Amsterdam criminal fathers often have law-breaking sons

Almost all Amsterdan crime-lords' sons end up in a life of crime themselves, according to research done by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The researchers studied the families of 25 famous Amsterdam criminals and found that 9 out of 10 of the sons were already in trouble with the law, the Volkskrant reports. The study was done on behalf of the police. The 25 famous Amsterdam criminals have 76 kids between them. The study focused particularly on the 44 kids between the ages of 19 and 33 years old, average age is 23. The researchers found that 9 out of 10 sons already had contact with the judiciary. Half of them already spent time in prison for, among other things, violent crimes or being caught with a weapon. One of them was even assassinated - 26-year-old Baris Onder, son of career criminal Atilla Onder, was gunned down with an automatic weapon while sitting in his car in Osdorp in April last year. "That is a very high score", researcher Meintje van Dijk said to the newspaper. "Much higher than the figure we got from previous research into the sons of 'standard' criminals. The studies can't really be compared, but that was about 60 percent." The police believe that the explanation for the high crime rate among criminal sons can be found in how they were brought up. "Criminal parents take their child into their world. Children are given a totally wrong idea of what is normal", Hanneke Ekelmans, head of operations at the Amsterdam police, said to the newspaper. Strikingly, the daughters of crime families seem to be far less affected. Only half of them are in trouble with the law.