DEVELOPING SCANDAL Police Deviance in Amsterdam MAURICE

The Dutch tradition of honesty and efficiency in municipal government still contrasts with our history of municipal mismanagement, blackmail, graft and jobbery. Policy corrup-tion, so commonplace with us, as the recent New York City Police Department investigation underlines, is virtually un-known to them. [Compared with the United States] the government is more scrupulous, the taxpayer more honest, and there is a relatively low level of tax evasion and fraud.-M. Blanken In the midseventies, the Amsterdam police faced a major case of corruption for the first time The media reacted with relish and treated the case as a major journalistic scandal with prolonged coverage. Top members of the police were confused by the internal upheavals and acute external interest, and their inability to deal with a complex, changing environment lead to an escalation of internal unrest. This scandal reveals latent features of police work and the police organization, of the media’s construction of scandal, and of attitudes toward deviation in Dutch society Dutch society, on the rare occasions that it has attracted outside comment, tends to be remarked upon for its orderli-ness, moderation, and sobriety (Bagley, 1973; Goudsblom, 1967). As an advanced industrial society with one of the highest living standards in the world, the Netherlands is often portrayed as a model for enlightened planning, muni-ficent welfare provision, and public finance control that exemplifies &dquo;outstanding levels of fiscal honesty&dquo; (Blanken, 1976: 12). But behind the favorable image lies a more complex reality. The royal family was almost toppled by revelations that one of its members solicited money fro