In this article the ways in which philosophers have thought about greed are discussed. From antiquity until the Renaissance greed was considered to be a sin. This immoderate desire had to be stopped because it constitutes a threat to the wellbeing of both an individual and society as a whole. This changed since the beginning of the modern era, when a more positive attitude towards this excessive desire arose. The new opinion was: private vices lead to public benefits, and thus the normalization of an excess came about. Greed no longer was considered to be a sin or vice, but instead to be a harmless passion that had a good effect on the welfare of society. The financial crisis of 2008 may have induced some doubts concerning the idea that greed is good, but a real change in opinion has not yet occurred.

This article discusses the problem of excessive drug use from a historical perspective. Cultural ambivalence towards excessive use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs has roots going back into the seventeenth century. A case study is presented of the introduction and adaptation of tobacco in the Dutch republic. Dutch national and colonial drug regulation is discussed. It is concluded that regulations have been primarily motivated by anxieties about excessive behaviour among the labouring classes, endangering public order, and non-white users in the colonies. This has led to criminalization of excessive behaviour, and to the creation of a criminal underground economy.

The lifeblood of contemporary consumer capitalism is ever-growing and accelerating human needs for new consumer goods and services. Needs that remain unsatisfied on the one hand but defy the carrying capacity of planet Earth on the other. Anything but a win-win situation. Although excess harms, the infrastructure of consumption pays full service to perpetuate and cultivate the ‘more and faster’ orientation of today’s consumers. It is believed that we can cope with excess by taking efficiency measures and paying attention to recycling and refurbishing. This article, however, points out that there is need to rethink consumption and reconsider prevalent orientations dedicated to excess consumption more fundamentally.

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.

Sexualized graffiti has emerged on walls in Brussels since the beginning of 2013, generating fierce debates. Perceived as street art and a welcome challenge to heteropatriarchy by some and as obscenity and vulgarity by others, these pieces highlight the inherently contested character of public spaces. The controversies around the presence of these paintings in public space relate to what in the literature has become known as moral geographies, that is, the spatial aspect of morality. What should one do about these supposed ‘porn’ pieces: regulate their existence and control potential tensions and conflicts, or let frictions emerge between the partisans and the opponents of such urban interventions? Who gets to say what should be tolerated and what should be regulated in public space? In this opinion piece, I situate this issue between two ends: an agonistic one, in which contestation is the rule; and an excessively regulatory one, in which public space is over-rationalized and normalized.

Attempting to understand the Greek narrative of crisis, this paper examines the most prominent forms of violence that emerged in the period of acute economic recession and political upheaval in Greece namely structural, institutional and anti-institutional violence. This paper aims to highlight existing theoretical gaps and avoid common fallacies of the current body of knowledge. In contrast to some of the more common features of the discussion on violence, this note sets out to: a) acknowledge that violence is not necessarily a physical act, b) acknowledge that the outcomes of violence performances might not be physical either, c) specify and adequately distinguish agency and structural dynamics and d) address the cultural and contextual aspects of violence. Vital to this endeavor is to acknowledge, identify and understand the interactive relation between different forms of violence that emerge during the same period of time in a context in which conflict escalates.

Generally, large listed companies and banks immersed in a ‘risk and win’-culture do not have to deal with ‘deprivation of resources’ which may trigger violations of the law. The anomie-theory of Merton does not seem to fit in this context. It is more obvious that the pressure to realize lofty ambitions is the trigger for potential violations of the law. I therefore work out a ‘post-Mertonian’ anomie-concept using the ‘European Durkheim’ to examine some excessive tendencies of an originally American ‘risk and win’-culture. The aim is to work towards an anomie-theory of power illusions that makes sense in the context of corporate crime. The leading question is: which anomic attitudes prevail in an over-ambitious corporate culture and which aspirations and rationalizations can be distinguished? It is argued that an approach focused on CEO-personality traits is too limited and that the sociological approaches of Durkheim and Shover offer many points of departure to construct a plausible anomie-theory. The dimensions of that theory have been taken from studies which focus at two criminogenic norm-systems: an ‘ethos of winning at any price’ and an ‘ethos of entitlement’.

This article presents a micro- and a macro-level analysis of predictors of delinquency in order to contribute to the discussion about the micro-macro problem in criminology. We use Coleman’s boat (1990) to situate our research question. Individual theories dominate the field of delinquency, there are few theories at macro level. Cross-level theoretical integration primarily takes place between individual (micro) and community (meso) levels, and hardly ever on (national) macro level. Our question is to which extent macro-level theory fruitfully may use concepts drawn from micro-level theory. We test a micro and a macro model using indicators from the domains of family, school, friends/peers and economy, using data collected by the Second International Self-Report Study of Delinquency (ISRD2), a cross-national self-report survey of delinquency and victimization among students between 12 and 16 years in 30 countries (n=71.436). Dependent variable at micro level is versatility (last year), at the macro level (national) we use contacts with the police for youths under 18. Results confirm the importance of including macro context (country clusters) in the analysis of individual delinquency. We further conclude that factors related to family and friends correlate at both micro and macro level with measures of delinquency; the role of school and economic factors is less clear-cut. The article concludes with the recommendation to give the micro-macro problem in delinquency theory a more central and explicit position in research programs.

Journalists are accustomed to investigate and interpret current forms of violent conflicts and massacres. Psychologists and social scientists lag behind and seem to focus more on ‘remote’ forms of evil, often focusing on forms of authoritarian behaviour and obedience, especially related to the Holocaust. It is striking that reflections on collective violence are often ignored by criminologists. How can this ‘distance’ be explained? Why is there little incentive to study ‘evil’? In this introduction we first discuss the difficult issue of how to define ‘evil’ and we clarify its various meanings. Then we focus on the Holocaust, an oppressive theme that still instigates much debate. In particular, the thesis of the ‘banality of evil’ is controversial. This interest in appalling forms of mass destruction – by theologians, ethicists and historians – raises once again the question why criminological reflection and research of barbarity remains underdeveloped.

This article deals with three questions. What did resistance mean in the 1970s and what does it mean today? Have the rituals of resistance changed over time? What is the status today of moral panic theory? These questions directly refer to ‘Resistance Through Rituals’ (1976) and ‘Policing the Crisis’ (1978). For that reason, one of the authors answers these key questions in a contemporary framework of hegemony, security and neoliberal politics, and points to the continuing relevance of the political and critical tradition of British cultural studies.

Immigration detention is formally not a punishment, but governments do seem to use it to deter irregular migrants from staying in the territory. This study explores whether and how practices of immigration detention in the Netherlands affect detainees’ decision-making processes regarding return and result in ‘specific deterrence’. 81 unauthorized irregular migrants were interviewed in immigration detention and their casefiles were examined. We find evidence for a limited deterrence effect: a minority of the respondents indeed wanted to return to their countries of origin in order to end their (repeated) stay in immigration detention. For some respondents the detention experience contributed to a desire to migrate from the Netherlands to a different European country. We go into the relevance of these findings for the continuing societal debate on the use of immigration detention.