Thanks, the Penoze goes back to the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic, although the term "organized crime" was not used. There were organized gangs, which often formed a large network. The best example of this is the Great Dutch Gang. It was active in the seventies of the eighteenth century and consisted of a network of the Brabantse, the Meerssener, the Hollandse and the Noord-Brabantse Bende. ' In the first half of the eighteenth century, there were mainly many gangs in Brabant, but even after 1750 the gangs were rampant. Gangs like the Muscovites, the Blackmakers, and several others, terrorized villages and towns.

Poverty and social exclusion were an important reason for joining a gang in the eighteenth century. For example, the skinners, also known as disposers or cold slaughterers, were strongly represented. These were craftsmen who had the task of killing sick animals, skinning dead cattle and horses, and clearing away cadavers. They also acted as executioners' assistants and were tasked with transporting, hanging, or burying corpses of convicts under the gallows. The skinning profession was unclean and passed on from father to son. A skinner was not allowed to marry someone from another profession. He lived (literally) on the edge of the community.