Take the asylum Nood Act. He had to send “a signal.” What that signal is exactly remains vague. That from now on we fine -tune people if they offer hungry foreigners a soup? That we make illegality punishable, while we are not an agent left to record your stolen bicycle?
We have around 100,000 people without papers. No idea where they are. We have 0 extra cells and a shortage of 14,000 agents. And yet we pretend we can pick up those people. Who are we fooling here?
Laws that you cannot maintain are not cool. They are dangerous. They give the impression that the government consciously looks away. And if that trust falls away, people will ‘maintain’ themselves. Such as those types who went to check cars in Ter Apel for ‘suspicious’ passengers. That came creepy close to the Burgerguard playing based on skin color.
And then something: everywhere where one criminalizes formal help, criminal networks are rooting. Refugees do not disappear, they only disappear from view. In Belgium, this led to tent camps in Brussels a few winters ago, with crying children in the snow. Part of the capital turned into a Syrian African refugee camp.
Same genre, other theater: Amsterdam. There the city made it impossible for Zwervers to sleep on benches, “on principle.” The result? A scourge of nuisance at stores, more aggression, more incidents. But yes, those benches were so civil.
What both examples share: policy that does not change behavior, but wors out behavior. Policy as ritual, legislation as a moral statement. It is reminiscent of a toddler who calls “blablabla” with his hands on his ears in the hope that the problem will go away.
But problems don’t disappear because you look away. They disappear if you really dare to arrange something. Laws that don’t solve anything are not a policy. It is theater for an audience that has long been home.
Tom De Bruyne is a behavioral scientist, partner at Sue & The Alchemists, and co-initiator of the movement for our Netherlands.