Within the field of criminology, marriage and labour are important determinants for the decline in criminal behavior. However, these factors are seldom researched in the context of historical criminology. By conducting research into crimes against property in Rotterdam, those brought to the Rotterdam correctional court in the 1812-1820 period, this paper attempts to shed light on the topic. Our findings show that a majority of the delinquents in question were employed, while a minority of those female delinquents were married, yet also in gainful employment in most cases. Male adolescents, who had just entered the labour market, were the largest group of male delinquents. The female population of delinquents consisted mostly of women who were close to marriageable age. Thus, it is suggested that labour and marriage supplied insufficient economical stability to inhibit criminal behavior during the 1812-1820 period.

Since winter 2014, Belgian is faced with a possible rolling out of power. Blackouts come without any warning whilst the duration and cause of it is mostly unclear. Rolling outs are usually planned by utility companies to put small service areas without electricity, to cope with a high energy demand that the utility companies can’t supply. This rolling out plan can prevent a larger blackout and should make people aware of the consequences of a possible black-out.
Given this situation, this paper presents the result of a study asking citizens about their self-efficacy and organizations of their own house hold to deal with possible blackouts. For this survey, 473 citizens have been interviewed in 2 Belgian cities. We asked about their own action to organize themselves and were looking at their expectations of the government.

Immigrants are overrepresented in Dutch crime rates and in forensic psychiatric care. The current research explored the relation between delinquency, psychiatric problems and ethnicity. General characteristics, judicial history and history of mental health care of male detainees which reside in a penitentiary psychiatric centre, have been investigated and the relation of these factors with ethnicity is examined. Results show that in particular second-generation non-western immigrants are highly represented. It seems that it had been more difficult for them to get adequate treatment.

Legislation as we know it is a recent phenomenon, and its quality has been under debate for 40 years. It is not surprising or problematic that the place and function of legislation evolve under the influence of societal changes. It is, however, important to change the mechanistic view of legislation. Instead of viewing it as an instrument of policy, we must search for structures and institutions that create room for diversity without breaking the unity of law. In our dealings with inevitable risks and damage to society, rules too often take the place of ethics or professional judgment. Rules are essential, but they should leave room to dissent from them if justified: rules as a point of departure, not rules that must be respected on pain of sanctions.

Both the Court of Justice and the regional Court of The Hague ruled the retention of telecommunications data directive and the Dutch Wet bewaarplicht telecommunicatiegegevens in violation of the right to respect for privacy. The police and the Dutch Prosecutors Office have attempted to clarify the importance of the retention for criminal investigation. However, without an efficiency and effectiveness assessment of the method to request and analyse telecommunication data, it is not possible to substantiate the significance of data retention. To ‘save’ the retention of telecommunication data in its current form, but also to assess the importance of the existing and new investigative methods, a thorough analysis is necessary.

In this introductory article we introduce the subject of our thematic issue on ‘macro criminology’, and illustrate it with a short historical overview and examples of ‘typical macro criminological’ research. Successively we address the recent decrease in crime in many Western countries (the ‘crime drop’), the increased tendency to punish more severely in the last decennia (the ‘punitive turn’), and historical developments in homicide (‘history of violence’). After that we address an important theoretical and philosophical problem with regard to macro criminology: the balance between micro and macro factors in explaining macro phenomena. Finally, the contributions of this thematic issue are introduced.

Some overestimation of crime risk is likely, but that does not mean that risk perceptions are not adjusted in line with changes in actual crime risk. Based on time series data, we show that crime risk perceptions are strongly related to rates of victimization. The conventional wisdom that the drop in crime since the 1990s did not result in an adjustment in risk perceptions can be easily refuted. The much discussed crime drop goes together with a much less discussed fear drop.

The explosive growth of the Internet has led to countless new possibilities, and it opened the way for societal progress and an extensive globalization and digitization. However, the original ambition of the Internet as a free, open and neutral medium has also led to new possibilities in the field of crime. The current paper illustrates how governments dealt with the development of the Internet and it gives an explanation for why and how unintended side effects have manifested in society. Using the phenomenon of digital child abuse, this paper offers recommendations for an effective government response and for an effective detection of and fight against cybercrime.

