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8 J. Quantitative Criminology 1 (1992)

handle is hein.journals/jquantc8 and id is 1 raw text is: Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1992 Introduction to the Special Issue The Netherlands is a small country of 15,000,000 inhabitants. Although crime has never been of particular concern to Dutch citizens, the increase in crime since the 1960s has placed the crime problem high on both the public and the political agenda. Between the 1960s and the 1980s crime has increased substantially. In absolute figures recorded crime has increased almost 10-fold. In 1960 130,000 offenses were recorded by the police, and in 1980 about 1 million. Rates per 1000 inhabitants also increased: since 1975 recorded offenses per 1000 (traffic offenses excluded) rose from 38 to 76, an increase of 100%. The rise has been greatest in offenses covered by the criminal code, such as theft and burglary. There has also been a steep increase in willful damage of property. Our biannual victim surveys, carried out since 1975, show that crimes such as breaking and entering private premises. and the destruction of private property have almost doubled since 1975 (van Dijk and Junger-Tas, 1988). A parallel and partly overlapping development can be seen in the rise of juvenile delinquency since the end of the 1950s. Crime rates for 12 to 17 and 18 to 20 year olds started to rise in 1955, the year that has been charac- terized as the takeoff of prosperity. Since that year the percentage of con- victed juveniles in the total population has doubled: from 0.3% in 1955 to 0.6% in 1970 for the age group 12-17 years and from 0.7 to 1.65% for age group 18-20 years. As far as the nature of the delinquency is concerned, it should be stressed that the bulk of it is accounted for by property offenses and vandalism, with some increase in aggressive offenses of a nonserious nature (Jongman and Cats, 1974). However, there are signs suggesting a reversal of this trend over the last 10 years. Victim surveys show a stabilization of the number of victims since 1983 and a steady decline of victimization for about the past 4 years. Most kinds of theft, including burglary, have decreased. Police statistics show that property crimes is the largest category of all crimes recorded by the police. Half of these consist of aggravated theft, and one-third of simple theft. About 25% of all crimes are traffic offenses, in most cases drunken driving. 0748-4518/92/0300-0001$06.50/0 L 1992 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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