This study investigates the direction of the relationship between police legitimacy beliefs and delinquent behaviour using longitudinal data from Swiss adolescents (z-proso study). Employing a random intercepts cross-lagged panel model, we assess whether police legitimacy influences delinquent behaviour or vice versa. Results show stable within-person effects for police legitimacy beliefs and delinquent behaviour, with varying strength over time. Delinquent behaviour significantly predicts police legitimacy beliefs, but the reverse effect is limited and inconsistent. A highly significant negative association was found at the between-person level, with weak to medium effect sizes overall. This research challenges the idea that police legitimacy beliefs directly reduce delinquent behaviour, suggesting the need for further research on the direction of this relationship. It emphasises the limitations of cross-sectional designs, calling for longitudinal methods and standardised measures for better comparisons. Police legitimacy only weakly and inconsistently predicts delinquent behaviour, highlighting the need to test procedural justice theory against other criminological theories and take the evidence for reverse causality seriously. Practically, strategies focused solely on increasing police legitimacy may not effectively reduce delinquency.

Time is a foundational yet underspecified concept in criminological theory and research. While developmental and life course criminology is explicitly concerned with temporal processes, including the onset, duration, and desistance of criminal behaviour, the precise specification of time in theory and empirical research remains largely implicit. This paper critically examines how time is conceptualized and modelled in criminology, with particular attention to the gap between the temporal assumptions embedded in theory and the designs and methods used to test them. We argue that this underspecification has important consequences for both scientific understanding and practical application, including the design and evaluation of interventions where questions of dosage, timing, and the duration of effects are central. We demonstrate that theoretical and empirical decisions about temporal processes are often driven by convenience or convention rather than explicit reasoning, and that commonly held assumptions about the stability of key constructs over time rest on an insufficient empirical foundation. To address these limitations, we make a case for more formally specifying causal temporal assumptions, integrating measures across micro- and macro-time scales, and adopting research designs, such as ambulatory assessment, experience sampling, and burst designs, capable of capturing how short-term experiences translate into longer-term behavioural change. Greater transparency about temporal assumptions and their empirical basis will strengthen causal inference and improve the design and evaluation of criminological interventions.

Research shows that women leave male-dominated work settings more often than their male colleagues. In public services such as policing, disproportionate attrition of women slows improvement of gender equality, but can also affect legitimacy and service outcomes. Typically, attrition of women in policing is studied in isolation, while sources (and thus, solutions) of inequalities may lie in societal or broader organizational dynamics. Using monthly employment register data, this study compared attrition of Dutch female policing staff to those of their male counterparts and their peers in other public subsectors. Findings indicated that, while women were more likely to leave the Dutch policing sector than men, several other subsectors showed similar gender differences. Results suggest that approaches to improve gender equality, both in policing and in other ‘gender-typed’ subsectors, should not be limited to increasing representation and should involve reviewing implicit assumptions about employees, including procedures for appraisal.

Increasingly researchers are assessing the causal effects of procedurally just treatment by police on public attitudes using experimental vignettes across the world. However, there are two key limitations to this body of research, particularly when drawing causal conclusions about theoretical mechanisms. The first is that most research on procedural justice, and particularly using experimental vignettes, has been conducted in countries with similar roots in policing (i.e., Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking countries). The second limitation is that research on procedural justice theory using vignettes often fails to closely assess the mechanisms and potential confounds linking experiences of treatment and subsequent attitudes. The current study aims to address both of these gaps by replicating US experimental vignettes among a representative sample of Dutch residents. Specifically, we field a 3x2x2 between-subjects vignette to assess different components of procedurally just treatment by police on individual attitudes during a traffic stop. We assess causal assumptions using a series of follow-up questions about placebo characteristics, and investigate underlying mechanisms by analysing open-text responses following each police legitimacy item. The results from the current study show that, while procedurally just treatment by police was statistically related to perceptions of encounter-specific police legitimacy, the strength of the causal effect and underlying mechanisms were not so clear. Not only was a key causal assumption violated, indicating that the effect does not run only through the treatment, but respondents suggested that they would comply and trust police in the situation based on broader societal norms and expectations, not necessarily because of police behavior. Methodologically, our study suggests that researchers using experimental vignettes need to pay more attention to causal assumptions. Theoretically, our study shows that those interested in testing procedural justice theory (and criminological theories more broadly) must think critically about identifying and evaluating competing mechanisms in different societal and institutional contexts.

