European countries allow for the use of privately contracted armed security personnel on board merchant ships. As a result, the Dutch Parliament has adopted a bill containing rules for the use of armed private security guards on board Dutch maritime merchant ships (Law to Protect Merchant Shipping 2019 (published in the Dutch official Gazette on June 7th, 2019)).
The author addresses the question whether because of the new law a level playing field will emerge with the Merchant Navies from the neighboring Flag States of Belgium, the United Kingdom, Spain and Denmark, presenting a comparative analysis of their domestic legislation.
The Dutch law clearly regulates the use of force and the master has the final responsibility for everything that happens under his authority. In principle, the security guards may only apply violence as the master has determined that it is necessary. Innovative is that there is a reporting obligation whereby every incident should be reported with images and sound recordings. It seems, however, that the law is especially made to protect and secure and not necessarily to provide a solution for situations in which pirates come on board.
It is clear that the intention of the legislator is to leave the monopoly on the use of force in the hands of the State. However, the adoption of this law to protect merchant shipping could constitute a first step in enabling the use of force by other actors than the State, which in itself is groundbreaking. Before being able to go on this road, there are still countless political (mainly related to the sovereignty of a State) and legal challenges (mainly concerning the use of force and respect for human rights) to be addressed.

Several authors fear that the expansion of Dutch mayors’ executive powers in the field of safety and security will harm their position as non-partisan and consensus-oriented leaders. Empirical research into how mayors use their powers, however, is still rare. From a leadership perspective, the current article analyzes how mayors in the region of South East Brabant in Netherlands use their administrative power to close homes involved in drug-related crime. Drawing on Fischer’s framework of discursive practices, we analyze mayors’ considerations in terms of the argumentation they provide for closing homes. Our analysis, which draws on interviews and document analysis, covers 27 cases from the police region of South-East Brabant and includes 120 considerations. Our findings indicate that mayors vindicate home closures mostly through policy-derived technical and situational argumentations. Vindications that aspire a particular societal effect, such as the reduction of criminal activity, or ideological motivations are rarer, which is indicative of a non-decisive leadership style. In addition, mayors mostly respect the local closure policies. As such, they show very little decisive and individualistic leadership. And, to the extent that they deviate from agreed-upon regional policies, their motivation is to be able to take into account unique local circumstances. In the use of their administrative powers mayors, thus, show mostly situational and adaptive leadership, which, rather than as visionaries, positions them as caretakers. The leadership style of Dutch mayor in the use of this administrative power is, thus, much more in accordance with their traditional bridging-and-bonding leadership style than some authors suspect. Some of the limitations of our study are that we have analyzed closure decisions from one region only and that real-life decisions are susceptible to contextual influences. At the same time, our study provides a rare insight into real-world mayoral leadership in the Netherlands in the field of safety and security.

In the Netherlands, over the past 25 years mayors have had an increasing number of formal powers, based on administrative law, to fight against crime and disorder. Now, the Dutch mayors have the power to impose a restraining order, to close houses in case of drugs and/or drugs trade, or to decline a request for a permit when it might be used for illegal activities.
To implement these measures, the local government is highly dependent on (information provided by) the police. At this moment we do not have much information about this cooperation between local government and the police in the management of crime and disorder. This paper is based on an empirical study concerning this issue. It shows that the inter-organizational cooperation between local government and the police may differ strongly, however this cooperation still often depends on central factors and circumstances. An important factor is the (growing) distance between the police and local government in regard to the local approach of problems of crime and disorder. A significant number of local police officers concentrates mainly on the maintenance of law and order by criminal law enforcement instead of the implementation of administrative measures. As a result, local government is often unsatisfied about the contribution of the police. For example, the quality of the information provided by the police is often perceived as insufficient. In some cases local governments try to diminish the degree of interdependency with the police and to strengthen their own position in the local safety domain.