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Comment by thght | Hacker News Reader

What a lie this is..

In reality there is the decade old problem that the Dutch justice system cannot handle the amount of criminals. Not enough judges and money for that.

Partly because of this it has become very hard in the Netherlands to even file a police report for light to medium weight crimes committed to you. Police simply send you away if a crime is not heavy enough in their opinion. Criminals walk free on the street, and when they are caught they most often are back on the street the same day, unless it is a real serious crime of course.

At some point they even decided not to file a police report below 3Kg of cocaine smuggling from the Dutch Antilles. Why? There were just too many doing it and the justice system couldn't handle it..

The Netherlands in reality has a very high crime rate, but the government found smart ways to conceal that.

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The actual policy about the 3kg of cocaine is much more interesting and rather different from what you state. From http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTHAITI/Resources/Caribb...

> 7.13. Toward this end, the “100% Control” policy was implemented, in which flights landing in Schiphol originating from the Dutch Caribbean, Suriname, or Venezuela are subject to extensive searches. Rather than attempting to scare off potential smugglers with the threat of incarceration, the Dutch approach was based on increasing the rate of interdiction to the point that smuggling becomes unprofitable. In other words, the focus was on the drugs, rather than the couriers, and was based on incapacitation, rather than traditional deterrence. Europol described the mechanics of the policy in this way:

> > Crews, passengers, their luggage, the cargo and the planes are systematically searched. Couriers with amounts of less than 3 kg of cocaine are not detained, unless they are arrested for the second time or another criminal offense is involved. Instead, the drugs are confiscated and the smugglers are sent back. Couriers who have been identified are registered on a blacklist, which is provided to KLM, Dutch Caribbean Airlines and Suriname Airways.

You must be very naive to believe all that.. The actual amount of cocaine smuggled into the Netherlands is currently higher than ever before.

Also, the street value for 3Kg of cocaine is far above 50.000 euro's, do you realise how poor the people of the Dutch Antilles are? Without even a police report and a free ride back it's a clear invitation. And I didn't even mention the corrupt airport security, some of them make a sweet income out of this. It is definitely not "100% control", at all..

You said:

At some point they even decided not to file a police report below 3Kg of cocaine smuggling from the Dutch Antilles. Why? There were just too many doing it and the justice system couldn't handle it.

I was pointing to a World Bank study describing what actually happened, which is very different from what you said.

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