Tom Vander Beken
Biographic Data
| ID | 162871 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tom Vander Beken |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tom Vander |
| FAMILY NAME | Beken |
| SIGNATURE | BEKEN T V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1596-5070 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Short infrequent police stops maximize crime-free time at street segments
Establishing optimal police dosage is central to evidence-based policing. The current consensus is that 15-minute patrols represent the optimal level of such dosage. This study revisits this central assumption of police research and practice, by examining the relationship between the duration and frequency of police patrol and the timing of subsequent crime at the street segment level. Drawing on 21,581 GPS-tracked police stops and 45,987 citizen…
Exploring the Good Lives Model Concepts among an Ethnically Diverse Sample of Forensic Clients
The increasing ethnic diversity in Europe’s forensic population challenges culturally sensitive rehabilitation. The Good Lives Model, a strengths-based rehabilitation framework promoting well-being and desistance, provides a universal structure but shows potential for cultural adaptation. This study explores the emic dimensions of the GLM’s core concepts and assumptions—primary goods, secondary goods, strengths, and obstacles—among ethnically div…
The Grayness of Match-Fixing
In this study, we provide a nuanced perspective on a sub-type of match-fixing, called non-betting-related match-fixing (NBMF). Using a cross-sectional survey, we measured the prevalence and motives behind NBMF in Belgian amateur football and tennis. Additionally, we conducted a thorough study of the regulatory documents of the relevant (sports) organizations to examine the sanctionability of different types of NBMF by analyzing their disciplinary…
Overdue Athletes’ Salaries in Professional Football and Match-Fixing
Overdue athletes’ salaries, i.e. late, partial or nonpayment of athletes’ salaries in professional sports, increases the risk for match-fixing as athletes are rendered more vulnerable to match-fixing approaches and for giving in to such proposals. Even though research and stakeholders recognize the aforementioned risk, the body of literature addressing the issue from a preventative legal perspective is slim to nonexistent. While the Council of Eu…
Simple indicators of crime and police
This study demonstrates how temporal summary statistics can be a guiding tool for big data analyses to unravel temporal patterns of crime and police presence. Simple indicator statistics were used to identify temporal clusters of crimes and police presence, and to investigate potential links between the two. The methodology was applied on an anonymized police database, including reported crime events and police presence data, from a medium-sized …
Hot spots and burning times
Establishing police demand is important to optimally allocate scarce police resources in space and time. To contribute to the existing knowledge on the optimization of policing and crime prevention strategies worldwide, we examine the spatiotemporal pattern of calls for service (CFS), with a focus on the urgency of the calls (as measured by the police priority codes), in Antwerp (2017–2020), Belgium. To disentangle the space-time pattern of the p…
Victimization of Applicants for International Protection Residing in Belgium
Background: Sexual violence (SV) literature on applicants for international protection (AIPs) shows that they are at high risk of victimization. The study objectives are to provide an exploratory overview of the occurrence of SV in AIPs in Belgium and their help-seeking behavior (HSB). This overview is crucial to develop prevention strategies and care paths focusing on providing adequate care to AIP SV victims in Belgium. Methods: Quantitative da…
Minority Identity, Othering-Based Stress, and Sexual Violence
This study contributes to our understanding of the relationship between minority identification, OBS, and SV. Studying both specific and common SV vulnerabilities and outcomes within specific societal subgroups and the general population may inform policy makers when allocating resources to those interventions with the largest societal impact
An assessment of the proportion of LGB+ persons in the Belgian population, their identification as sexual minority, mental health and experienced minority stress
The proportion of persons who identified as LGB+ was twice as large as the proportion of persons who identified as a minority based on their sexual orientation. LGB+ persons show poorer mental health compared to heterosexual persons. This difference was unrelated to minority stress, sociodemographic differences, minority identification, or the importance attached to minority characteristics
Police equilibrium
Police resources are scarce public goods and have to be used with maximum efficiency. One dimension of efficiency is the spatial and temporal alignment of police presence to calls-for-service. The research question of interest in this paper is whether the police are where and when they are needed most. We employ a supply and demand model based on police presence and the occurrence of calls for police service. We use GPS data from 100 tracked poli…
Two decades of European criminology
What is European criminology about? Through topic modelling, we investigate the content of 11,724 presentations held at the annual conferences of the European Society of Criminology, the largest and most influential professional association in Europe for those who are actively engaged in research, teaching, and/or practice in criminology, from 2001 to 2019. We extract 50 topics and identify the top contributing institutions and countries based on…
Big Boys Don’t Cry
Sexual victimization is typically presented as a gender-based problem involving a female victim and a male offender. Science, policy, and society focus on female victims at the expense of male victims. Male sexual victimization is thus understudied compared with female sexual victimization. By performing a critical interpretive synthesis of research papers, policy documents, and gray literature ( N = 67) published in four electronic databases fro…
Assessing the missing data problem in criminal network analysis using forensic DNA data
Missing data is pertinent to criminal networks due to the hidden nature of crime. Generally, researchers evaluate the impact of incomplete network data by extracting or adding nodes and/or edges from a known network. Statistics on this reduced or completed network are then compared with statistics from the known network. In this study, we integrate police data on known offenders with DNA data on unknown offenders. Statistics from the integrated d…
The critical interpretive synthesis
The importance of the critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) to review quantitative and qualitative research, and to critically develop new theory, is increasingly recognized and evidenced by the increase in published CIS reviews. However, the flexibility embedded in the method hampers its implementation and exacerbates concerns about trustworthiness. This paper seeks to determine the extent of transparent reporting and soundness of execution in p…
Privatising Punishment in Europe?
