EMI (European Metropolitan Institute, Brussels) Public Lecture ‘Effective approach to juvenile crime prevention’, November 2011

EMI (European Metropolitan Institute, Brussels) Public Lecture ‘Effective approach to juvenile crime prevention’, November 2011

Ladies and gentlemen,

As you know, urbanisation has become one of the global challenges of this century. People are moving to the cities in ever greater numbers. These cities are spreading and growing towards one another. Often cities in the same region end up merging into a metropolis – possibly under a unified regional body. We see these developments taking place all over the world, and certainly in Europe too.

　In view of these developments, I proposed to the municipal council of The Hague last year that a European institute for large cities and metropolitan expertise should be set up.

There has been a national institute of this kind in the Netherlands since 2001.　This institute was at the time set up jointly by central government and the local and provincial authorities of the Netherlands. The results have been very positive.

Together with this institute and similar institutes throughout Europe, as well as other urban organisations in Europe, we have set up the European Metropolitan network Institute, or EMI. As the name suggests, this is a network organisation in which the emphasis will be on working with partners throughout Europe.

　The mission of the EMI is to strengthen the socio-economic position of European cities through knowledge and innovation.

It will create opportunities for cooperation between universities, cities, research institutes, network institutes and the private sector. The motto being: ‘research based, practice led’.

　On the one hand, the EMI takes problems and experience from the urban practice and turns them into research questions for academic research programmes. It brings experts from industry and the academic world together to analyse these issues and look for funding for research projects. This process is referred to as drawing up Knowledge & Research Agendas. These agendas identify strategic and long-term research issues to be addressed in the social, economic and spatial areas.

On the other hand, the EMI analyses already published research results and turns them into knowledge and instruments which can be applied in the day-to-day urban practice. These practical tools enable cities to deal more effectively with such urban challenges as unemployment, empty office buildings, road congestion, social exclusion and anti-social behaviour (or youth nuisance).

　Today, at this EMI Public lecture, you can get a taste of how the EMI brings together research and its practical application.

A real problem, which many people living in urban areas are faced with is anti-social behaviour by youngsters, youth nuisance.

Young people who appear to be going off the rails are causing a nuisance and creating problems in public spaces and thus spoiling the social climate and the pleasure of living in urban communities. These same young people are our capital for the future. For the residents who experience their behaviour as a nuisance, as well as for the young people and their parents, it is necessary that the city authorities intervene.

I am pleased to see that there is so much interest in dealing with anti-social behaviour, which has become a real problem in society. I hope that in this diverse European setting we can learn from one another.

As Mayor of The Hague, international city of peace and justice, I am responsible for the municipal council’s safety and public order portfolio. I am also head of the Haaglanden regional police force. Because the way in which safety and public order is organised differs from one country to another, here is a brief outline. In the Netherlands safety and public order is covered by various parties:

The mayor: city father, chairman of the Municipal Executive with special responsibilities and powers in the areas of safety and public order. The mayor is the competent authority for the enforcement of public order and has the fire service and the police as instruments for this.

The Public Prosecution Service: is responsible for the investigation and prosecution of punishable offences. The Public Prosecution Service also oversees the proper enforcement of court rulings (fines, penalties, alternative sanctions and prison sentences).

The police: tasks include supervision in public spaces, maintaining public order, investigation of punishable offences and providing emergency assistance. The Minister for Security and Justice has overall responsibility for the police. The mayor as head of the police force also has authority over the police. The police is currently organised into regional forces. The chief of police is responsible for the day-to-day management.

The municipalities have a regional role: they are responsible for ongoing policy development and implementation, involving partners and ensuring that problems are quickly and efficiently resolved. The municipality further has an important role to play in prevention.

The mayor, chief of police and the chief public prosecutor together form the local triumvirate: they discuss developments, policy and the results.

Dealing with anti-social groups of youths falls under my portfolio as mayor. A considerable problem in The Hague. In any event, it is perceived as such by the residents: one in five residents of The Hague has at some time been affected by nuisance caused by young people.

This could take the form of serious nuisance, intimidation, threatening behaviour and sometimes even petty crime.

I will show you a short film which is representative of the type of anti-social behaviour seen in The Hague. (Show film of Frans Halsstraat), I will then tell you how we responded to this.

