After the banning of criminal motorcycle clubs such as Satudarah, Hells Angels and No Surrender, the number of small motorcycle clubs in the Netherlands is increasing rapidly. This is evident from one monitoring research of the police.
The number of members of banned clubs is decreasing, but the police see three times as many suspicions of violent crimes among members of new clubs as among members of traditional clubs and one and a half times as many as among members of banned clubs. Six questions for public prosecutor Niels Huisman. At the national public prosecutor’s office he is the portfolio holder for motorcycle gangs – or: ‘Outlaw Motor Gangs’, as the public prosecutor’s office calls them.
In total, the number of crimes committed by members of motorcycle clubs appears to have decreased slightly. Does that mean good news?
“The number of suspicions is decreasing. But that is only what we have insight into. In the past, members of motorcycle clubs wore vests and were checked because they had a logo on their back. Now you only check when they do something wrong and you no longer have any idea whether someone is a member of a club. So it darknumber, what is normal in crime is increasing again.”
Is the problem really getting smaller or do you see less of it?
“That’s hard to say. Although you see less crime on the streets, there are now many small clubs, with even more criminal appeal than before.”
You also see relatively many incidents of violence at these new, small clubs. Hasn’t crime just moved?
“I don’t know if you can say that so definitively. Satudarah is now banned, but you see small clubs using the same color scheme: black and yellow. Occasionally it has also been possible to get someone convicted for continuing a banned club. But in another case, prosecution led to an acquittal because there was insufficient evidence. So some of the new clubs are simply a continuation, whether you can prove that or not.”
Doesn’t prosecution just become more difficult because you have to prove that something is a continuation?
“In some cases we manage to demonstrate this, in other cases the judge is not convinced that it is a one-on-one continuation and then we have to build up further evidence. That can be quite difficult, yes.”
Does it make sense to ban those larger clubs, if crime continues in other clubs and you then have to prove it again?
“The professional criminals in the cocaine trade, for example, have of course not disappeared. We didn’t expect that either. The question was indeed: should we ban clubs, at least if we have insight into it? Ultimately, we did this to reduce intimidation on the street. And that seems to be working.”
“In addition – and now I’m going to speculate a bit – motorcycle clubs have a certain position in international crime networks. And the bigger the name of the club, the greater its reliability. I can imagine that smaller clubs find it more difficult to do business, because they have less proven themselves as a reliable partner. That is not something we can determine now, but it could have a positive effect on crime control.”
The effect on crime control therefore remains to be seen. What is the advantage of breaking up those large criminal clubs?
“That really is the street scene. That challenging ‘we are intangible and the police cannot do anything to us’ with groups driving by, that is really less. And that was also an important goal. But we shouldn’t think that new clubs are all nice. We must just as well remain vigilant.”