Privatising Punishment in Europe
In Search of Norwegian Penal Exceptionalism
Between May 2013 and November 2014, I had visited 15 prisons in the United Kingdom, Norway, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Azerbaijan. These prison visits were the backbone of a project inspired by the travels and work of John Howard (1726–1790). Anyone interested in prisons ought to know who John Howard was. His countless visits to institutions of correction and of confinement all over Europe, and his books describing with exacting precision…
The role of prison in Europe
What Makes Long Crime Trips Worth Undertaking? Balancing Costs and Benefits in Burglars’ Journey to Crime
This study taps into rational choice theory and scrutinizes the assumption that profit maximization and effort minimization govern decisions related to burglary behaviour and the journey to crime. It treats distance as one of the major costs in the burglary target selection process and uses community characteristics to gain insight into how the anticipation of particular benefits favours the incremental costs of long crime trips. Two thousand thr…
Organized Crime
This article examines the main shifts in meanings, territorial scope, and scientific and political legitimacy of the concept organized crime. It reconstructs the historical trajectory of the concept, starting in the United States where it was used almost exclusively until the 1970s and then following its rapid spread in Europe since the late 1980s. One of the main arguments of the essay is that the understanding of organized crime has shifted bac…
The evolution of criminal interrogation rules in China
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Awareness Space and Mobile Offenders
Most offenders operate in the vicinity of their homes. The offender’s awareness space plays herein a crucial role. This refers to all spaces of which an offender has knowledge and develops through daily routines. The role of the awareness space has been confirmed in various empirical researches. However, one may wonder whether the importance of awareness space exists only in the most common offending patterns i.e. local offending and what the rol…
Assessing European futures in an age of reflexive security
Over the past decade, European assessments of organised crime have evolved into strategic future-oriented intelligence systems. Policy-makers want to be informed about coming organised crime threats and challenges. We use the concepts of reflexive government and reflexive security to explore this shift in EU policing, and suggest that strategic planning in the field of organised crime control might benefit from the use of scenario methodologies. …
The transfer of sentenced persons in Europe
In recent years new instruments have been developed in Europe that allow sentenced persons to be transferred to their country of nationality/origin or permanent residence, where the sentence is then carried out. The most commonly referred to ratio legis for these regulations is the reintegration or rehabilitation of offenders. But is the optimization of offender reintegration really the objective and the result of these transfers? Reintegration f…
The Music Industry on (the) Line? Surviving Music Piracy in a Digital Era
After successive years of growth during the 1990s, decreasing compact disc sales have been plaguing the music industry since 2000. Although several other reasons have been cited to explain the decline in sales, the music industry mainly puts the blame on physical and digital piracy. This article discusses both opportunities and challenges for the industry to survive in the digital era. Besides an analysis of the contemporary piracy problem, the i…
The critical interpretive synthesis
The importance of the critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) to review quantitative and qualitative research, and to critically develop new theory, is increasingly recognized and evidenced by the increase in published CIS reviews. However, the flexibility embedded in the method hampers its implementation and exacerbates concerns about trustworthiness. This paper seeks to determine the extent of transparent reporting and soundness of execution in p…
What Makes Long Crime Trips Worth Undertaking? Balancing Costs and Benefits in Burglars’ Journey to Crime
This study taps into rational choice theory and scrutinizes the assumption that profit maximization and effort minimization govern decisions related to burglary behaviour and the journey to crime. It treats distance as one of the major costs in the burglary target selection process and uses community characteristics to gain insight into how the anticipation of particular benefits favours the incremental costs of long crime trips. Two thousand thr…
Reducing Vulnerabilities to Crime of the European Waste Management Industry
Studies of environmental crime suggest that its causes fall into three broad groups, concerning the high costs of legal waste management, aspects of the international context, and some effects of or inadequacies in regulation. This paper reviews the literature and then introduces and applies a method to look in greater depth at vulnerabilities that the waste management business offers for crime. It suggests that some current and quite contingent …
The transfer of sentenced persons in Europe
In recent years new instruments have been developed in Europe that allow sentenced persons to be transferred to their country of nationality/origin or permanent residence, where the sentence is then carried out. The most commonly referred to ratio legis for these regulations is the reintegration or rehabilitation of offenders. But is the optimization of offender reintegration really the objective and the result of these transfers? Reintegration f…
The Grayness of Match-Fixing
In this study, we provide a nuanced perspective on a sub-type of match-fixing, called non-betting-related match-fixing (NBMF). Using a cross-sectional survey, we measured the prevalence and motives behind NBMF in Belgian amateur football and tennis. Additionally, we conducted a thorough study of the regulatory documents of the relevant (sports) organizations to examine the sanctionability of different types of NBMF by analyzing their disciplinary…
