Impact Education: Organized Crime course
Suna Polat, Meryem Ouhadou, Malou Hamers and Prof. Miranda de Meijer in the mayor’s office as part of the organized crime course (image supplied by Malou Hamers).
How can Criminal Law students truly be prepared for their future career? How can existing crime-fighting organizations be inspired by students’ minds and creative approaches? In this core course as part of the UvA’s Master of Criminal Law, both students and the public prosecution benefit.
About the course
Head lecturer Prof. Miranda de Meijer and co-lecturer Malou Hamers teach the 8-week 6 EC Organized Crime course. All 100 students follow the course in the first semester. In smaller groups students work together to learn how criminal organizations function from different perspectives. Through three different papers, students first examine a specific breeding ground for criminal organizations, then simulate creating a criminal organization and finally coming up with ways to counter criminal activity.
Challenging students
Student Elizabeth Bosman felt this was one of the best courses she took during her studies. She says: “For the first time I really felt like we – as students – were invited to give our own perspective and think critically. Instead of reproducing course material, we were challenged to really understand the literature and to think about implications for society.”
The lecturers set high expectations, and students rose to the occasion. By engaging the students and making it concrete and relevant helped to stimulate motivation. Even though it is a larger scale mandatory course, students were very active in their participation.
Taking different perspectives
Co-lecturer Malou Hamers further explains the set-up of the course. It existed partially of guest lecturers in the relevant field, as well as seminars in which students worked together in groups of around four. The course covers the four main thematic areas of organized crime, namely (1) drug and illegal firearms trafficking (2) human trafficking (3) financial and economic crime and (4) environmental crime.
In the first essay students examined the breeding ground for organized crime in their own neighbourhood, inviting them to take the perspective of criminologists. In the second part, their group of four simulated starting their own network - putting them in the shoes of actual criminals. Finally they were invited to think like prosecutors to examine how to fight certain crimes.
The students had to view problems from the angles of many different stakeholders, challenging them to view issues from all perspectives. Staff and students agree it is the ‘’simulation’’ element that makes this course so unique.
Prof. Miranda De Meijer works at the Public Prosecution herself. She says the reason why she designed the course in the aforementioned way was to mirror how it works in the real world. She believes “by combining my background in practice, and Malou’s recent experience in the Master program as well as her knowledge of academic skills made [us] such a strong teacher team”.
Journalists Vico Olling (L) and Martijn Haas speak to law students (image supplied by Malou Hamers).
Orientation in the field
The course also gives students a valuable insight into the work at the Public Prosecution. Studying at university can feel abstract, however, through the course students begin to grasp what working in the field is all about. The teachers stimulate this by awarding an internship the Municipality of Amsterdam for the student who produces the best paper.
It goes both ways, however. Gerrit van der Burg, Head of the Attorney-Generals at the Public Prosecution Service was involved as one of the stakeholders in the course. He states that through this course the prosecution is able to “lower the threshold for students, and is able to attract new talent to its organization”.
Head of Public Order and Safety at the Municipality of Amsterdam Frank Rozenberg and Mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema were also involved. Elizabeth Bosman says: “Through the many different guest lecturers in the course, the relevance of the subject was also made much more clear”.
Lawyer Onno de Jong speaks to students as part of the course (image supplied by Malou Hamers).
Benefits for society
Another benefit of the course is that students are able to bring new insights to society. Some might argue that students are not (yet) capable of fully grasping the complexity of certain topics, and that their research and insights may not be of such use. Van der Burg disagrees: ‘It is this freshness and external perspective that brings us to new ideas.”
Prof. De Meijer concurs: “Students still have such an open mind and are so closely related to society and current topics like social media and cryptocurrency. We should make even more use these intelligent minds”.
Van der Burg continues: “Of course the in-depth knowledge of my colleagues is vital, however, the creative perspective of a new generation is also very valuable.” All in all Van der Burg is very content working with this UvA course, all well as project-based initiatives from other higher education institutes in the Netherlands.
One of the most valuable experience in the course, for student Elizabeth Bosman was the fact that solutions she and her team came up with regarding the smoking industry were very well received by some people in the field. “The idea that they might actually use our insights in practice is incredibly motivating,” she says.
Are you interested in taking part? Could your company or organisation be a part of the course? Get in touch.