Volume 108, Issue 3

Why does people’s crime involvement vary and change? Developmental and Life-Course criminology has brought individual change to the forefront of criminological study and has done an impressive job of mapping out peoples age-graded patterns of crime involvement and demonstrated an abundance of individual and social factors correlated with various aspects of people’s criminal careers and their characteristics. However, DLC criminology has been less successful in comprehensively explaining the identified patterns and their correlates. In this paper I shall discuss some of DLC criminology’s theoretical shortcomings, specifically the limitations of the commonplace risk factor approach to explanation and the related idea of cumulative risk. I shall argue that criminal careers are best understood and analysed as a series of situationally caused crime events, putting the explanatory focus on the socially and age-graded stability and change in crime relevant situational factors, and, crucially, the developmental processes that drive continuity and change in these factors (the causes of the causes). All this is discussed based on Situational Action Theory (SAT) and its Developmental-Ecological-Action model (DEA model).

The demand for the introduction or expansion of criminal law in order to regulate and control companies is widespread – also in the criminological discourse. In this discourse, however, scepticism towards criminalization generally prevails. This critical view of criminal law primarily focuses on its effectiveness and side effects in the field of everyday delinquency. Therefore, the question arises as to how the demands for more and at the same time less criminal law can be harmonized. In order to answer this question, the article provides an overview of international research on delinquency by and regulation of organizations. The current state of knowledge suggests that the strength-weakness ratio of criminal law in relation to companies is different from what it is in other sectors.

Zusammenfassung Wenn es um soziale Kontrolle geht, sind wir es gewohnt, ganz vorrangig auf das Strafrecht zu schauen. »Immer noch« möchte man sagen, denn daneben hat sich ein bunter Strauß ganz anderer Mechanismen, Strategien und Techniken entwickelt, den wir als Kriminologie nach wie vor recht stiefmütterlich behandeln. Auf diesen Bereich will ich nun den Blick lenken und zeigen: Neben das Disziplinarmodell sind andere Konzepte sozialer Kontrolle getreten bis hin zur Prädiktion. Diese Modelle lösen sich nicht ab, sondern bauen aufeinander auf und schreiben sich ineinander ein. Diese Entwicklung führt zu einer immer stärkeren Abstraktion in der Wahrnehmung von Abweichung und sozialen Problemen.

This contribution describes the development of criminology in the Netherlands over the past 75 years, from a niche, politicized pastime to a fully fledged discipline. We explain its blossoming from historical developments in crime and policy orientation, taking along European perspectives. We end with issues that merit attention in future years.