More than a quarter of all people registered as suspects of a crime last year were younger than 23 years old at the time. That the Central Bureau of Statistics reported on Tuesday. When being classified as a suspect, it makes a lot of difference what education someone has had and how much someone earns.
In total, approximately 150,000 unique suspects were registered for approximately 800,000 crimes in 2023. Two-thirds of them had previously been identified as suspects by the police. People who have completed secondary special education as their highest level of education are more than seven times more likely to be regarded as suspects than average. This is almost six times as often for people who have completed practical training. People from a household below the low income limit were suspected of a crime three times more often than average. This was even slightly higher for property, drugs and (fire)weapons crimes.
Small drop
There was a slight decrease last year compared to 2022, when the police registered 156,000 suspects. By comparison: in 2010, 272,000 people were suspected of a crime. Since the same year, the number of suspects of violent crimes (minus 57 percent) and crimes against public order (minus 53 percent) has halved. The number of traffic offenses decreased by 21 percent in the same period.
The number of young suspects decreased between 2010 and 2018, but stabilized in the following years. The age group 18-23 years is proportionally most often suspected of a crime: that is 178 per 10,000 inhabitants. After that, minors are proportionately the largest group, with 139 suspects per 10,000 people. People over 65 account for the smallest share.