DUTCH NEWS: HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED

NRC/international headline: Fewer addicts stealing bikes as crime falls. Yeah, about 12 years ago, I needed cheap transportation on an extended visit to Amsterdam and naively bought for a few guilders a very used (read: stolen) bicycle from a guy outside the Wibautstraat Metro station.

Property crime in the Netherlands has been falling for years. There are fewer bicycle and car thefts, fewer burglaries, and fewer incidences of pickpocketing. The downward trend has been particularly marked since 2002.

"Frequent offenders, often junkies, sometimes commit thirty offences a day. If they go to prison for two years, the number of offences in the area in which they work can drop considerably." The number of frequently offending drug addicts has also fallen since 1995. Addicts have a low life expectancy, and there are now relatively few new addicts.