The Marengo trial against, among others, Ridouan Taghi has started, and the series Mocro Maffia is being watched en masse on Videoland. The link between crime and Moroccan culture is quickly established. At Radio Rijnmond, Abdessamad Bouabid, assistant professor of Criminology at Erasmus School of Law, explains why this link is unjustified.
In criminology, it is widespread that the overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in crime rates is not caused by cultural background: "They end up in crime because they grow up in poverty and in neighbourhoods where criminal behaviour is encouraged. In addition, there is still ethnic profiling by the police and the judiciary", says Bouabid.
According to Bouabid, this image is difficult to reverse, despite the countless exemplary figures such as Mayor Aboutaleb of Rotterdam and Najib Amhali. "Negativity influences more than positivity. These examples cannot compete with ram-raiding or ordinary nuisance in neighbourhoods". The first step in reversing these stigmas is awareness: this has to change! Problems with young people must be tackled as juvenile delinquency; it does not matter what origin these young people have, says Bouabid.
Bouabid's research also shows that Moroccan Dutch suffer from this stigma; many of them become despondent, furious or frustrated. "It also creates a sense of injustice. In education, terms such as equality and justice regularly recur, but Moroccan Dutch are confronted with the opposite in the real world. They get the feeling that they are held to different standards. We as a society should not want that", says Bouabid.
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You can read the whole article by Radio Rijnmond here (in Dutch).