A nationwide survey into an emerging form of human trafficking known as "criminal exploitation" is being carried out in the Netherlands after the first local study in Rotterdam – scene of last month's anti-lockdown riots – indicated the problem is much worse than previously thought.
The Rotterdam study by the anti-trafficking centre CKM says that vulnerable young people are at much greater risk of being exploited by criminals than the authorities realise – mainly because official statistics are unrealistic and mask rather than reveal the scale of the growing problem.
"Criminal exploitation is a relatively new form of human trafficking where victims are forced to commit criminal offences and are therefore wrongly portrayed as perpetrators – while the real criminals remain unaffected," says Shamir Ceuleers, a team leader with CKM.
“What shocked us most about this survey is that there is a huge gap between official figures for this type of exploitation and what frontline professionals, such as neighbourhood police officers, youth workers and school attendance officers, encounter every day.”
What those frontline professionals have found is that young people with learning difficulties or volatile family situations are most of risk of being targeted.
Drug runners
They are typically approached on the street, at school, in places where teenagers gather, or online through social media, and are induced to act as couriers or drug runners, small-time stuff at first.
“They’re often asked to do a job in exchange for free dope,” says Ceuleers, “and once they get entangled in that underworld there’s no easy way out. It’s distressing to see how young some of them are, sometimes just out of primary school.
“The problem is that these young people don’t see themselves as victims. They know they’ve been involved in crime and so even if they have misgivings the last thing they’ll do is go to the police. The people who control them know that.”
In the November rioting, police revealed that more than half of those rampaging through the streets of Rotterdam burning and looting indiscriminately were minors, under the age of 18.
They were from all over the country, keeping in touch on Snapchat, Instagram, Telegram and WhatsApp and switching location in swarms – faster than police could respond.
Justice minister Ferd Grapperhaus said he believed the rioting was premeditated, in some cases by "organised groups of adults". He refused to be more specific. However, serous organised criminality in the Netherlands tends ultimately to be drugs-related.
A nationwide survey is being conducted in 12 other large municipalities in the Netherlands. Early indications are that all paint a depressingly similar picture of underprivileged children being covertly exploited by gangs at an early age. The results will be published in the first half of next year.
