Cyrille Fijnaut: a pioneer from the low countries

ABSTRACT

Inspired by American pioneers in the field of police research like Jerome Skolnick, Cyrille Fijnaut resigned in 1969 as a police lieutenant from the police force in the city of Tilburg, the Netherlands in order to create the opportunity to study criminology and philosophy at the KU Leuven in Belgium. At the same university, he wrote in the years 1974–1978 his Ph.D. dissertation on the political history of policing in Europe since the Napoleonic Era. This thesis became the starting point of a rich career as a professor of criminology and criminal law at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the KU Leuven, Tilburg University and NYU Law School (Global Law School Programme). Over the years, he became an internationally renowned expert in the fields of police and judicial cooperation, organized crime and terrorism, and the transatlantic history of criminology and the criminal justice system. In these and other fields he wrote some 50 books and edited some 50 volumes, and published more than 400 articles in academic and professional journals. In addition, he was one of the founding fathers of the Belgian journal of criminology and criminal law Panopticon and the European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. He also served as an expert in some of Dutch and Belgian committees of inquiry, e.g. the committee that investigated the safety and security problems of Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politician who was killed in May 2002. The Dutch government rewarded him with a Knighthood in the Order of the Dutch Lion, and the Belgian government appointed him Commandeur in the Crown Order.

KEYWORDS:

• Criminology
• Comparative criminal law
• Police systems and police powers
• Organized crime

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In 1973, he wrote his first academic article on the basis of this thesis (C. Fijnaut, 1973).

2. An abridged version of this conclusion is included in (Fijnaut, 2016).

3. For the report of this conference, see (Punch, 1983).

4. Some extracts from this book have been translated and are included in (Fijnaut, 2016, p. 83–110).

5. A few years later an updated version of (Fijnaut, 1985a) a was published in the British Journal of Criminology (Fijnaut, 1990).

6. Fijnaut (2019) is an abridged version of this book in English.

7. For an English-language translation of this valedictory lecture, see (Fijnaut, 2016, p. 663–678).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dirk Van Daele

Dirk Van Daele (1970) is full professor at the Institute of Criminal Law and the Leuven Institute of Criminology of the Faculty of Law of the KU Leuven. He currently teaches Introduction to law, Police Law, International and European Criminal Policy, International Police and Judicial Cooperation, and Comparative Law and Criminology. His main research areas are: organisation, tasks and powers of police services and the public prosecution service, comparative criminal procedure and police law, international police and judicial cooperation, and the administrative approach in the fight against (organised) crime.