Overdue Athletes’ Salaries in Professional Football and Match-Fixing
Overdue athletes’ salaries, i.e. late, partial or nonpayment of athletes’ salaries in professional sports, increases the risk for match-fixing as athletes are rendered more vulnerable to match-fixing approaches and for giving in to such proposals. Even though research and stakeholders recognize the aforementioned risk, the body of literature addressing the issue from a preventative legal perspective is slim to nonexistent. While the Council of Eu…
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Awareness Space and Mobile Offenders
Most offenders operate in the vicinity of their homes. The offender’s awareness space plays herein a crucial role. This refers to all spaces of which an offender has knowledge and develops through daily routines. The role of the awareness space has been confirmed in various empirical researches. However, one may wonder whether the importance of awareness space exists only in the most common offending patterns i.e. local offending and what the rol…
Interesting times
Reducing Vulnerabilities to Crime of the European Waste Management Industry
Studies of environmental crime suggest that its causes fall into three broad groups, concerning the high costs of legal waste management, aspects of the international context, and some effects of or inadequacies in regulation. This paper reviews the literature and then introduces and applies a method to look in greater depth at vulnerabilities that the waste management business offers for crime. It suggests that some current and quite contingent …
Crossing geographical, legal and moral boundaries
Belgium is an important transit country for cigarette smuggling to the UK. This study pictures the illicit tobacco trade as a complex, ambiguous phenomenon involving several legal and illegal participants whereby the transit of cigarettes across the licit/illicit divide is paralleled by the moral careers of those who smuggle them, not to mention those who consume them. From the legal world to the illegal and back again, this trade and its practit…
Appropriation of restorative justice in the prevention, management and resolution of Niger Delta conflicts
Appropriation of restorative justice in the prevention, management and resolution of Niger Delta conflicts
Interesting times
The transfer of sentenced persons in Europe
In recent years new instruments have been developed in Europe that allow sentenced persons to be transferred to their country of nationality/origin or permanent residence, where the sentence is then carried out. The most commonly referred to ratio legis for these regulations is the reintegration or rehabilitation of offenders. But is the optimization of offender reintegration really the objective and the result of these transfers? Reintegration f…
The Music Industry on (the) Line? Surviving Music Piracy in a Digital Era
After successive years of growth during the 1990s, decreasing compact disc sales have been plaguing the music industry since 2000. Although several other reasons have been cited to explain the decline in sales, the music industry mainly puts the blame on physical and digital piracy. This article discusses both opportunities and challenges for the industry to survive in the digital era. Besides an analysis of the contemporary piracy problem, the i…
Assessing European futures in an age of reflexive security
Over the past decade, European assessments of organised crime have evolved into strategic future-oriented intelligence systems. Policy-makers want to be informed about coming organised crime threats and challenges. We use the concepts of reflexive government and reflexive security to explore this shift in EU policing, and suggest that strategic planning in the field of organised crime control might benefit from the use of scenario methodologies. …
The evolution of criminal interrogation rules in China
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Awareness Space and Mobile Offenders
Most offenders operate in the vicinity of their homes. The offender’s awareness space plays herein a crucial role. This refers to all spaces of which an offender has knowledge and develops through daily routines. The role of the awareness space has been confirmed in various empirical researches. However, one may wonder whether the importance of awareness space exists only in the most common offending patterns i.e. local offending and what the rol…
Organized Crime
This article examines the main shifts in meanings, territorial scope, and scientific and political legitimacy of the concept organized crime. It reconstructs the historical trajectory of the concept, starting in the United States where it was used almost exclusively until the 1970s and then following its rapid spread in Europe since the late 1980s. One of the main arguments of the essay is that the understanding of organized crime has shifted bac…
What Makes Long Crime Trips Worth Undertaking? Balancing Costs and Benefits in Burglars’ Journey to Crime
This study taps into rational choice theory and scrutinizes the assumption that profit maximization and effort minimization govern decisions related to burglary behaviour and the journey to crime. It treats distance as one of the major costs in the burglary target selection process and uses community characteristics to gain insight into how the anticipation of particular benefits favours the incremental costs of long crime trips. Two thousand thr…
The role of prison in Europe
In Search of Norwegian Penal Exceptionalism
Between May 2013 and November 2014, I had visited 15 prisons in the United Kingdom, Norway, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Azerbaijan. These prison visits were the backbone of a project inspired by the travels and work of John Howard (1726–1790). Anyone interested in prisons ought to know who John Howard was. His countless visits to institutions of correction and of confinement all over Europe, and his books describing with exacting precision…
Privatising Punishment in Europe?
