Police don't recognize criminal exploitation victims while perpetrators go free: report

The Netherlands' approach to criminal exploitation - in which victims are forced to do something illegal, like kids forced to deliver drugs or people with intellectual disabilities forced to cut cannabis plants - is failing, according to the Center for Child- and Human Trafficking (CKM). Victims are treated as perpetrators, and the real perpetrators get away free, the CKM said in a report published on Tuesday.

“Police officers are unable to recognize victims of criminal exploitation. They are more often regarded as perpetrators and risk punishment for drug dealing, for example, while they did it under duress,” Shamir Ceuleers of the CKM said to RTL Nieuws. According to international rules, people who commit crimes under duress should not be prosecuted for them. But that rule is only “a reality on paper,” he said.

Ceuleers cited an example of a 13-year-old boy approached on the schoolyard. He can smoke weed for free if he delivers packages. “If he says he wants to stop, the boy is threatened. But the police see him as a little drug criminal. So that boy won’t talk because he is afraid of the perpetrator and the prosecution. This way, the real perpetrator remains untouched.”

Warner ten Kate, the national public prosecutor responsible for human trafficking cases, acknowledged that the authorities too often see victims as perpetrators in these cases. “If we treat young offenders as victims, we can also help them and get them out of the world of drugs,” he said to the broadcaster. Ten Kate can’t say how many victims the authorities miss. “This is a problem that remains under the surface. But my gut feeling is not good. I feel that criminal exploitation is too common, especially in the drug world, and that we don’t see it enough.”

That feeling is reflected in the official records. Between 2015 and 2019, the Dutch authorities only launched 41 investigations into criminal exploitation. When the CKM surveyed youth workers, community police officers, and school attendance officers in 13 municipalities earlier this year, 821 of these professionals indicated that they’ve had contact with at least one suspected victim of criminal exploitation in the past two years.

According to the professionals, most cases involved minors recruited as drug mules on the street or via social media. 240 reported suspected victims being recruited at school, including 15 at a primary school. 148 reported suspected recruitments at healthcare institutions.

According to the CKM, the Netherlands must do much more to protect victims, so they dare report the perpetrators exploiting them. The authorities should also give criminal exploitation more priority. The CKM used the United Kingdom as a good example of a proper approach. There, schools, youth workers, and criminal justice organizations work together to identify victims and protect young people against a life of crime.