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The Handling of Juvenile Cases by the Dutch Police

From various American studies on police work it has become evident that, in their decision about the settlement of a case, police officers are rather guided by, what I would like to call, delictextrinsic factors (person and social setting of the suspect) than by delict-intrinsic factors (offence and offence circumstances). Through these studies my interest in the situation in the Netherlands was aroused. Which disposition-criteria would the Dutch police use? In order to get an idea of the disposition-criteria I subsequently investigated some observational studies of researchers who had tried to trace these criteria. From this research literature it becomes clear that patrolmen on surveillance pay special attention to certain stereo-types; "indecent" and "serious delinquent" types are sooner suspected of criminal activities than others. In the encounter between police-officer and suspect outward appearance and demeanour of the suspect appear to be specially important disposition-criteria. In practice this means that coloured people and persons from the lower socio-economic strata are often dealt with more severely. Officers from the detective-branch appear to apply other directives; their decisions are mainly governed by the social background and the character of the suspect, as well as by his willingness to co-operate. After I had studied this literature I proceeded to do some research on the Dutch situation. The research method I decided on was that of participant-observation. While participating in the daily work, I studied the procedures at the juvenile bureaux in The Hague and Amsterdam. This period lasted 5 months at each bureau. I selected the juvenile police as research object because this police department takes an important position in the deviancy process of a person. Its choice of disposition strongly influences the course of the lives of many young offenders. I recorded my experiences in the juvenile bureaux in two parts. Firstly in the form of a diary, which was meant to illustrate the way the juvenile officers operated; secondly in standardized observation lists, in which per bureau about 250 cases were entered from beginning to end and in which as many data as possible were collected about suspect, detective, offence and disposition decisions.