Privatising Punishment in Europe
Big Boys Don’t Cry
Sexual victimization is typically presented as a gender-based problem involving a female victim and a male offender. Science, policy, and society focus on female victims at the expense of male victims. Male sexual victimization is thus understudied compared with female sexual victimization. By performing a critical interpretive synthesis of research papers, policy documents, and gray literature ( N = 67) published in four electronic databases fro…
Assessing the missing data problem in criminal network analysis using forensic DNA data
Missing data is pertinent to criminal networks due to the hidden nature of crime. Generally, researchers evaluate the impact of incomplete network data by extracting or adding nodes and/or edges from a known network. Statistics on this reduced or completed network are then compared with statistics from the known network. In this study, we integrate police data on known offenders with DNA data on unknown offenders. Statistics from the integrated d…
The critical interpretive synthesis
The importance of the critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) to review quantitative and qualitative research, and to critically develop new theory, is increasingly recognized and evidenced by the increase in published CIS reviews. However, the flexibility embedded in the method hampers its implementation and exacerbates concerns about trustworthiness. This paper seeks to determine the extent of transparent reporting and soundness of execution in p…
Two decades of European criminology
What is European criminology about? Through topic modelling, we investigate the content of 11,724 presentations held at the annual conferences of the European Society of Criminology, the largest and most influential professional association in Europe for those who are actively engaged in research, teaching, and/or practice in criminology, from 2001 to 2019. We extract 50 topics and identify the top contributing institutions and countries based on…
Hot spots and burning times
Establishing police demand is important to optimally allocate scarce police resources in space and time. To contribute to the existing knowledge on the optimization of policing and crime prevention strategies worldwide, we examine the spatiotemporal pattern of calls for service (CFS), with a focus on the urgency of the calls (as measured by the police priority codes), in Antwerp (2017–2020), Belgium. To disentangle the space-time pattern of the p…
Victimization of Applicants for International Protection Residing in Belgium
Background: Sexual violence (SV) literature on applicants for international protection (AIPs) shows that they are at high risk of victimization. The study objectives are to provide an exploratory overview of the occurrence of SV in AIPs in Belgium and their help-seeking behavior (HSB). This overview is crucial to develop prevention strategies and care paths focusing on providing adequate care to AIP SV victims in Belgium. Methods: Quantitative da…
Minority Identity, Othering-Based Stress, and Sexual Violence
This study contributes to our understanding of the relationship between minority identification, OBS, and SV. Studying both specific and common SV vulnerabilities and outcomes within specific societal subgroups and the general population may inform policy makers when allocating resources to those interventions with the largest societal impact
An assessment of the proportion of LGB+ persons in the Belgian population, their identification as sexual minority, mental health and experienced minority stress
The proportion of persons who identified as LGB+ was twice as large as the proportion of persons who identified as a minority based on their sexual orientation. LGB+ persons show poorer mental health compared to heterosexual persons. This difference was unrelated to minority stress, sociodemographic differences, minority identification, or the importance attached to minority characteristics
Police equilibrium
Police resources are scarce public goods and have to be used with maximum efficiency. One dimension of efficiency is the spatial and temporal alignment of police presence to calls-for-service. The research question of interest in this paper is whether the police are where and when they are needed most. We employ a supply and demand model based on police presence and the occurrence of calls for police service. We use GPS data from 100 tracked poli…
Political science (16 works) · Criminology (15 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (9 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (9 works) · Business (7 works) · Engineering (7 works)