Crime drops but sexual violence reports up: police figures
Dutch NewsTotal reported crime dropped 6% across the Netherlands last year, according to figures published on Friday by the Dutch police. In a press release, the force suggested this could be related to the increased social attention and openness around sexual violence, making people more likely to alert the police to an incident. These were mostly carried out by young people, doing an amateurish job.’ Invisible crime Pickpocketing, however, fell by more than a quarter and the police cited extra surveillance as a reason. It said in a press release: ‘In recent years, there has been a clear shift to “invisible” criminality…which people do not report but which is still a social problem.’ This includes, for example, drug-related and online crime and socially ‘undermining’ businesses, for example laundering cash from the criminal underworld. A private police report last week, seen by Trouw last week, said that the ‘real’ crime figures were five times as high as the official levels.