Prof. Frank Weerman, professor of youth crime at Erasmus School of Law, responds to the increasing knife violence in the Netherlands in a broadcast from EenVandaag.
Statistics show that more and more young people in the Netherlands carry a knife. Over the past three years, the number of stabbing incidents involving teenagers increased significantly. Many of these young people cause problems but often they also have problems themselves, for example disadvantaged backgrounds or problems with parents, school or debts, says Prof. Weerman.
The increase is no reason to worry massively about the Dutch youth in general, but rather about the small group that is active in the field of knife violence and gun ownership, says Prof. Weerman. He argues that we need to gain more insight into the social media use of these troubled youth in order to understand and combat this problem.
Listen to the full fragment here (in Dutch).