The fight against outlaw motorcycle gangs is high on the Dutch criminal justice agenda. Yet, much is unclear about the extent to which Dutch outlaw motorcycle clubs are involved in (organized) crime, and the exact role club membership plays in the crimes committed by individual members. This study analyses all court decisions between 1999 and 2015 that were made publicly available through the Rechtspraak.nl database to yield insight in the frequency and nature of (members of) outlaw motorcycle clubs’ court appearances. Results show that members of outlaw biker clubs are convicted for violence and drug offending. In a third of all incidents, fellow club members are among the co-offenders. Membership of an outlaw motorcycle club is often used to put pressure on victims. Non-members also make use of the violent track record of outlaw bikers.

This narrative aims to identify a number of challenges for the future of (green) criminology. It discusses what the three traditional criminological questions about criminalization, etiology and the social reaction imply in a ‘green’ context. For each of those topics, we analyse where the goals of green and mainstream criminology align and pay attention to research projects on these topics in the Netherlands and Belgium. In the end, this allows us to identify the following challenges for the future of (green) criminology: theoretical foundations, methodological creativity, interdisciplinary research projects and dialogue, and a research focus that goes beyond a preoccupation with the Global North.

Last year the article ‘Episodic memory and interviewing witnesses. What do police interviewers know about this topic?’ (Odinot, Boon & Wolters, 2015, TvC, 57(3), 279-299) was published in this journal. The article describes a study that explored the knowledge of police interviewers about episodic memory. The researchers concluded that police interviewers had insufficient knowledge of episodic memory and that this was related to the lack of psychological terms in the manual of the curriculum of police training. In this article we describe the lack of scientific consensus about episodic memory and the consequences of this for doing research with lists with theses about this subject. Differences between interviewing witnesses and suspects will be discussed. We also question whether it is necessary that police interviewers have thorough knowledge of episodic memory. More important is what knowledge does police need when doing interviews and how are these conducted? Some factors have a negative impact on the quality of those interviews, so we end up with some recommendations for improving the quality of interviews in police practice.

In the past decades, organised crime internationalised rapidly as a result of increasing mobility and ‘open’ borders. At the same time developments in information and communication technology have led to modernisation of existing types of crime and the introduction of novel ones. Finally, criminals have benefited from increasingly diversified migration streams. In the Netherlands and Belgium, organised crime appeared on the agenda in the 1990s. For a long time emphasis was on ‘trade crimes’ i.e. trafficking in drugs and humans, as well as human smuggling, followed by the production of synthetic drugs and cannabis. More recently the Low Countries are confronted by more visible manifestations of organised crime, for example rapid growth of outlaw motorcycle gangs. Criminals also try to utilise their capital to invest in businesses and real estate and to influence local politics.

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.