States experience difficulties in realizing the return of rejected asylum seekers, but migration control policies are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Against this background, we consider explanations for the increase in Assisted Voluntary Return from the Netherlands in the 2005–2011 period. Both macro‐level factors (source country societal conditions and characteristics of the Dutch “deportation regime”) and individual‐level factors (applicants' demographic characteristics and variation in status determination time) are examined. The study, which is based on a unique multilevel dataset (N = 15,682) with data from governmental and other sources (including International Organisation for Migration), is the first to quantitatively test assumed Assisted Voluntary Return determinants and contributes to the study of policy effects in migration studies. We find that states are capable of increasing return rates by expanding the use of “hard” and “soft” power. We propose the term “soft deportation” as a way to go beyond the dichotomy of “voluntary” and “forced” return.

While a growing number of longitudinal studies contribute to our knowledge on the development of offending over the life span, the landscape of research on women's criminal careers remains sparsely populated. Consequently, relatively little is known about female criminal development-especially during the adult years-and extant developmental and life-course theories generally are tailored to explain patterns in male offending. This article examines the criminal trajectories of the 432 women in the Criminal Career and Life-course Study (CCLS) a representative sample of Dutch offenders convicted in 1977.The CCLS includes information on registered criminal behavior spanning a period of up to 60 years. Trajectory analyses show that four developmental pathways can be distinguished among female offenders. We characterize these different pathways in terms of the type of crimes committed and the personal characteristics of women following them. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

The empirical and theoretical knowledge base on criminal careers is heavily influenced by data on boys and men. What pathways do women follow in and out of crime through their adulthood? With data from the Criminal Career and Life-Course Study, this article describes the criminal careers of 432 women and 4,180 men, a representative sample of all those who had a criminal case adjudicated in 1977 with retrospective criminal histories up to age 12 and prospective data to death or 2003. Comparing women and men, this article describes life-span patterns of prevalence, onset, duration, termination, frequency, crime mix, and overall trajectories and discusses implications for practice and for developmental and life-course theory.