NCJ Number
220170
Date Published
2007
Length
44 pages
Annotation
This chapter addresses misconduct by corporations in the Netherlands--including commercial, nonprofit, and governmental organizations--as well as the regulation of corporate behavior.
Abstract
Section I describes how Dutch criminology first became aware of organizational crime. This awareness emerged in the early 1980s, but conceptual tools and the expertise required to investigate it were lacking. Many first-generation commentators did not focus on empirical research on organizational crime or on possible explanations, but rather on the social impact of this type of criminality and on the pros and cons of the criminal justice approach to the problem. Section II provides an overview of the current scale and nature of organizational crime in the Netherlands. It is difficult to estimate the scale of organizational crime, since it varies from governmental corruption and misconduct to business crimes. This section discusses the nature and sources of data on organizational crime used by Dutch criminologists. Section III discusses various explanations of organizational crime, using empirical data thus far collected. Section IV discusses responses to organizational crime in the Netherlands. It addresses the regulation of corporations in the past three decades as well as law enforcement practices. The strategy against organizational crime has focused on the application of administrative sanctions rather than criminal law enforcement. Section V deals with a typical Dutch phenomenon in organizational crime, i.e., the entanglement of corporations and government. The section concludes with a plea for more focused research and more interdisciplinary collaboration. Section VI outlines a research agenda for the near future. 19 references