I will first outline the scale of the problem in The Hague where there is a real problem – albeit not on the scale of the Paris suburbs and, more recently, the London riots. I will then discuss The Hague’s method and, in particular, look at the measures we took on the Frans Halsplein, which you just saw in the film.

In The Hague we divide problematic groups of youths up into bothersome groups, groups causing nuisance and criminal groups.

Every year the police, the municipality and the public prosecutor’s office together, take a look at the problematic groups of youths based on general aspects such as the size of the group, ethnicity and contact with the criminal justice system.

How do these categories differ from one another?

• The bothersome youth groups:
• less than 20 people
• generally not much age difference between them
• half of them are often native Dutch, largely either attending school or working
• the problems they cause are largely limited to their own surroundings: own neighbourhood
• the nuisance aspect here includes petty property crimes, such as shop-lifting or theft from companies, sometimes home burglary, and provocation of residents or partner organisations, such as youth work.
• The community police officer can still approach these groups and talk to them.

The youth groups causing nuisance:

• more than 20 members
• greater age difference: between 12 and 24 years of age
• sometimes at school or with a job, but often unemployed and have been in trouble with the police
• they generally cause problems in their own local environment, elsewhere in the municipality, sometimes in the region or even beyond that
• sometimes there may be criminal members
• there is often soft drug use involved
• what kind of nuisance do they cause? Provocative, threatening or physically violent behaviour towards local residents and sometimes the police as well, petty and more serious property crimes (e.g. home burglary, drug dealing)
• two-thirds of the members are in possession of illegal knives and similar weapons.

The municipality coordinates the approach for dealing with youth groups that are bothersome or cause nuisance. Criminal youths groups:

• more than 20 people
• large age differences
• Moroccan Dutch overrepresented
• less substance use than in the other two categories
• they act sometimes at regional or even supraregional levels
• their behaviour? Hanging around, public drunkenness, excessive noise, petty and more serious property crimes and acts of violence, and drug dealing.
• The police and the public prosecutor’s office are responsible for dealing with criminal youth groups.

In October 2010 The Hague had 50 problematic youth groups: of these 14 were bothersome, 27 nuisance-causing and 9 criminal. The Hague municipality’s goal for the current term of office, 2011-2015, is to tackle all criminal youth groups within two years and, at the same time, deal with all known youth groups causing nuisance by 2015.

The Hague started developing a method for dealing with youth groups causing nuisance in 2007. Four sites in the centre were selected. Efforts were concentrated here for a number of years, and with success. This resulted in a method which is now being applied across the city, including in the area where the film you just saw was recorded.

The approach itself focuses on a specific area and combines preventive and repressive measures with personal attention. The Safety Centre has an important role in this approach. There was an article about this in the EMI newsletter; briefly summarised, the Safety Centre is an organisation where the partners involved in safety join forces to arrive at a unified and coherent approach. These partners are:

• The municipality
• The police
• The Public Prosecution Service
• The Probation Service
• Care and welfare organisations, including the Child Care and Protection Board and the Domestic Violence Support Centre.

Key elements in our youth approach are:

I send the youngsters a letter in which I speak to them about their behaviour. The youngsters receive an offer of help in the letter in the form of a tailored process to help them find work or return to education, for example, with alternative leisure activities , as well as care and support.

In the letter I write that continuing this behaviour will lead to sanctions. Parents are also informed and made aware of their responsibilities.

The police keep a close eye on the youngsters who do not wish to cooperate and act accordingly if the need arises.

The police and the public prosecution service concentrate on confiscating property which has been criminally acquired and diminishing status.

Optimum use is made of the administrative avenues. An exclusion order can be imposed, for example, something which has been made easier to obtain under the recent Nuisance Act. This act, officially the Combating Football Hooliganism and Serious Public Nuisance (Measures) Act (more generally referred to as the Nuisance Act), provides the mayor and the public prosecutor with additional powers to be able to deal with persistent and serious nuisance.

Under the Nuisance Act the mayor can impose an exclusion order or a group ban on people who, either individually or as a group, repeatedly disturb the public order. Although there has to be a serious concern that there will be further public order disturbances.

Where an ‘under 12 minor’ is involved, the mayor can order the parents or guardian to ensure that the child does not enter a certain area unaccompanied or he may not leave the home unaccompanied between the hours of 8.00 pm and 6.00 am.