Procedural justice theory states that when police treat people in a fair, respectful, and neutral manner, individuals are more likely to perceive the police as legitimate and obey the law. To test this perspective, researchers often use experimental vignettes that depict police-citizen interactions and measure subsequent attitudes. However, it is not straightforward to determine causal effects from these designs, as one must carefully assess whether the effect runs through the intended theoretical pathways in order to properly test the theory. This paper advances beyond ‘traditional’ experimental designs to evaluate the pathways linking police-citizen interactions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. The data consist of a representative sample of 2,003 adults residing in the United States using an online panel. We use a mixed methods approach combining a pre-registered 3x2x2 experimental vignette depicting a traffic stop by police with follow-up closed- and open-ended questions, allowing respondents to explain their reasoning. We found that the quality of treatment by police was statistically related to subsequent perceptions of police legitimacy, but not compliance. However, follow-up placebo tests and open-text responses revealed a number of confounding factors limiting the strength of causal claims regarding procedural justice theory. Most notably, a number of respondents expressed that they would comply with the officer in the moment, even if they disagree, out of fear of escalation and their own personal safety. Research using (quasi-)experimental designs should evaluate causal assumptions and mechanisms more rigorously when theory testing, and likewise incorporate methods that can better assess these intermediate processes, such as open text responses and process tracing.

Many studies aim to evaluate and explain how and when police contact leads to offending. However, research on this topic is diffuse, drawing from different theoretical frameworks, which has consequently produced many possible mechanisms explaining this association. The current study therefore aims to provide a starting point for organizing the literature on police contact and criminal behavior in order to highlight potential points for theoretical competition, integration, and testing. Specifically, we conducted a systematic scoping review (N = 95 studies) of all quantitative studies that have tested this relationship and assessed the theoretical frameworks used, measurement of key concepts, mediators and moderators, as well as methodological quality. Our results found that studies were primarily based on four major theoretical frameworks: procedural justice theory, strain theory, labeling theory and deterrence theory, with little integration or competition between them. The broad variety in measurements and the relatively small number of studies that were able to adequately address threats to internal validity demonstrated the difficulty in drawing conclusions about the strength of a given theory and where the weight of the evidence lies. We further discuss the need for the development of clear and falsifiable hypotheses, standardization of measurement, and attention to causal inference designs.

A decade ago, in a 2014 editorial on the future of European criminology, David Smith, then Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Criminology argued that ‘European criminology needs to become both wider and deeper: wider in the range of countries, in the scope of the subject matter, in the borrowings from related fields … and in the research methods used; deeper through a close engagement between humanistic and scientific approaches’. In this editorial collection marking the 25th Anniversary of the European Society of Criminology, the 2025 European Journal of Criminology Editorial Team celebrates and reflects on the breadth and depth of European criminology today; its unique contributions to global knowledge about crime and criminal justice; and its future directions, priorities, and challenges.

