In the past years important changes have occurred in police work in the Netherlands and Belgium. These developments, and new questions that arose because of these developments, are the reason we dedicate a special issue to ‘the police and citizen in a changing context’. In this introduction of this issue, we describe a number of developments and new questions. We address the changing distance between police officers and citizens, authority and trust, the role of citizens, technology and digitization and growing complexity and diversity. In addition, the articles in this special issue are introduced.

The rise of the internet and social media has important consequences for the way we interact, communicate and access information. This has repercussions for the police organization and also for the cooperation between police and citizens. One of these forms of cooperation between police and citizens are neighborhood watch (NW) projects (also known as ‘BINs’ in Belgium and ‘burgerwachten’ in the Netherlands). This study uses semi-structured interviews (n=380) in Belgium to examine how NW members and non-NW members perceive the effectiveness of both formal and informal NW projects and how the two relate to each other. The perceived effectiveness is assessed based on several criteria, including impact on crime, fear of crime, policing, and the relationship between police and citizens.

In recent years, big data technology has revolutionised many domains, including policing. There is a lack of research, however, exploring which applications are used by the police, and the potential benefits of big data analytics for policing. Instead, literature about big data and policing predominantly focuses on predictive policing and its associated risks. The present paper provides new insights into the police’s current use of big data and algorithmic applications. We provide an up-to-date overview of the various applications of big data by the National Police in the Netherlands. We distinguish three areas: uniformed police work, criminal investigation, and intelligence. We then discuss two positive effects of big data and algorithmic applications for the police organization: accelerated learning and the formation of a single police organization.

Predictive policing is the use of historical crime and other data in complex statistical models to predict where and when there is a high risk of new crime events. These predictions can then be used to direct police patrols proactively. Despite the increasing use and commercialisation of predictive policing worldwide, academic research into the methodological and operational dimensions of predictive policing is relatively limited. Since 2015 we have researched and tested several predictive crime models methodologically and operationally, based on police and other (big) data sources in several Belgian police districts. In this article, we summarise the results of six years of empirical research into predictive policing and look to the future of predictive policing research and practice.

This article was written by Claudia Mazzucato for The International Journal of Restorative Justice 21(2) and translated for our thematic issue. Mazzucato explains that there is something in restorative justice that resembles art. In her view restorative justice is made of the same fabric. Both deal with ‘creativity and rigour, imagination and insight, preparation and improvisation, vocation and inclination, talent and skill’. Both trigger innovation and have a political dimension when identifying problems and look for transformations or cultural change. The use of art in the restorative field is growing and visible in literature, paintings, theatre and films. Art can become a sort of mediator of restorative encounters or can give a concrete shape to stories that otherwise cannot be told. The author asks questions about liaisons between restorative justice, law and art. The leges artis of restorative justice are values and standards as drafted by the United Nations and Council of Europe. Do they nourish criminal justice in terms of beauty? To a certain extent yes. A challenging task of the art of restorative justice is in her view: ‘to approach the complexity of the quest for justice in the real world, combining hard and soft skills harmonically, and complying rigorously with the proper restorative leges artis, in order to amend in democratic ways what has proved wrong and harmful, and to prospectively avoid its reoccurrence’.

The promises of big data have reached the domain of safety and security. After these techniques proved their added value in the private sector, they soon reached the attention of the public sector. In this article we present the results of our interviews with 27 executive professionals of the Dutch police and the department of public order and safety of local governments. What are their expectations of big data? Their experience with big data varied. Our respondents gave expression to a basic positive attitude towards intelligence led policing and the chances that big data brings to it. But anticipation of working with big data was not free from discussion and the respondents stressed the need for securing privacy and other constitutional rights of citizens before big data applications are implemented in the police function. With that, our respondents strongly aligned with the international, academic call for a constitutional reflection about the application of big data withing the police function.

The availability and use of big data sources is increasing exponentially. The variety of new and emerging data sources offers opportunities to complement, replace, improve or add to conventional data sources. Survey data are one kind of conventional data sources. In survey research, a framework to assess the accuracy of survey data already existed for quite some time. This framework is known as the Total Survey Error (TSE) framework. The philosophy behind this framework has only recently been universalized to (big) data in general in the form of the Total Error (TE) framework. This generic framework, which allows for assessing the accuracy of (big) data, is outlined in this article. Additionally, the TE framework is applied to big data sources that could be relevant for policing: police-registered crime data, Twitter data and mobile phone data.

