NCJ Number
194208
Date Published
2002
Length
72 pages
Annotation
This report presents statistics on homicide in the Netherlands in 1998.
Abstract
Data from the National Police Agency (KLPD) were used, as well as newspaper clippings, interviews with police officers responsible for investigations, and data from the prosecutor’s office on prosecution and court decisions. Data were structured into four different groups: the victims, the known offenders, the events, and the relations between victims and offenders. Two main dimensions were used to classify homicides: the motive of the offender and the relation between offender and victim. This resulted in the following categories: liquidations, drug-related, criminal-other, sexual, robbery, intimate, fights between acquaintances, fights between strangers, psychotic, other, and unknown. There were 202 homicide events in 1998 with 225 victims and 230 known offenders. Nearly a third of the homicides were found to be “intimate” and about a fifth belonged to one of the three criminal categories (liquidation, drug-related, and criminal-other). Homicides receiving the most publicity were sexual and disputes between strangers, though each constituted only four percent of the total. Forty percent of the victims were killed by a gun, 27 percent by a knife, and 33 percent by other means. There was an increase in the percentage of gun killings in comparison with previous years. Firearms were used more by men than by women, and more by ethnic non-Dutch than ethnic Dutch offenders. Most of the homicides occurred in the western part of the Netherlands, in particular the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague. More than half were committed inside a house, most of them in the house of the victim. June, July, November, and January were the months with the most homicides. Homicides occurred mainly at night, with Friday and Saturday nights being the most prominent. The majority of offenders were male and between 20 and 40 years old. A substantial number of offenders were unemployed at the time of their offense. At least two thirds of the victims were acquainted with the offenders. A total of 168 offenders were sentenced to incarceration, with the average sentence length of 83 months.