LETTER FROM BENELUX
Central Planning Office, Central Statistics Office, Center for Scientific Investigation and Documentation… The Netherlands loves analyzes of all kinds that decipher the functioning of their society. And sometimes reveal surprising trends, like the one highlighted at the beginning of September by a “Youth Crime Monitor”, published by the Ministry of Justice.
The researchers detected a dazzling increase (+42% in one year) in crimes committed by young girls and the fact that all those involved (police, judges, prosecutors, reintegration services, etc.) would demonstrate, towards them, much more indulgence than with boys.
In 2022, some 17,500 crimes involving Dutch minors aged 12 to 18 were recorded in the kingdom. Among the perpetrators, 4,510 girls, including 520 guilty of violence. The others were mainly accused of theft from stores, but also for scams, destruction and mistreatment. For flights, the increase is really striking: + 70% in one year, a trend that the statisticians themselves put into perspective a little: due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses were closed in 2021 and it It was difficult to hide anything from it.
Caution was therefore necessary, but newspapers did not hesitate to write big headlines about the “new criminality of girls”. No doubt because these statistics came a few days after the looping broadcast on social networks of a scene that occurred in Zoetermeer, a town near The Hague. The population, still unaccustomed to acts of this kind, discovered the images of two boys and five girls, teenagers aged 14 and 15, very violently beating a younger victim. Enough to push the mayor of the city, Michiel Bezuijen, to talk about the birth of a “new phenomenon”, that of violent gangs composed mainly of girls.
Second knives
A somewhat hasty conclusion, no doubt, but it is certain that teenage crime is increasing in the country and that the phenomenon still largely escapes the authorities, analyzes Anne-Marie Slotboom, renowned for being the best specialist on the subject in the country. . No doubt because girls are often less suspected and, therefore, less often worried, underlines this lawyer and criminologist from the Free University of Amsterdam. Furthermore, when young girls are arrested, the difference between what they confess and what they actually committed is much greater than when it is boys who are confronted by police officers, explained M.me Slotboom every day NRCSeptember 3.
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