AMSTERDAM — Startling figures on Monday indicated that 55 percent of detainees in Dutch prisons last year were not born in the Netherlands, a rise of 5 percent compared with 1995.

The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) said 9 percent of detainees were born in Suriname, about 9 percent came from the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, 7 percent were Moroccans and 5 percent were Turkish, newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported.

The Dutch media and politicians have repeatedly expressed concerns about “ethnic crime” in the Netherlands and authorities in cities such as Rotterdam and Amsterdam have highlighted street crime problems allegedly committed by migrant youth. 

Several brutal crimes committed and also allegedly committed by immigrants in recent years have also heightened concerns, while figures have revealed that a majority of murders involve ethnic minorities.

But ethnic groups claim they are being stigmatised, while the jobless rate and socio-economic position of migrant communities is traditionally worse than that of native Dutch. The Social and Cultural Planning Bureau (SCP) said in December that non-western migrants were the main victims of declining prosperity in the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, the CBS also said that the total number of prisoners increased to almost 14,000 on 1 September 2003, a rise of 7 percent compared with the year before. There were about 13,000 men in jail last year, while the number of female detainees (840) remained stable.

The number of people serving long sentences increased by 13 percent. There are almost 1,600 people serving a sentence of four years or more. Just 4 percent of these people are women and just 20 people are serving life sentences, all of whom are men.

[Copyright Expatica News 2004]

Subject: Dutch news