Last year, the number of cases of murder and manslaughter fell in Amsterdam and The Hague, but rose in Rotterdam. Figures published on Tuesday by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) show that Rotterdam is the municipality with the most victims for the first time since 2008. The total number of cases of murder or manslaughter in the Netherlands rose to 142, sixteen more than in 2021.
Fewer people in the Netherlands still deliberately kill each other than in the 1990s and 2000s. In 1996, the earliest year for which Statistics Netherlands has figures, 240 victims of murder or manslaughter were counted. In 2016, the statistic reached its lowest point with 108 victims.
Men and women
Every year, roughly twice as many men than women are victims. The relationship with the suspected perpetrator shows a striking difference: in more than half of the cases, women are killed by their partner or ex-partner, while men are more often acquainted or strangers.
Statistics Netherlands also published figures on suspects of murder or manslaughter on Tuesday: last year, nine out of ten suspects were male. Men are therefore relatively often victims of murder or manslaughter, but are most likely even more overrepresented in the group of perpetrators.
Rotterdam
In Rotterdam, sixteen people were killed by murder or manslaughter last year, one more than a year earlier, while that number fell to ten and three respectively in Amsterdam and The Hague. Half of all murders took place in municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, Statistics Netherlands writes.
The municipality and the police of Rotterdam did not want to comment on the figures on Monday.
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