In his editorial, David Smith listed comparative research as a key priority for the journal and European criminology. The diversity of European nations regarding various social, institutional, political and cultural features provides rich opportunities for comparison and theory testing. Publishing in the European Journal of Criminology (EJC) necessarily requires one to think comparatively, even if data are drawn from a single country. The goal of this piece is to evaluate the geographical and comparative coverage of EJC articles since 2004. Specifically, I extracted information on the sample and countries named in the abstracts or methods and described patterns of comparative research across empirical articles. I find that, while the majority of studies were based on single-country data, authors often framed the goals and analyses of a given study within the relevant social, political, or institutional European context. However, despite establishing these comparative frameworks and goals, there was still a substantial bias toward case studies and data from certain countries: namely, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany. In essence, this means that the EJC reflects primarily Western European criminology. However, the idea of a truly European criminology, and likewise a journal with similar ambitions, is inherently comparative. For that reason, we must continue to push the boundaries of European criminological theories and knowledge by advocating for comparative designs, high-quality comparable data, and international collaborations beyond Western Europe.

Perceptions of procedural justice and legitimacy are important for cooperation, trust, and confidence in the police. However, how individuals form their procedural justice judgments varies and remains unclear. Group membership and feelings of belonging are important aspects of social life, which can in turn influence attitudes and perceptions of fairness. Presumably also the perceptions of the police. The current paper uses the European Social Survey (wave 5) to investigate the role of social exclusion on procedural justice perceptions and in turn police legitimacy in 27 European countries (N = 41,696). The results show that socially excluded citizens perceive the police to be more procedurally unjust, and that procedural justice positively influences police legitimacy. The results contradict the group value model and social bond theory, which state that the relationship between procedural justice and police legitimacy is weaker for socially excluded citizens. Overall, this study demonstrates the importance of social exclusion, and especially perceived discrimination, on perceived police fairness and its association with broader perceptions of the police, such as police legitimacy.

Wildlife are natural resources utilised by many people around the world, both legally and illegally, for a wide range of purposes. This scoping review evaluates 82 studies nested in 75 manuscripts to provide an overview of the documented motivations and methodologies used, and to identify and analyse knowledge gaps in the motivations of illegal harvesters. Studies differ in what data is collected, often leaving out important contextual variables. We find 12 different motivations, frequently interlinked and multiple often play a role in the same harvesting incident. Motivations seemed to differ between taxa. Future research needs to move beyond a general description but recognise the complexity of the matter and allow for context-specific adjustments to facilitate a deeper understanding of these motivations.

Growing evidence suggests that experiences with police are associated with a range of negative mental health problems among youth. This study examined the impact of negative police contact on changes in adolescent internalizing problems, measured by anxiety and depression. Six waves of data from a longitudinal study in Zurich, Switzerland were used in order to assess the direct relations between first reported police contact in the years prior to the survey moment and internalizing problems at the time of the survey and follow-up waves. The sample consists of a cohort of youth (max n = 1353, 49.4% females) spanning ages 11 to 24 (mean age and SD at each wave = 11.32 (0.37), 13.67 (0.36), 15.44 (0.36), 17.45 (0.37), 20.58 (0.38), 24.46 (0.38)). Specifically, difference-in-differences techniques for multiple time periods were employed to assess the average treatment effects for the treated population (first contact with police) compared to those who were never treated (never had contact). Across all models, police contact did not lead to an increase in internalizing problems. These results diverge from previous studies mostly conducted in the United States, and possible explanations including differences in historical contexts of policing, juvenile justice, health care, and dosage of intrusive contacts are discussed.

Previous research on police procedural justice shows that observed assessments of police behaviour, for example through systematic social observation, are not strongly correlated with citizen perceptions of the same police behaviour. There is a growing body of knowledge about how people form their perceptions of police behaviour and how personal and situational characteristics are associated with specific judgements about procedural justice. However, we know little about how this works for people who most frequently interact with the police and criminal justice system, such as offenders or arrestees. The present study uses data from the Prison Project to examine to what extent individual and situational characteristics relate to perceptions of encounter-specific police procedural justice among Dutch detainees. Male adults in pre-trial detention (N = 1380) were surveyed on how they perceived procedural justice during their arrest, which occurred approximately three weeks prior. In addition to individual characteristics (demographics, attitudes, psychosocial characteristics and criminal history), we measured characteristics that reflect the situation during arrest, such as location, police verbal abuse and unnecessary use of force. This allowed us to examine the relationship between situational factors and detainee perceptions, net of individual characteristics. Regression analyses show that next to pre-existing general attitudes towards the police, several situational characteristics (i.e. perceptions of use of force and verbal abuse, anger and outcome fairness) were strongly associated with encounter-specific procedural justice perceptions. Our results indicate that, beyond (pre-existing) individual characteristics, situational factors of the arrest play an important role in forming specific procedural justice perceptions of the police.

