The Netherlands Drug Situation 2010 - Trimbos-instituut

cases is increasing. The proportion of cases with a combination of hard and soft drugs isquite stable in the last years.9.1.2 Other drug-related crime (i.e. crimes committed by drug users)Offences committed by drug usersThe Police Records System includes a classification ‘drug user’. It is important to notethat in the Netherlands drug use as such is not a criminal offence according to the OpiumAct. The designation ‘drug user’ is accorded by the Police to a suspect if he/she may constitutea danger to others due to his or her drug use, if he/she indicates being a druguser or if he/she asks for methadone. The classification is made by the police, but becausedrug use is not assessed systematically, its validity is disputable. An unknown proportionof drug using offenders is missing in the classification.The category of drug users who are registered as such by the Police has the followingprofile in 2009 (not in table; preliminary data): 92% is male. They are a greying population: mean age increased from 35 years in 2002 to almost40 (39.9) in 2009. In 2009, 95% was over 24 years old. Most of them (43%) live in one of the four largest cities (250,000 or more inhabitants). Many of them are repeat offenders: 79% was arrested more than ten times beforeand 24% more than 50 times.With regards to the type of crime, we can see the following pattern in the registeredcrime (table 9.1.6): Most of the drug users committed property crimes. This fraction has been decreasing. Violent crimes (against persons) are increasing. Other crimes like Opium Act offences (drug dealing) and vandalism/disturbance ofpublic order decreased and that of traffic offences shows slight increases.Main changes concern property offences (decreasing) and violent offences (increasing). Apossible explanation could be that the group with a primary opiate problem, who committedmainly property crimes, was imprisoned first – for instance in the Institution for ProlificOffenders (Vollaard 2010). Another possible explanation is that there are less opiateusers and more users with a primary cocaine/crack problem (Cruts & Van Laar 2010,Tollenaar & Van der Laan 2010).The development in types of crime is also visible in general trends in registered crime inthe Netherlands (De Heer - de Lange et al. 2010).128