Past and present human activity lies at the basis of the unprecedented environmental crisis we face today. This article explores the drivers and dynamics that are directly and indirectly responsible for the environmental crisis in the Anthropocene by using a green and organizational criminology perspective and combining it with insights from perpetrator studies. Responsible actors and responsibilities are discussed on societal, organizational and individual level. Lessons are drawn on how existing insights in criminology can be challenged to better accommodate for the ecological challenges in the antropocene and on what that means for criminologists experiencing and researching the Anthropocene.

The environmental crisis makes it clear that our current legal instruments and concepts are not sufficient to effectively combat, remedy and prevent widespread environmental harm. However, new concepts and approaches are being developed that try to reduce these legal imperfections. Our essay explores these developments, in particular the emergence of a legal duty of care for the environment, the rights of nature-movement, the campaign to make ecocide (mass damage and destruction of the environment) an international crime and the application of restorative justice to repair environmental harm. We also advocate a new multidisciplinary perspective launched by us: positive green criminology.

The overexploitation of nature has led to anthropogenic defaunation, which results in complex socioeconomic, political and ecological consequences. Influenced by the economic growth of modernization and the interconnectedness of globalization, zoonotic diseases emerge as incalculable side effects of defaunation. By rejecting anthropocentric worldviews, this article critically examines anthropogenic defaunation and the causes and consequences of the coronavirus pandemic from a green criminological perspective.

In this article, I am using Becker’s concept of moral entrepreneur to analyse the role of pain specialists in the labelling process, which has led to the normalisation of the use of opioid painkillers in the United States and ultimately to the death over 200.000 Americans. In general, the literature on labelling centres on crusading reformers, and the criminalisation and stigmatisation of transgressive behaviour. Here I will focus on the moral entrepreneurship of medical experts. What was their role in the normalisation process of opioid painkiller use and are there any similarities with the strategies of crusading reformers? My findings, based on qualitative analysis of documents such as newspaper articles and academic publications, show that, with two exceptions, pain specialists use the strategies of moral crusaders. First, in their narratives, pain specialists represented themselves as neutral objective experts without the emotional stance of moral crusaders. The second exception, which is related to the first, is that there was less emphasis in their narrative on creating villains, as they could not blame openly standard medical practice because they needed the support of the established medical world in order to normalise and legalise opioid painkillers.

This paper focuses on the practice of youth justice (termed ‘youth protection’ in Belgium) in which professional actors ascribe deviant behaviour of youngsters to different cultural and migration backgrounds. Intra-European Roma migrants and refugees from the Northern Caucasus in Belgium are chosen as case studies. Discourse analysis of 55 youth court files and 41 expert interviews with professional actors show that deviant behaviour of these young people is explained in different manners. Two discourses are identified: ‘criminal vagabonds’ and ‘war torn children’. These discourses and their effects in practice differ tremendously for both groups. The broader discussion this article touches upon is the selective inclusion and exclusion in the institutions of formal social control, through social practices of culturalisation.

During the recent ‘refugee crisis’, governments have been confronted with various problems concerning asylum reception. In several locations in the Netherlands, as well as elsewhere in Europe and beyond, new local forms of experimenting around the issue of asylum reception have begun. One example is Utrecht’s ‘Plan Einstein’. In Overvecht, a district of the city, an office building has been converted into an asylum shelter, where 400 asylum seekers live together with 38 non-refugee youngsters from Utrecht. The Centre runs courses and activities, offered to both asylum seekers (including those who do not yet have a residence status) and local residents. Employing the concepts of ‘multilevel governance’ and ‘experimental governance’, this article indicates why this initiative was able to be realized at this location and at this time.

The main cities in the Netherlands and Belgium are becoming superdiverse majority-minority cities. This implies more than increasing diversity, but involves an increasing diversification of diversity and (contested) processes of normalization of diversity. The article explores the increase of temporary citizens and undocumented migrants as part of this transition. The rise of intra-EU-migration and transmigration contributes to an increase of temporary citizens. Using the case of Antwerp (Belgium), the article analyses the presence of undocumented migrants, using data of the collective regularization in Belgium in 2009, and of transmigrants, building upon an explorative research in Antwerp & Brussels in 2015.

