Municipalities need €250 mil. per year more to fight growing drug crime

Municipalities need an additional 250 million euros per year to successfully fight drug crime, former Tilburg Peter Noordanus, professor Pieter Tops, and criminologist Edward van Torre warned in a research report they wrote together. The money must go toward fighting drug imports through the ports and drug production in the border regions and improving Dutch municipalities’ security organization, they said, Trouw reports.

“In the Netherlands, we underestimated how easy it is to get young people to join the criminal industry,” Noordanus told Trouw. “Municipalities will be crucial in the coming years to connect safety with welfare work like youth work, in order to get and keep young people out of organized crime.”

According to the researchers, municipal officials in all kinds of positions face undermining crime and young people sliding into the drug world. But many don’t have the resources in place to identify and combat this.

The authorities in Amsterdam and Rotterdam recently called for extra long-term investments in “neighborhood-based policing” and a significant expansion in the number of detectives. The researchers echo that plea. According to them, about a thousand additional local detectives will be needed in the coming years.

“The national criminal investigation department has been achieving great successes recently, but there is far too little capacity for detection in the neighborhoods,” Noordanus said. “Attention is needed for petty drug crimes. Otherwise, young people will remain out of the picture, and they can grow into major criminals.”

Pieter Tops, co-author and professor of undermining, agrees. “Think of a cannabis farm. That is not that interesting to the police. But its detection is crucial for a neighborhood because criminal networks around such a farm have branched out in the neighborhood.”