This introductory article of a special issue on naming and shaming addresses the origins of the concept and its transformation during the last decades. The main conclusion of the article is that contemporary forms of naming & shaming come closer to humiliation and public lynching, rather than redemption and self-reflection.

Naming-and-shaming campaigns, in which civil society groups publicly call upon corporations to end harmful behavior via social media, are a powerful mechanism for social control of corporations. This article investigates naming and shaming in modern, global markets through a case study of Shell - one of the most stigmatized corporations of our time. First, the perspective of organizational sociology is used to answer the question why Shell is receiving such significant attention. Next, the article addresses how shaming manifests itself in global markets. The example of Shell illustrates reintegrative shaming, aiming to end harmful activities, as well as stigmatizing shaming that undermines a corporation’s license to operate.
Finally, this article discusses the potential consequences of naming and shaming for corporate reputations. In the case of Shell, Goffman’s concept of courtesy stigma appears to form the greatest reputational risk, as stigmatization of Shells business partners will create status anxiety and will limit opportunities to develop business.

Though less well-known than for instance the narcotics or weapons trade, illegal organ trade is a lucrative business with yearly revenues estimated between 840 million and 1.7 billion USD. The most commonly reported form of organ trade is the trade in living donor kidneys. The current study maps the criminal network behind the illegal organ trade that took place in the Medicus clinic in Kosovo based on police files, indictments, transcripts of suspect and victim statements, court rulings and interviews. The Medicus case involved at least 27 living kidney donations. Operations were performed by eleven actors in teams of varying composition. The total criminal network consisted of 107 individuals and is characterized by a low density and features a number of central actors.

Although reward systems are utilized in prisons worldwide, evaluations regarding their intended use are lacking. This contribution reconstructs the policy theory of such a system: Promotion and Demotion, as implemented in Dutch prisons in 2014. With a policy scientific approach the intended target group, means, goals and causal mechanisms of the system were delineated. The policy theory assumes three means, ten goals and 24 causal mechanisms. The policy theory is insufficiently empirically substantiated on a number of points and takes limited account of (cognitively) impaired prisoners. This accurate reconstruction offers a unique insight into the assumed functioning of a part of Dutch detention policy and provides starting points for international considerations of behavioral change in detention.

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.

In the reduction of undermining crime in the Netherlands, the role of local government has become more important over the past decade. One of the means used for this is Article 13b of the Opium Act (the Damocles Act). That has evolved from a way of closing down local dealer properties to a means of disrupting the criminal drug world. In this article we analyse the developments that the application of the article has gone through. We make an inventory of the actual use of the article in a region known as one of the hotbeds of subversive crime in the Netherlands, the region of West and Central Brabant. Finally, we will discuss the consequences that application of the article has for the position of the mayor. Does this lead to a mayorship in which this officer becomes more of a ‘sheriff’ and less of a mayor? We show that this is not the case.

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.

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.

The current poor conservation status of Dutch nature is a result of human activities and is therefore characteristic of the era of the Anthropocene in which we now live. As a result of climate change, desiccation and a surplus of nitrogen and other environmental problems, the survival of many habitats and plants in the EU and in the Netherlands is at stake. Recent scientific research shows that many habitats and plants are in an unfavorable conservation status. Biodiversity is under great pressure. In almost all cases, the declining biodiversity can primarily be traced back to human activities and the consequences of these activities for nature. The EU Habitats Directive and the Dutch Nature Conservation Act provide a legal system that obliges the protection of all wild habitats and plants. Although the objective of both regulations suggests otherwise, the protection of nature in the application of provisions from the Dutch Nature Conservation Act is not an intrinsic objective. The extent to which habitats and plants are protected is linked to human – often economic – interests. It is this ambivalence in existing laws and regulations – the human perspective – that makes it possible to ‘disable’ rules that are precisely intended to preserve habitat types and plants relatively easily. As a result, environmental problems caused by humans are not or not completely resolved. Remarkably enough, the design and application of current national and international nature conservation law contributes to the undisturbed continuation of the Anthropocene era in which we live.

Criminological research has emphasized the importance of procedural justice of authorities during encounters with citizens. Theory and prior research propose that the procedurally just treatment by the police influences, possibly via legitimacy, citizens’ willingness to cooperate with authorities in the criminal justice chain. This article tests the hypotheses of procedural justice theory using Dutch data of the European Social Survey (N=1,616). The results show an association between the procedurally just treatment of citizens by the police and cooperation with criminal justice authorities. However, this association has not been explained by the legitimacy of the police.