How Pseudolegal Advice Manifests Itself in Criminal Offending and Suspect Interrogations of Sovereign Citizens in the Netherlands
Dutch security services noticed in 2024 that crimes associated with the sovereign citizen movement have increased in frequency and severity. While most sovereign citizens obey the law, key influential people within the movement might inspire others to commit crimes using their own interpretations of the law, also known as "pseudolaw". We compared popular literary sources within the sovereign citizen movement with police interrogations of sovereign crime suspects in the Netherlands to investigate this. The results showed that the interrogation transcripts indeed seemed to reflect the pseudolegal rhetoric of sovereign influencers.
Authors
- Jelle van Buuren (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0739-9689)
- Jan‐Willem van Prooijen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6236-0819)
- Lisa van Es (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2874-8219)
- Adriaan van Veldhuizen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9363-7227)
Institutions
- Leiden University (NL)
- European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (NL)
- Hague Institute for Global Justice (NL)
- Maastricht University (NL)
- Politieacademie (NL)
- Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NL)
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Deviant Behavior
- Published
- 2025-12-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2025.2599959
- Primary Topic
- Deception detection and forensic psychology
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00