Samenvatting

Academic researchers in the Netherlands working on organized crime often make use of police files. This produces a lot of knowledge and helps building and testing theories about organized crime. However, it is also known that police files have their limitations. This article uses the concept of ‘street-level bureaucracy’ to explain some of these limitations. For instance, routines and biases can influence the way an investigation is conducted, i.e. avoiding or not following up certain lines of enquiry. Researchers who make use of case file analysis should therefore keep in mind the extent to which an investigation team functioned as a street-level bureaucracy.