Amsterdam and Rotterdam both have become majority-minority cities. Cities where all ethnic population groups, including that of Dutch descent, now form a minority. Most migration research focusses on the integration of a variety of migrant groups in the city. This article addresses the group forgotten in migration research: the people of Dutch descent. What does it mean for people of Dutch descent to be part of an ethnic group that is becoming increasingly smaller in the super-diverse neighborhoods of the city? Amsterdam is often regarded as the example of a ‘happy’ super-diverse city, while Rotterdam considered to be an ‘unhappy’ super-diverse city. Our research confirms that in Rotterdam people of Dutch descent draw brighter boundaries between themselves and people of other ethnic backgrounds than their peers in Amsterdam do. It is remarkable that the difference between Rotterdam and Amsterdam is especially evident among people in the middle and higher echelons of the labour market, and less so among the working class. What causes this difference? In both cities, we see that people from the creative sector and people working in law enforcing occupations like police, army and security are characterized by a stabile attitude towards ethnic diversity. The cities’ general climate seems to influence – both positively and negatively – mainly those in administrative, technical, financial and social professions, where we find less stable attitudes towards diversity.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) within Dutch civil society provide material and immaterial assistance to unauthorized migrants in the Netherlands. Based on long-term qualitative fieldwork in the life worlds of unauthorized migrants, the authors describe how the migrants experience these NGOs as a safe haven where they feel at home and secure for the risks of apprehension and deportation. We argue that these safe havens are also beneficial for the society at large. These NGOs contribute to preventing unauthorized migrants from sleeping in public places and employing illegitimate survival strategies. In addition, the NGOs’ empowerment of these migrants is advantageous for their willingness to access healthcare and employ legal rights. Recent attempts of the Dutch government to restrict the number of these NGOs, lead amongst other things to NGOs who are increasingly focusing on the unauthorized migrants’ return. We argue that these governmental efforts of controlling unauthorized migration through NGOs, will result in unauthorized migrants loosing trust in these safe havens. Ultimately, this governmental control through NGOs will have a negative impact on feelings of security in the society at large as it fundamentally diminishes the significance of these NGOs in civil society for unauthorized migrants without offering an alternative.

Positive security is a very promising development in criminology. The ‘movement’ reconnects the current debate on crime with the origins of ancient Greek thinking on the positive nature of politeia, policy and policing. Securitas - providing safety and security for the common good - has a long and rich tradition. Good governance is about many things, but foremost about providing security in society. Polizeiwissenschaft in 18th and 19th century Prussia made a distinction between Wohlfahrt- and Sicherheitspolizei.
The latter is outright dangerous because security becomes equated with negative connotations: the other, the enemies of the state, the drug war and more recently the war in terror. In times like these the positive qualities of securitas become inflated. Human rights, privacy and the rule of law are no longer viewed in positive terms. Therefore I advocate the positive security movement. But the author is worried about two things. Firstly, the current Zeitgeist which is charged with xenophobia and war like languages. And, secondly the fact that the ‘movement’ is limited to a few rebels with a cause. The mainstream of criminology is not really interested in reconnecting with the philosophical positive roots of securitas. Mainstream criminology fosters the status quo and is financially too depended on the state to actually follow the new heroes of positivity. The only way out is to develop a following but this requires academics to actually take a stand.

It has become evident that the use of performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) is becoming an important societal issue, with ramifications extending beyond elite sport. A particular concern of authorities is that the majority of PIEDs are not legally obtained through a physician, by means of a prescription, but instead are illegally purchased on the illicit market. Currently little research exists on the illegal production and supply of PIEDs. However, understanding illicit PIED markets is important for policy decisions as knowledge on the production and supply of these substances may assist in designing law enforcement efforts, harm reduction initiatives and other measures. This article will, therefore, focus on the production and supply of PIEDs in Belgium and the Netherlands. Specifically, it will examine the general characteristics of PIED suppliers and the ways in which the behaviour of dealers are influenced by cultural factors. In particular the role of the legal profession of PIED suppliers is examined, taking the fitness industry as an example. This research is based on a content analysis of 64 PIED-dealing cases initiated by criminal justice agencies in the Netherlands (N=33) and Belgium (N=31). This article illustrates that the dealing of PIEDs is a rather specialised business and that not everyone has the suitable ties, opportunities and/or knowledge to enter the PIED market. Many PIED dealers are already devoted to a gym, sport, medical, or other subculture before becoming involved in dealing. Importantly, the embeddedness of PIED-related supply-side activities in legitimate professions, roles, and institutional settings form an integral part of the market culture these dealers engage in. We, therefore, need to examine the production, distribution and use of PIEDs, as embedded within a diverse combination of social, economic and cultural processes, in which none is simply reducible to the other.