This comment aims to contribute to agenda-setting for the study of interpersonal violence over the years to come. Interpersonal violence is a high-profile topic not only in the domain of criminology, but also in public health, medicine, and epidemiology, and across the social sciences (sociology; psychology; economics; and political science). However, interdisciplinary integration between the different perspectives is lacking. This comment takes up the question of how scholars and practitioners in the field of violence can work towards greater integration with other perspectives. It outlines five key priorities for the field going forward, which are intended to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of interpersonal violence. Importantly, the view outlined here arose from a collaboration of researchers from a wide range of academic fields, and as such represents interdisciplinary consensus on the steps required to ensure that the study of interpersonal violence remains an effective and productive research field.

This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on fraud victimization in Hong Kong, providing valuable insights beyond the Western context. Drawing on general strain theory and routine activity theory, this research explores the influence of economic recession at the local and adjacent societal levels, as well as residential duration (refers to relative time spent at residences), on fraud victimization in Hong Kong. Utilizing 10 years (120 months) of monthly police-recorded victimization data, this study employs various methodologies, including ARIMA forecasting, single-group interrupted time series analysis (ITSA), and Poisson regression, to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on fraud victimization in Hong Kong. The ARIMA framework reveals an unexpected and significant increase in fraud victimization during the COVID-19 period, surpassing the predicted levels. The ITSA results demonstrate that the pandemic had a short-term and long-term effect on fraud victimization in Hong Kong. To further understand the factors contributing to this change, a Poisson regression analysis is conducted. The findings highlight the positive and significant impact of residential duration and the unemployment rate in mainland China on fraud victimization, aligning with the propositions of routine activity theory and general strain theory. Limitations and policy implications at both the local and international levels are discussed.

The current study examines the relative impact of take home (open book) examinations (THE) and in class (closed book) examinations (ICE) on student academic performance and wellbeing outcomes. Specifically, this study contributes to our understanding about students’ long-term knowledge retention, measured four to six months after completing the course. A unique longitudinal dataset consisting of four cohorts of a social science bachelor and master course that implemented either a THE or ICE in successive years was used. Survey data included wellbeing and academic performance measures as well as a 10-item knowledge retention quiz. Within the master course, the ICE cohort had higher examination grades and higher knowledge retention scores than the cohorts that completed a THE. In the bachelor course, there were no differences in knowledge retention across cohorts. Examination score was associated with higher knowledge retention scores across both courses. One bachelor cohort reported lower wellbeing compared to others (cohort 2021–2022); however, we found no further differences in academic or wellbeing outcomes based on examination form. The findings suggest a slight advantage of ICEs over THEs with regard to academic performance.

PurposeWhile there has been extensive research on the normative, instrumental, and social explanations for cooperation with police, fewer studies have examined how personal, social-cognitive characteristics might influence willingness to cooperate. This paper integrates models of cooperation with the social information processing framework to understand when individuals are more willing to cooperate with the police.MethodsWe use two waves of data from the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood, an ongoing longitudinal study of an ethnically diverse sample of young people from Zurich, Switzerland.ResultsThe results show that, aside from perceptions of police legitimacy, moral neutralization and empathy were directly associated with willingness to cooperate. Police legitimacy moderated the relationship between moral neutralization and cooperation, however this effect was not robust across models. In addition, we found that those who have engaged in serious criminal behavior were less likely to cooperate.ConclusionsWe argue that our findings demonstrate the need for cooperation with police research to adopt a decision-making framework in explaining the decision to indirectly intervene and cooperate. Namely, individuals must first recognize and acknowledge the harm or illegal behavior done when deciding to take action to cooperate with the police.

