‘Twelve percent have a chance of ending up in the drug world’
More than 12 percent of young people in Emmermeer have a chance of ending up in drug crime. In Emmen there are a total of 1,100 young people between the ages of 8 and 23 who have a high chance of ending up in drug crime. This is evident from figures from RTL Nieuws and View on Undermining. Across the Netherlands it would be 162,000 young people
The risk is greatest among early school leavers or young people who have previously been in contact with Bureau Halt. In Emmermeer (12 percent), Emmen Center (9 percent) and Emmerhout (9 percent) most young people have a high chance of ending up in drug crime.
“It is possible that some of these young people actually end up in drug crime,” criminologist Robby Roks of Erasmus University told RTL Nieuws. According to him, a lot of attention is needed for these young people. “Some of them can also go very well in a few years, but there is the possibility that they will grow into organized crime.”
According to the criminologist, this includes trafficking in narcotics, cocaine, involvement in liquidations and other forms of serious violence. The researchers emphasize that these figures do not mean that all these young people actually end up in the criminal circuit.