Een wolf onder de wolven: Ethiek en Ethische Commissies in criminologisch onderzoek naar ‘the powerful’

For quite some years now, crimes of ‘the powerful’ have been studied by criminologist. While researching crimes of ‘the powerful’, research aim to maintain and safeguard their integrity and ethics. However, there seems to be a friction between, on the one hand, ethics of the researchers themselves and on the other hand, ethics (policies) of universities. Obviously, not only do they have to justify their actions and decisions to themselves and ‘science’ as a whole; they must justify their research to ethics committees (EC’s) of universities. It could result in complex and difficulties situation when researchers suspect that EC’s themselves may be instruments and products of powerful group they are studying. In that case, EC’s might undermine ethics and research integrity themselves. What do certain EC- ‘conditions’ look like for research ethics and to which extent do they have to be adjusted or reconsidered when criminologists are researching ‘the powerful’? The key question that will be answered in this contribution is as follows: how can criminologist (re)act ethically responsibly when confronted with (un)ethical committees? In doing retrieving insights to answer that and other relevant questions, after reviewing literature, we reflect on a biographical study of a legal arms trader. We then elaborate on the ‘ethics creep’ (Haggerty, 2004) that seems to haunt social sciences nowadays.