Various studies show that the views on the drug problem and appropriate policy responses have undergone profound changes from the 1960s onward. This article is analysing one of these changes, the decriminalisation of drug use, reflecting a fundamental change of view: understanding drug use as a health issue and not as crime. A useful heuristic to understand this type of change is Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm concept. He sees a paradigm as a set of beliefs that are shared by a scientific community and accepted by a wider community. A paradigm change is therefore a socio-psychological process rather than rooted in new scientific or research facts.
The author analyses the change from the dominance of a crime to the dominance of a health paradigm reflecting its social-historic context, starting with the widely shared concerns about substance use related health problems in the 20th century. These concerns translated into two different views on the essence of these problems, a crime and a health paradigm. The first served as fundament of the international drug control efforts, resulting in the still governing drug prohibition. Yet, the health paradigm was also of influence from the start and gradually gained weight. From the 1970s onwards the health paradigm became more important as part of a wider reform movement. It started in the Netherlands and the UK as bottom-up process criticising criminalising the users of illicit drugs as inappropriate, detrimental for their health and inhumane. The health paradigm was seen as more appropriate.
The author reflects on the benefits and disadvantages of the health paradigm. Its primary benefit is that it helps to understand the health problems related to drug use. A key disadvantage is its close relationship with the disease paradigm. The latter fits well with the generally negative view on drugs as dangerous or evil. It is encompassing the risk of ‘pathologising’ all forms of drug use and denying phenomena of unproblematic use for, among other things, recreational or spiritual purposes. Like the crime paradigm it can serve for control purposes. The drug user remains subject of control or disciplining policies and is not in charge of his/her own life. An additional problematic issue is that ‘softening’ the approach towards the users seems to be mirrored by a harder, more punitive approach to the producers and sellers of the substances, which are seen as villains, making available the drugs which deserve harsh punishment for ‘devastating’ the lives of users.
The author concludes with a short discussion of the well-being paradigm as possible alternative for the health paradigm. It covers a broader spectrum than the health paradigm and helps to grasp the negative impact of (problem) drug use, reducing well-being, but is also useful in understanding the positive sides, enhancing well-being.

Vagabonds, mainly relating to beggars and vagrants, have occupied the Western European social and criminal landscape by the ages. In this contribution some long term patterns – from the Middle Ages onwards – are investigated. The central questions are a) What is the place vagabonds occupied in society? and b) How was dealt with them in the past centuries? In order to answer these questions the perception of and the distinction between true and false beggars and vagrants are included. In addition to penal and criminological sources also those from the visual arts (history) are applied. Answering these questions shows a process of increasing institutionalization seeing a pattern of social exclusion to institutional confinement. An important role in the institutionalization is reserved for the interference of criminal law.

It seems common knowledge among criminologists that our societies have to be understood in terms of securitization. This means that security is the defining and organizing concept in (social) policy making. In the Netherlands the process of securitization can be characterized as rather contingent. According to the author, it can be typified as ‘pragmatic securitization’. It is driven by the desire to show decisiveness and being in control of complexity of social order, rather than by ideology. Under the pressure of the economic crisis there is a growing interest in self-organization, civic power and civil society. These themes emerge along the issues of security and control. Is it possible then that security is exchanged by another big social theme?

Measures to combat international crime include customer identity controls by banks and repressive measures against informal money transfer systems. While there is debate surrounding the latter strategy, customer identity controls are largely taken for granted in the Netherlands. The author argues that these controls can negatively affect migrants. Moreover, exclusion of migrants from regulated banking systems has development implications. Phone-based remittances, that are linked to the regulated banking system, could serve as an alternative for informal transfer systems. Too stringent identity controls in host countries seem to prevent this however. The author recommends that controls focus on the amount being transferred, rather than on the person making the transfer.