The social and physical surroundings we address together with our colleagues in the urban districts. We involve businesses and residents associations in this process as well as other partners, such as youth work and social services. How did this method

How did this method work out on the Frans Hals square, which you just saw in the film, where youths had claimed the square as their domain thereby creating a dangerous situation and causing nuisance to others? This group of youngsters was a constant source of nuisance: they littered and despoiled the surroundings, caused noise nuisance by shouting and riding around on scooters or racing over the square in a car, as you just saw. They also intimidated residents and passers-by, committed burglaries in the neighbourhood, were responsible for vandalism and drug dealing was going on.

The square is located in one of the most vulnerable problem areas of The Hague: Schilderswijk. A deprived area in many respects compared to many in The Hague.

Schilderswijk has a large immigrant community, the average income is low and unemployment is high, with overdue maintenance required on many homes and in public spaces. In short, a district where the quality of life is under severe pressure. The municipality and the residents are doing everything in their power to improve the situation. A great deal is being invested in this disadvantaged area funded from various municipal budgets, with tackling youth nuisance at the forefront.

The solution was found in:

Paring the group down to its discrete members, with an individual and tailor-made approach for each one provided by the Safety Centre, together with a supporting offer of help.

Temporary CCTV monitoring was also installed at the site. In addition to their frequent patrols, this gave the police more of an overview of what was going on on the square, and the camera footage could be used to identify individual members of the youth group causing nuisance. CCTV surveillance is not a measure to be undertaken lightly: for cameras to be installed there have to be demonstrable and serious offences taking place which greatly disrupt public order. The police applied a zero tolerance policy and intervened hard and fast in the event of any offences taking place. Agreements were made with the Public Prosecution Service about the speed with which cases would be handled and the severity of the sentencing.

The municipality refurbished the public space , I will show you some photos of this (photos of the situation after refurbishment). The municipality has the square cleaned daily. Bearing in mind the ‘Broken Windows theory’, as it is known, which states that a disordered environment leads to more disorder and vandalism, a better maintained environment has been invested in.

The municipality has also deployed ambulant youth workers from the Stedelijk Mobiel Jongeren Team (Mobile Urban Youth Team) who speak to young people about their behaviour and where possible guide them towards more worthwhile leisure activities.

In addition, the municipal enforcement team provides extra monitoring, people leaving litter or creating disorder, for example, are more quickly fined.

Businesses and residents have been made more capable of standing up for themselves. A neighbourhood intervention team has been set up which, under police supervision, patrols the streets weekly during the evenings on the lookout for any misconduct. Besides this, Moroccan, Hindustani and Turkish community elders have joined forces in a Community Elders Team.

This concerted action is unique, certainly when you consider that in the past these population groups wanted to have nothing to do with one another and now they are working together to improve the quality of life in their own neighbourhood. They speak to youngsters about their behaviour. Other parents also receive instruction from the community development organisation on how to speak to their children if they misbehave.

We are here today not only to talk about the successes; there is always room for improvement, even in The Hague. The obstacles to optimum and effective cooperation are a major factor.

These obstacles lie in the need to confer with all the organisations involved – each with their own policies, goals, procedures, and legal responsibilities – as well as in confidentiality requirements which may differ from one partner organisation to another, and can stand in the way of creating a tailored plan for each individual. The Safety Centre of The Hague, which since 2009 has brought many of the safety partners together under one roof, is a step in the right direction towards fewer long-drawn out procedures. It has made it easier to work together more efficiently. However, even though the cooperation is getting better, in practice there are often still legal or bureaucratic hurdles – such as rules about which body can take certain decisions – that stand in the way of immediate and targeted action.

This is an argument which I would therefore like to throw into the discussion later: we need to explore the limits of what is legally acceptable when it comes to finding solutions to the problems caused by youth groups. Bending the rules!

The Hague approach is, of course, not the only approach, and we are here today principally to learn from one another. Therefore I am very curious to see what the interactive sessions will bring. Let’s make sure that this meeting is not just a one-off, in today’s society networking is vital. I would therefore especially like to encourage you to remain in contact with one another about effective ways of dealing with youth nuisance. And I warmly invite you to visit The Hague if you would like to learn more about how The Hague approach works in practice.