Based on a new book edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen The Poetics of Crime. Understanding and Researching Crime and Devience Through Creative Sources (Ashgate, 2014), Dina Siegel analyzes the ways in which social scientists can find inspiration in art, music, literature, photography and dance. She discusses how these fields can enrich criminological research by introducing new analytical instruments and skills and to discover new research fields, meanings and emotions in crime-related issues.

This article is based on ethnographical research in 24 crack houses in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. Crack houses were defined as the homes of crack users where crack is being sold and smoked together with other users. All crack houses were located in disadvantaged, multi-ethnic neighbourhoods. Both residents and visitors were men and women, middle-aged, of various ethnic origin and with a long history of hard drug use. In addition to economic benefits for residents (crack sales, getting crack for free from visitors) and sometimes also for visitors, crack houses predominantly serve as a safe haven for drug use and as a social meeting place. Two types of crack houses were found: dealing houses (with ‘home sellers’) and home circuits (divided into ‘fixers’ who arrange or facilitate that crack is available, and ‘users-for-free’, who allow that crack is sold or delivered and used in their apartment, in exchange for a bit of crack). To reduce the risk of discovery and closure, residents take various measures, but less if they are not a legal resident of the apartment. In comparison with the Anglo-Saxon literature about crack houses, there is less ethnic segregation, a less aggressive atmosphere and less involvement with prostitution.

This article aims to explore the driving factors behind the process of crimmigration, the merger of crime control and migration control. By analysing the legal and policy framework governing the so-called ‘Mobile Security Monitor’ – the discretionary immigration checks carried out by the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee in the borderlands with Belgium and Germany, the research explores the extent to which the framework might leave room for crimmigration-based decisions on the street level. As the article shows, the dual nature of the Mobile Security Monitor as both an instrument for immigration control and crime control combined with an important name-change and the ongoing securitization of migration in Europe seem to create a favourable environment for crimmigration.

Dutch policies concerning the illegal stay of aliens are characterized by regular tensions between central and local governments. This article describes various concrete (proposals for) policy changes in the last twenty years and examines the reasons for these tensions while using the distinction between policy strategies based on denial versus strategies based on adaptation (Garland). When it comes to refugee policies, the central government works in the denial mode while local governments adapt and try to find solutions in order to bring problems under control. This attitude can be explained by the local governments’ duty to provide for in the case of humanitarian emergency situations.

Tensions between the central national level and the local level become clearly visible in coffee shop policies, which have to fit within the international VN and EU treaties and strategies, national drug policy principles and local interests of public order. Three cases, all concerning long-term problems of drug tourism, nuisance and crime around coffee shops, illustrate these tensions. In the case of coffee shop Checkpoint near the Belgian border the Public Prosecutor aimed at solving the problem by prosecuting the coffee shop as a criminal network, while the mayor tried to minimize the negative effects by facilitating visitor flows. In the case of the private club and residence criterion in 2012 not all the mayors actually enforced these national criteria. This leads to a bigger emphasis on local tailoring. Thirdly, several mayors have opted for a regulation of cannabis production for coffee shops, while the stance of the national government is that international treaties banning this practice should be respected. The influence of local policies may be small, but in the end the local communities seem crucial when it comes to finding new ways of managing drug problems.

In this article the authors use empirical data from the Dutch Organised Crime Monitor to give empirical insight into the investments of organised crime offenders in legal economy. Using a dataset of 1,196 individual investments, they look into what kind of assets offenders purchase and where these assets are located. The authors use the empirical results to assess the tenability of different theoretical perspectives and assumptions that are present in the literature on money laundering and organised crime: the standard economic approach, the criminal infiltration approach and the social opportunity structure. The results of this study show that offenders predominantly invest in their home country and that their investments consist of tangible, familiar assets such as residences and other real estate and companies from well-known sectors. Investments such as bonds as well as stocks in companies in which offenders are not personally involved, were only found in a small number of cases. To put it differently: offenders usually stay close to home with their investments. Based on these results, the concept of social opportunity structure seems to be best suited to understand offenders’ investment choices.