Uncovering the dark figure of wildlife crimes in Olifants West Nature Reserve
Law enforcement rangers need to know where and when crime occurs to effectively design strategies for reducing poaching. Although crime is generally hard to measure, obtaining a representative sample is particularly challenging for wildlife crimes. The vast majority of wildlife crimes are probably never known to anyone other than the offenders involved in the crime. […]
Face-touching behaviour as a possible correlate of mask-wearing
The study Face-touching behaviour as a possible correlate of mask-wearing: A video observational study of public place incidents during the COVID-19 pandemic published in Transboundary and Emerging Diseases offers an analysis of the association between mask-wearing and face-touching in a Western European context, which was tested in two studies. Study 1: sample of both masked […]
Völker will be appointed for a period of five years: ‘I consider it a huge honour to be able to lead this fantastic institute where fundamental and at the same time interdisciplinary research is done into highly relevant societal issues concerning criminal behaviour, justice and democracy.’ The choice for Völker is the outcome of an […]
Human behavior and the similarities with nonhuman primates
Virginia Pallante started her study in biology driven by the interest in how social cohesion is maintained in gregarious animals, trying to understand if similar strategies are shared across different species and how different societies shape the expression of such strategies. She further investigated these issues by focusing on nonhuman primates’ conflict management, a topic […]
It is well established that offenders commit most crimes near their routine activity space: the locations where they engage in their daily activities. However, research examining the geography of offenders’ routine activity spaces has largely been limited to a few core locations such as homes, prior homes, the homes of relatives and prior offense locations. […]
Research is human work and thus subject to error. The article Do offenders avoid offending near home? A systematic review of the buffer zone hypothesis, by NSCR researcher Wim Bernasco and former NSCR intern Remco van Dijke was retracted from Crime Science at the request of the authors after they had been made aware of […]
Video analysis of peer relationships: rich data, a lot of work
Video makes it possible to perform very precise conversational and behavioural analyses. As technology keeps getting better and easier to use, more and more research is done this way. The WORP meets every three months to exchange experiences. Hoeben: ‘We are a multidisciplinary working group with educationalists, psychologists, criminologists and sociologists from – currently – […]
How do people decide who to intervene towards in street conflicts?
Imagine that you are walking down a street and two individuals start to fight. Many of us want to believe that we would intervene and help in this kind of situation. But helping can be challenging – fights are often fast paced and can appear chaotic. There is oftentimes not a clear division between who […]
More and more often, legally relevant questions are answered in various areas of law, such as family law, liability law, law of evidence or (international) criminal law, using empirical research. Such empirical legal research focuses on the assumptions on which the law is based, the way in which that law functions in practice and the […]
Curfew during lockdown: number of people on the street not much different
Also read our factsheet One Year of Social Distancing Behavior on the Streets of Amsterdam. Drawing on video footage from municipal public space cameras in Amsterdam, we investigated behavioral compliance with a curfew installed as a Covid-19 mitigating measurement in a period of lockdown. Based on the existing studies of the effect of curfews on […]
Problem-oriented policing adapted to wildlife protection
Officers for a national wildlife authority, may experience déjà vu while on the job. They arrest poacher after poacher but the poaching threat is not decreasing. They get called out to deal with crop raiding animals, but despite culling and translocation, each year there are more callouts. Probably they are not alone in thinking ‘if […]
In line with the advice of the Dutch government, NSCR is taking the following measures to minimize the risk of coronavirus infection: All NSCR employees work from home. All visits to the NSCR are postponed. All business trips from the NSCR are cancelled. Questions? For general questions, please contact the secretariat, via +31(0)6 2161 8344 […]
