Samenvatting

This contribution focuses on the manner in which between 1880 and 1940 private actors in the port of Antwerp, whether or not in cooperation with the public authorities, interpreted crime and crime control in terms of risk management, loss prevention and situational crime prevention through a strict economic approach, as opposed to the then dominant institutionalized and criminological discourse. Whereas crime control by the major criminal justice institutions put an emphasis on the biological, psychological and sociological characteristics of the offender, measures taken by maritime, industrial and commercial organizations were aimed exclusively at manipulating the temporal and spatial dimensions of the opportunity structures in which criminal activities, which posed a threat to the economic profitability, could develop.