Results from previous research suggest that terrorist attacks lead to relatively short-term increases in trust in institutions. The explanation for this increase is known as the “rally effect”, whereby individuals respond to crises and threats with more positive support for political leaders and institutions. Even though the number of related natural experiments with survey data is increasing, these studies merely represent case studies of single incidents with limited external validity. In order to advance quasi-experimental research on the effects of terrorist attacks on institutional trust, we propose a new methodological approach by assessing all jihadist terrorist attacks resulting in at least one civilian death in a European country that take place during the fieldwork of the European Social Survey and combine the results of eight unique natural experiments in five different countries using meta-analytic and meta-regression techniques. The results of this “multi-site natural experiment” indicate that support for the rally-hypothesis is mixed at best. While some attacks appear to significantly increase at least some measures of institutional trust (e.g., The Netherlands 2004, France 2015, Israel 2012), others seem to have no effect at all (e.g., Germany 2015, France 2018), or even substantially decrease trust in domestic political institutions (Russia 2012). Summary effects from multilevel meta-analysis are non-significant for any institutional trust outcome. These results are robust to a large number of robustness tests and alternative specifications. In comparison with previous research, it appears that a lot of the European evidence for the rally-hypothesis was based on “outlier” case studies like the Charlie Hebdo attack in France, 2015. Accordingly, our results cast doubt on the unrestricted generalizability of rally effects after terrorist attacks to different geographic, political, social, or historical contexts.

Psychopathy remains a relatively unexplored concept in Latin America. The abbreviated Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP-SF) seems promising in this under-resourced context. However, the SRP-SF should be tested for measurement invariance to achieve meaningful comparison across countries in Latin America. Therefore the aims of this study were to examine the underlying factor structure of the SRP-SF in incarcerated adult male offenders from Uruguay (n = 331) and Chile (n = 208), to examine the measurement invariance of the SRP-SF across countries, and to assess the utility of SRP-SF to classify first time offenders from offenders with criminal history. Findings showed a good fit for the four-factor model in Uruguay, and both Chile and Uruguay showed invariance. Conversely, the Interpersonal and Affective factors were not associated with criminal history in the Uruguayan sample. Therefore, more studies are needed before using the SRP-SF as screening tool to classify first-time offenders and reoffenders in different countries in Latin America.

Survey research typically measures contact and experiences with police cross-sectionally and retrospectively. These retrospective measures may suffer from recall biases and are relatively limited in capturing the variety of experiences that may occur in daily life. The current study explores the feasibility and application of experience sampling techniques to measure day-to-day experiences with the police and variation in attitudes towards the police. Data for the study were collected over a period of 21 days from a convenience sample of 206 young people (aged 18–30 years) living in the Netherlands. After completing a baseline questionnaire, participants completed daily questionnaires measuring attitudes towards the police and any experiences with the police or other authorities that have occurred. A total of 3042 daily questionnaires were completed out of a possible 4389 (69% response rate). An analysis of participation and attrition suggests that individuals with more positive views of the police are more likely to complete most or all of the daily surveys. The descriptive results show that the number and type of experiences can vary substantially across individuals and time and that overall experiences with the police are prevalent in everyday life. The most prevalent reported experiences were observing the police ‘on the job’ and through the media. In addition, while attitudes towards the police were largely stable across the study period, there was still a non-negligible amount of variation over time. These pilot results raise questions about how we measure experiences with the police, and what role different experiences have in shaping individual attitudes. Experience sampling techniques may help to capture these other forms of exposure and understand how these experiences might influence attitudes towards police.