Litter in the street is a great annoyance for many people, especially in the large cities. This includes overflowing garbage containers caused by people incorrectly placing garbage: next to these containers. In this study, carried out in the municipality of Rotterdam, we have developed a model that provides insight into which factors contribute to where this is done (or not). In summary, days when people are not working, the number of people that depend on the container(s), the bonding and social cohesion of that group, and the social-economic circumstances of the people in that group are the most important factors in determining at which container locations people incorrectly place their garbage. These insights provide starting points for an effective municipal approach to overflowing garbage containers and thereby reducing the residents’ feelings of nuisance and unsafety.

Although risk profiling can by no means be considered as a ‘new’ crime prevention tool, its application has gained popularity over the years. Both in the screening of asylum seekers, in border control at airports (e.g. behavioural profiling or the use of risk profiles in the European Passenger Information Unit) and in the designation of hotspots at the local level (e.g. the Crime Anticipation System), attempts are now being made to identify persons with criminal intentions more often on the basis of ordinal risk assessment tools. This sudden increase in popularity is not remarkable, since random police patrols or undirected security checks have long been shown to have negligible impact on crime reduction. Risk profiles, on the other hand, have a certain potential for shaping more effectively the interventions by law enforcement authorities at border crossing points. Nevertheless, the use of such profiles also raises some pertinent questions. It is precisely in the light of this ambivalence that the present theoretical contribution will consider the pitfalls and success factors of risk profiling during border checks, in order to determine when one can speak of ‘risk profiling’ and when the concept of ‘risky profiling’ must be used.

It has been proposed that when people perceive their treatment by criminal justice actors as more procedurally just, they will be more likely to comply with the law. Existing research mainly focused on the police or the judge. This longitudinal study examined how prisoners experienced their treatment by five different criminal justice actors using data from the Prison Project. The prisoners were most positive about the procedurally fair treatment by their lawyer and least positive about the treatment by the police. Additionally, the perceived treatment by the police was associated with the treatment by other actors at subsequent moments.

The article discusses the connection between Bauhaus, a modern art and architecture school founded in 1919, and National Socialism. The central question is to what extent modern ideas about art and culture, architecture and modern life went hand in hand with the emerging and assertive National Socialist ideas. In the review of an art and architecture collection, activities of famous Bauhaus figures are traced in order to discuss the Bauhaus myth. Accordingly, it must be concluded that neutrality of art and architecture does not exist and Bauhaus modernity was not incompatible with National Socialism.

Art crime, related to the existence of hidden art, appears in the legal and illegal art market. In the criminal ‘artopolis’ especially iconoclasm, forgeries and looting are longstanding phenomena. Today they are subject to the debate on art restitution.

During the conflict in Syria and Iraq, Islamic State demolished and looted countless cultural heritage sites and the statues therein, as well as archaeological sites and museums. These acts of iconoclasm, broadly shown in propaganda videos, were aimed at erasing the cultural identity of the population. Additionally, the destruction and looting were also a means to obtain antiquities that could be sold in order to bring in revenues. This article tries to explain the iconoclasm and illicit antiquities trade constructed by Islamic State and how they were related.

In 1938, Nico (or Niko) Gunzburg founded the Institute of Criminology at Ghent University.
Because he was a professor of Jewish origin, Flemish-minded, a political liberal and a freemason, he became the victim, in 1940 and in 1941, of looting by the ‘Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die besetzten Gebiete’. Personal books, documents, art and archives concerning his lodge ‘Marnix van Sint Aldegonde’ were stolen from his house and transported to nazi-Germany. After the Second World War, almost the entire collection was found in the Moscow-Archive and subject to restitution.

The Russian avant-garde world serves as an empirical example of the embeddedness of criminal actors (fraudsters, smugglers, thieves) in the legal art market of curators, collectors and museum directors. The article discusses various dilemmas regarding the interpretation of criminal activities in the art world. Is the smuggling of ‘forbidden art’ from the Soviet Union a patriotic act or a crime? Why do world-famous museums exhibit forgeries? What are the financial and judicial consequences of a lack of consensus between art experts?

This article analyses political discourses in the light of the vocabulary and suggestions contained in the parliamentary resolutions proposed in 2019 dealing with the restitution. It appears that the discourses are committed but the developed suggestions are mild. This apparent contradiction can be explained through Hanna Pitkin’s work on political representation. Using this analysis, two reflections are proposed in the conclusion: one on the Belgian case with regards to the European context and the other on the current expectations of society.

This paper looks at a selection of famous forgeries of archaeological objects – the James Ossuary, the Shroud of Turin, the Piltdown Man Skull and the Archaeoraptor Fossil – to consider how these artefacts were falsified for personal benefit, whether in terms of fame or finance. The Shroud of Turin was identified as a forgery as early as 1389, and yet the value in terms of income from pilgrims was such that it continued to be displayed and venerated. The James Ossuary was forged for profit and notoriety, to gain renown and then to sell. The Piltdown Man Skull was one of many alleged forgeries by a man who sought renown by finding the ‘missing link’ that proved the Darwinian theory of evolution from ape to homo erectus. The same motivation drove the scientists who tried to pass off the Archaeoraptor Fossil as the ‘missing link’ that proved the relation of dinosaurs and birds.

The ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp are among the main European ports of entry for the import and further distribution of cocaine. Earlier research underlines the interchangeability of these ports regarding the criminal networks trafficking cocaine into Europe. In this contribution, the interchange­ability of these European sea ports regarding cocaine trafficking is questioned. Based on empirical research, and applying the routine activity approach, the Port of Rotterdam and the Port of Antwerp are compared with respect to their physical characteristics, the potential, motivated offenders, as well as the existing public and private security measures.

In 2018 we published a report on the production of synthetic drugs in the Netherlands. We calculated the turnover of synthetic drugs produced in the Netherlands in 2017; we estimated it to be at least 18.9 billion euro (worldwide, street prices). In this article, we will discuss how these calculations were executed and on which assumptions they were based. We describe the responses to these calculations, nationally and internationally. Finally, we describe problems we encountered when performing a repetition of the calculations for the year 2018. Our central message is: drug turnover calculations can be an important addition to scientific and political discussions about illicit drugs, provided they are presented in a transparent way and acknowledging the inherent limitations of these calculations.

In recent years, the authorities have dismantled several encrypted phone providers. These providers stored millions of messages about covert activities that were overtly exchanged between criminals. This type of communication offers a unique insight into serious organized crime and the people involved. Based on one such intercepted encrypted phone network, called PGP-Safe, we carried out a social network analysis on the Dutch-speaking synthetic drug market. Three findings stand out. Firstly, three-quarters of all accounts (N=4,158) are interconnected in a giant component, resulting in a criminal small-world effect. Secondly, the network appears to be robust. As a consequence, the removal of central accounts will hardly have any impact on the network as a whole. Thirdly, the majority of the accounts within the synthetic drug market is involved in poly-drug trafficking. The Dutch synthetic drug market is much more closely intertwined with other drug markets than is commonly known.

As drug producing countries and logistical hubs, the Netherlands and Belgium are topping the worldwide charts in the field of international drug trafficking. For this reason, the Netherlands – and to a lesser extent Belgium – is depicted as a ‘narco state’ in the media and the political arena. Another term that is frequently used when it comes to crime problems related to drugs is ‘subversive crime’. In this introduction of the special issue on drug crime, the authors elaborate on two themes that are central to the terms ‘narco state’ and ‘subversive crime’: the size and estimates of the drug economy and the embeddedness of the drug industry in the legal world in the Netherlands and Belgium.

This paper concerns the question whether in the period 2011-2017 displacement effects occurred from the Netherlands to Belgium in the context of synthetic drugs production, cannabis cultivation, and retail of illicit drugs, and if so, how these may be explained. We conclude that displacement took place in modi operandi of retail drug dealers. This is explained foremost by the policy of banning non-residents from Dutch coffeeshops in border region municipalities. Dealers and traffickers responded by switching to local distribution in Belgium as well as deliveries by drug couriers. The synthetic drugs and cannabis cultivation markets show minor changes in modi operandi, but no changes occurred in choosing production locations. Displacement effects in the context of organized drug crime must be explained from a range of factors. Reality is therefore more complex than assuming that government interventions are the main cause of a balloon effect.

In order to advance our understanding of digital drug markets on social media, this article examines the trustworthiness of cocaine dealers on Telegram Messenger. Based on an exploratory netnography, we illustrate that digital dealers on Telegram Messenger use a number of sales tactics to attract potential customers, emphasizing the quality of the goods and service and (competitive) pricing strategies. These sales tactics include various signals that seem intended to appear as trustworthy as possible to potential customers. Seen from the perspective of signaling theory, our study highlights the ambiguity of these signals that, depending on the online observer, could both signal trustworthiness and untrustworthiness.

This article describes traits of the hitherto underexposed transit trade of cocaine via the Netherlands, based on a qualitative social network analysis of a diversity of data. Research findings show that the transit trade via the Netherlands is dominated by poly-drug trafficking. It is noteworthy that streams of predominantly mono-drugs are entering the Netherlands, while mainly streams of poly-drugs are leaving the country. Our research furthermore shows that cocaine intended for European markets may be transited via the Netherlands to European countries to which the cocaine was initially imported. This is what we refer to as ping-pong trade. Another characteristic of the transit trade of cocaine via the Netherlands is that the actors involved, mainly coordinate parts of the cocaine supply chain. Although different groups within the cocaine distribution chain collaborate, this does not necessarily mean they actually know each other. Taken together, the organization of the distributive trade of cocaine is in this article positioned as an interdependent transnational network of networks (NoN). We suggest that future research into the transit trade of cocaine should apply such a transnational NoN perspective to fully grasp the interdependence of the micro and meso levels of the trade and, in so doing, ultimately comprehend the effect this may have on the macro level.