We will go to the polls on March 17. To help you make your choice, we take stock: how is the Netherlands doing? This time we are taking a closer look at safety in our country. Are there enough police officers and how safe do we feel on the street?
Underemployment and a high workload. The police have been dealing with it for some time. One of the reasons is that the police force has a relatively old force, which means that in recent and coming years more police officers will retire than new ones will be added.
In addition, the deployment of agents is necessary for the many demonstrations, which increases the workload on agents. The number of people who are threatened and who need personal security is also increasing. This security is arranged by the Royal and Diplomatic Security Service (DKDB), but those security guards come from the police.
Another cause of the increasing workload is a growing number of reports of people with confused behavior. Handling such a report takes a lot of time for the police, which is at the expense of efforts in other areas.
An increasing number of demonstrations are putting pressure on the police.
An increasing number of demonstrations are putting pressure on the police. Photo: ANP
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The staff shortage in the police force should be resolved in three to four years. Minister Ferd Grapperhaus (Justice and Security) wrote this to the Lower House at the end of last year. Until then, flex workers and office staff will be needed to keep the staffing of the ‘blue on the street’ up to standard.
At the end of 2019, the police had 50,402 operational staff. These are agents who can actually be deployed on the street. In order to get the staff up to standard, almost two thousand officers still need to be added. Minister Grapperhaus expects this to be achieved in 2025.
Aging in the police force
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Incidentally, the shortage of agents has no consequences for the sense of security of the Dutch. In 2012, 37 percent of Dutch people sometimes felt unsafe and that had dropped to 32 percent in 2019. The feeling of insecurity people have in their own neighborhood has also been declining for a few years now.
These figures correspond to the actual figures on crime. For years, traditional forms of crime such as shoplifting, burglary and pickpocketing have declined.
Last year, that drop was extra strong. Almost half fewer bags were rolled, the number of burglaries fell by nearly a quarter and 13 percent less stolen goods were also stolen in shops than in the previous year.
Logical, because 2020 was a ‘corona year’. People were home more often last year, so it was more difficult for burglars to take their chance. The same was true for pickpockets, because if people did take to the streets they had to keep their distance from each other, so that a pickpocket would be noticed more quickly.
Sharp decline in traditional forms of crime
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But this decline was also seen in traditional forms of crime in 2019. Compared to 2010, the number of shoplifters had fallen by almost 4 percent in 2019. You could say that this is negligible, but if we look at street robberies, burglaries and pickpocketing, the numbers are clearer.
The number of street robberies had decreased by more than half in 2019 compared to 2010. If we look at home burglaries, we see the same trend and pickpockets were even more than 60 percent less in 2019 than in 2010.
The Netherlands is therefore becoming safer and the Netherlands feels safer. Yet that is not the full truth. Cyber criminals have been on the rise for a few years now. Since 2017, the number of reports of online scams, forgery and hacking has doubled.
“Hacking is commonplace nowadays, as was bicycle theft in the past,” the police wrote in the 2019 annual report.
Fighting online crime will be one of the spearheads in the coming government’s term, as will be the case for lowering the workload on police officers and ensuring sufficient ‘police officers’ in the street.
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