Funding for this research was provided by:
Driehoek Plus (Project number 2-334-17)
Erasmus Initiative on Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Article History
Accepted: 16 September 2020
First Online: 7 October 2020
Compliance with ethical standards (summary statement)
:
: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interests.
: This study involved gaining access to confidential criminal justice data about drug crime in the Port of Rotterdam and involved human participants. The research design included several measures to guarantee the confidentiality, approval and secure data management of this study.First, the researchers received permission from the Minister of Justice and Security to access criminal justice information. Confidential information from the National Police (NP) and other authorities falls under the regime of the Police Data Act. In the context of Article 22, paragraph 1 of the Police Data Act and Article 4.7, paragraphs 1–5 of the Police Data Decree (provision of data for policy information and scientific research), the researchers requested permission from the Minister of Justice and Security to inspect files and have conversations with employees of the police and the Public Prosecution Service. Under article 15 jo. 39 g of the Judicial Data and Criminal Records Act (<i>Wet justitiële en strafvorderlijke gegevens</i>), the Minister of Justice and Security, via the Prosecutor General (letter dated 23 February 2018) gave formal permission, with a so-called PaG statement, to inspect completed criminal files at the District Public Prosecutor’s Office for the period 2010 to present day and specifically for data falling under art. 8 and 13 of the Police Data Act (excluding the data that falls under art. 9 and thus the Financial Information and Investigation Service (FIOD)). In addition, this permission was extended by letter on 2 May 2018 for the use of police data.Second, the researchers have all applied for and received a Certificate of Conduct (VOG - Verklaring Omtrent het Gedrag). A certificate of conduct is a document on behalf of the Dutch Minister of Legal Protection declaring that the applicant has not been convicted for any crime registered in the Dutch Criminal Records System or police files that is relevant to the performance of his or her duties.Footnote removedIn addition to the VOG and PaG statement, all members of the research team as well as the transcriber have signed a so-called “Integrity and confidentiality statement” from the Municipality of Rotterdam. Finally, as employees of Erasmus University Rotterdam they agreed with the Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity.Footnote removedThird, this research was supervised by an advisory commission of experts from practice and chaired by an academic specialist in the field of organized crime Prof. dr. Hans Nelen (Maastricht University). This committee provided regular feedback on methodological issues as well as (preliminary) results during the research. Members of this committee also screened the final manuscript on anonymity and confidentiality of the respondents before publication.Fourth, in order to exchange confidential documents between the researchers and the public authorities working in the harbour, the Regional Information and Expertise Center (RIEC) made a FileShare server available in which all registered parties involved in the research team and the supervisory committee could log in with a password and an additional code sent by text message to upload and download files.Fifth, to guarantee secure research data management, handling and storage, Erasmus University Rotterdam is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). To this end, the university applies the principles of privacy by design and privacy by default in the research design. An end-to-end encrypted and ISO 27001 certified data vault was used for the research. This data vault is based on the BlackBerry Workspaces (see also:ExternalRef removed). In this data vault, the researchers work safely together with the highest data classification, similar to what the Dutch Intelligence Service (AIVD) uses. In the data vault, researchers have access to a wide range of extensive file protection and encryption, logging and monitoring of usage and controlled access. The results of the analysis of our observations, documents and interviews were only reported confidentially and at an aggregated level, without disclosing the name of our respondents.