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.