The Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice has announced that there has been a "spectacular" drop in the number of street muggings in the first eight months of 2014.
During the official launch of Safety Week, the Ministry revealed in a press release that muggings recorded to the end of August this year have dropped more than 20 per cent compared with the same period in 2013.
Between January and August 2014, 3.612 street robberies took place in the Netherlands, whereas 4.525 such robberies occurred during the same time frame in 2013.
In signs of an ongoing positive trend, the Netherlands already experienced 12 per cent fewer robberies in 2013 than in 2012.
Ivo Opstelten, the Minster of Security and Justice, was pleased with the cooperation and commitment of all parties involved.
At the Safety Week launch Opstelten stated "it is through the joint efforts of the police, local authorities, the Public Prosecution Service, businesses and citizens that the number of street robberies has been reduced. Let this be a stimulus to continue this approach."
The theme for this year’s Safety Week is Minder cash, wel zo veilig (Less cash, even safer), which illustrates the Ministry’s intentions to increase security by encouraging people to carry less cash.
Reducing cash in your wallet, and paying with alternatives such as pin, lowers vulnerability and makes the enterprise of street crime less attractive to criminals.
The ministry is also currently working with Samsung on phone device locks to cut the number of stolen smartphones in the Netherlands.
The drop in street robberies corresponds with improvements in other areas of public safety, such as burglaries, which saw a reduction of 15 per cent in the first six months of 2014 compared with same period in 2013. Burglaries in the Netherlands have been nearly halved since 2009.
Source: Ministry of Security and Justice