The structural vulnerability of the port of Rotterdam to organized crime is dealt with in this article from a broader, historical perspective. Using examples from ports in Italy and the United States, among others, the author shows how at the end of the last century local criminal groups managed to gain a dominant position in the handling of good flows. The author discusses various research reports that have been published over the years on the import of drugs into the port of Rotterdam and other European ports. Drug traffickers turn out to respond very flexible to stricter controls by simply moving to alternative ports or opting for transferring drug loads to small fast boats in open water. The author emphasizes that ports should not be studied as isolated transition points, but must be considered as nodes in networks that extend far inland and abroad. This is the only way to see the broader strategic and tactical options for stopping or reducing drug trafficking. In addition, attention must be paid to the problem of corruption among port workers, police and customs officers.

The Netherlands functions as an important source and transit country for international organized drug trafficking. This is in part due to its large logistical nodes in the world economy, like the airport and the seaport. Based on in-depth analyses of sixteen cases of the Dutch Organized Crime Monitor, this article explores how drug traffickers operate at logistical nodes, in particular airports. The results demonstrate that organized crime groups deploy mainly three types of tactics to traffic drugs, namely defying, avoiding, and neutralizing security checks. Occupational embeddedness is manifested through several job-related factors. Autonomy, mobility, and the similarity between legitimate duties and criminal activities facilitate discrete engagement in organized crime activities during work time. Port employees are also attractive to organized crime groups because of their job-related social capital and knowledge.

This ethnography of everyday policing realities in the European ports of Rotterdam and Hamburg presents an understanding of policing spaces where protecting and supporting global commerce dominate. In undertaking this research, the author participated in the daily activities of 85 participants in Rotterdam (N=52) and Hamburg (N=33), consisting of 30 operational port police officers, 31 security officers, 10 customs officers and 14 others involved in port security-related matters (e.g. shipping agents, port authorities, boatmen and maritime engineers). These participants were collectively responsible for protecting the vulnerability of the just-in-time logistics by becoming the intervention, through which they become the very local threat to global commerce itself. A struggle that reveals itself in their (narrated) policing struggles with management, colleagues and multi-agency partners, as well as with the maritime business community and dangerous others.

This article focuses on the challenges associated with public-private partnerships in tackling drug crime in the port of Rotterdam. The authors identified the actors involved in the fight against drug crime and, more generally, security in the port. The authors show how these various actors view the subject of drug crime (so-called mentalities), what they set as objectives (finalities) and how they try to achieve these objectives. Subsequently the various aspects of the interactions between these actors are being analyzed. The article is empirically based on 76 interviews with public and private actors in the port of Rotterdam, that were conducted in the period from January 2018 to February 2019, and an analysis of literature, news items, government reports and other documents.

In this article, a recently published Dutch book on corruption in the port of Rotterdam is reviewed. De Schiedamse cocaïnemaffia. Een corrupte douanier, doorgewinterde criminelen en duizenden kilo’s coke was written by journalist Jan Meeus from NRC Handelsblad. The book can be seen as a case study of a customs officer – Gerrit – who fell for the big money. It gives a good insight into the connection between the legal and the illegal world and how this is experienced by those involved. The information in the book is based on seven large criminal files and dozens of conversations with people mentioned in those files. Meeus also attended the criminal proceedings intensively. It is now known that the film rights of the book have been sold and that Meeus will be writing the screenplay for the feature film together with director Jean van der Velde.