And this comes as a surprise?

Today's Telegraaf has a story (Dutch only) on the results of a survey by the Social and Cultural Planning Bureau (yet another institution in this country with a name that defies parody), that shows that 65% of Dutchmen are unhappy with the way the police to their job. People think the police should spend more time chasing criminals. Imagine that. And with just 14.6% of crimes (191,000 out of 1.3 million) being solved, it's not exactly surprising. And since most people only see the police when they get a speeding ticket, the misplaced priorities begin to register. Also of note: 90% of those interviewed thought that criminals should be punished more severely.

Holland must be one of the countries with the most lenient sentencing in the world. If you want to commit a murder, do it here. With some extenuating circumstances and a halfway decent lawyer, you'll likely get away with being sentenced to, say, 12 years. Throw some good behavior in the mix, and you could be out in 8. Even better, if you can claim to be an "activist" of some sort, you might get off even more lightly.

The new government, when it is not decending into farce, is planning to spend more money on the police. However, without realigning the police's priorities, it's going to be hard to make a dent in crime. One of the proposals that's come bubbling out of the new government is to be more lenient with people who exceed the speed limit by a small amount. Why not just increase the speed limit then? Current speed limits, especially on the highways, are ridiculously low (100 or 120 km/h, which is 60 or 70 mph), and are widely ignored. Having laws that are ignored on such a wide scale undermines respect for the law in general. When reality and the written law diverge by this much (and no harm comes of it), then surely the wise thing to do is to amend the law.

To round it all off, we also have the news that due to a "cell-shortage" many people who are arrested end up on the street again immediately. In the first six months of this year, 832 arrests ended up in the immediate relase of the suspects. In many more cases, the police don't even bother to act, since they know it's going to be futile. Now, isn't a "cell-shortage" an oxymoron? We have a number of cells. We have a number of criminals. Divide the latter by the former, and you get the average occupancy rate per cell. What's so horrible if this number is greater than one?