The number of young people with a reference to Bureau Halt increased slightly in 2024 compared to the year before, according to figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). From 2014 to 2021, a falling trend could be seen, but since 2021 the number of Halt-Youth youth remains fairly stable around ten thousand.
Young people between the ages of 12 and 18, who come into contact with the police or a BOA because of a violation or a slightly criminal offense, can get a halt intervention for this. Then they must, for example, do pedagogical assignments, or apologize to any victims. If they successfully complete the process, they will not receive a criminal record.
Around 10,500 young people came into contact last year, about half after they committed a crime and the other half after a violation. Most of them are a compulsory education or a wealth crime. In the vast majority of cases, the latter means a shoplifting, a spokesperson explains. The number of Halt -Jongeren with a fireworks violation or crime has also been increasing since 2021. In three-quarters of the Halt cases, just like the suspects of crimes registered by the police, it concerns boys.
Coronacrisis distorts the image
The references declined between 2014 and 2019. The biggest decrease is between 2019 and 2021. That largely devotes Halt to the Coronacrisis. “Young people were no longer allowed outside, so had much less the opportunity for wantonness, fireworks crimes or other situations.” The fact that the number of references in the past three years is rising again, Halt is therefore not necessarily as a problem.
“I actually hope that the weather will rise a bit more,” says a spokesperson even. “An agent or a boa has a few options: a fine, a reprimand, referring to the OM or to stop. Halt is the pedagogical intervention, of which we want children to learn something. A fine, often paid by the parents, you learn nothing. And a criminal record should really prevent some more references!”
More cyber crime, but no paving
The type of offenses and violations that Halt sees is quite stable, with the exception of an increasing number of ‘online crimes, such as threat’. That is in line with what the Scientific Research and Data Center (WODC) sees in the latter Monitor for youth crime from 2023. Both the number of minor suspects and the number of convicts has been falling for years, except in cyber crime.
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The WODC does, however, see in that monitor ‘limited and in the short term’ a pavement in juvenile crime: researchers will see ‘from 2018, after years of strong decrease, an increase in the number of minors convicted of serious violence, such as attempted serious abuse or attempted manslaughter’. However, these figures stabilize again in 2022 and 2023. So a trend cannot be determined.
Such a trend of paving cannot be concluded from the Halt figures. In Media, a lot of attention is paid to heavier crime, according to the spokesperson. This allows people to get an unbalanced picture, but “the serious crime remains excesses.”
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