More than sixty percent of the rule-breaking acts committed by Dutch adolescents are carried out with peers. Despite abundant evidence that peer influence is a driving force in adolescent risk-taking, it remains unclear how adolescents influence each other’s behavior. What do peers do or say to encourage or discourage risk-taking? This topic fits squarely in the burgeoning integration of situational perspectives with traditional criminological theory. Also, the increasing role of online communication challenges existing knowledge of peer influence. Does peer influence operates similarly in online versus offline settings? To answer these questions, we need information about adolescents’ decision-making and adolescents’ interactions with peers as they unfold. Gaining this information requires a microsocial experimental research design and in-depth conversation analysis. In the proposed project, I will break down ‘peer influence’ into specific verbal and nonverbal cues. I will assess these cues by observing adolescents’ real-time group interactions while they play a videogame. In this game, participants make decisions under time pressure facing risk. In the offline condition, participants play the game in groups of two to three peers, who can give advice on what to do. In the online condition, peers are located in different rooms and give advice through a chat program. These online and offline interactions are recorded and coded for conversational cues, distinguishing content, direction (‘what is said’), style of the message (‘how it is said’), and the source (‘who says it’). Participants (aged 12 to 18) are recruited from middle and high schools. The findings will show what type of cues from what type of peers are most likely to lead to risk-taking, and whether these processes operate similarly in online and offline settings. These insights will constitute a significant step forward for our understanding of peer influence and will inform policies targeting adolescent rule-breaking behavior.

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.

Do businesses (e.g. bar, supermarket) and facilities (e.g. library, recreation) generate or prevent crime? Urban planners and policy-makers often view businesses and facilities as a panacea to social problems: they create jobs and invest in their buildings and immediate surroundings. In contrast, and supported by most empirical research findings, environmental criminologists argue that crime is more likely to occur near businesses. However, empirical studies are limited to cross-sectional designs which preclude drawing conclusions about causal effects. With the proposed research, I investigate the causal effect of presence of businesses and facilities on crime using longitudinal data on locations of crime events and locations of businesses and facilities. I answer descriptive and explanatory questions, thoroughly investigating spatial effects as well as the interdependency between business presence and the larger community: How much and which types of crime occur, and how has this developed over time in street segments of urban neighborhoods? How does business presence affect this spatio-temporal criminal development? How does spatial clustering or dispersion of (different types of) businesses and facilities affect such development? Addressing these research questions is made possible by combining unique longitudinal micro-level spatial data of business establishments and crime events in police region Haaglanden, the Netherlands. As a unit of location, I investigate street segments, the most detailed geographical level available. I employ recently developed econometric methods for spatial panel data to properly model the spatio-temporal development of crime at street segments located within larger urban neighborhoods. This innovative research project is scientifically relevant as it tests competing theories using the most comprehensive data and best statistical methods currently available. Moreover, my findings will be highly relevant from a societal standpoint, by informing residents, business owners, the police, urban planners and policy-makers whether and which businesses and facilities generate or prevent what types of crime.

Aggression is uncommon in everyday life, yet for frontline workers, it is part of the job. Why do encounters between citizens and law enforcement, healthcare, public transport, and service workers become aggressive, and what can be done to prevent and de-escalate such incidents? We unravel how the situation, the persons involved, and the interaction between them drive escalation and de-escalation. We use video analysis of interactions, combined with measures of physiological stress and motives in the interaction. The de-escalation strategies that stem from this analysis is used to equip frontline workers with experimentally validated competencies to become better de-escalators.