Youths’ involvement in organized crime is worrisome, as it not only disrupts a healthy development, but also aggravates youths’ criminal behavior, and makes it harder to return to living a crime-free life. Social ties play an import role in the way youths get and stay involved in organized crime, that is why interventions are needed that target the youth, but also the youth’s social environment. We examine hotspots and mechanisms underlying organized crime involvement and use the knowledge gained to improve and implement intervention strategies. This way, the proposed project directly contributes to effectively decreasing youths’ involvement in organized crime.

Youths’ involvement in organized crime is worrisome, as it not only disrupts a healthy development, but also aggravates youths’ criminal behavior, and makes it harder to return to living a crime-free life. Social ties play an import role in the way youths get and stay involved in organized crime, that is why interventions are needed that target the youth, but also the youth’s social environment. We examine hotspots and mechanisms underlying organized crime involvement and use the knowledge gained to improve and implement intervention strategies. This way, the proposed project directly contributes to effectively decreasing youths’ involvement in organized crime.

This research examines corporate security (a specialised form of private security), its shifting relationship with law enforcement and its social significance. The main foci are (i) the raison dêtre and methods of corporate security; (ii) regulatory/legal frameworks for corporate security; (iii) its sphere of discretion in practice, focussing on the typically limited information flow to law enforcement (especially in instances of private settlement); (iv) the relative influence of private and public interests; and (v) consequences for the private parties directly concerned (fairness), for others (possibility of crime displacement) and for public policy (lack of information).

Rotterdam mainport offers employment to numerous people, like crane operators, boatmen and dockers. Yet, it also offers work to drug collectors and human smugglers who are connected to internationally operating criminal networks. In FORT-PORT, businesses, government organisations, and leading academics collaborate to prevent cocaine trafficking, human smuggling and corruption in and around Rotterdam mainport in an intelligent and predictive way, now and for the future. FORT-PORT connects with the mainport, the city, and the international port network and thus contributes to the development of an economically prosperous, safe, resilient, and therefore future-proof mainport and increases societal resilience against subversive crime.

We challenge the assumption that criminal involvement of specific ethnic minorities is the result of poverty and poor integration and question whether this involvement is the source of local conflicts. Criminal activities can be interpreted as an expression of resistance against dominant society and as attractive means to acquire a certain (luxurious) lifestyle. Research in two neighbourhoods on interactions between criminal networks, local ethnic groups and global linkages will provide an-swers as to whether and how criminal involvement of immigrants leads to conflicts within their group, influences the group?s integration into Dutch society and fuels conflicts in the broader com-munity.