Samenvatting

In the Netherlands, from 2007 police census data show a sharp decrease in the number of suspects of crime among juveniles aged 12 to 25 years old. How to explain this decrease remains unclear. Constructionist theories suggest that changes in police census data are fully explained by changes in the law enforcement system. Normative theories argue that changes in police data can be explained by demographic, social or economic trends. In this paper, we systematically explored the (inter)national literature for macro factors that could explain changes in juvenile crime. Next, in an empirical case study of the city of Amsterdam, we explored which of these macro factors relate to changes over time in the number of juvenile suspects of crime and the types of crime they were suspected of. Due to multicollinearity of the macro factors multivariate analyses were not possible. Our results indicate that the decrease in police registered juvenile crime in Amsterdam should be explained by multiple factors. Some of these factors concern policy investments (such as focus on school drop-out and targeted law enforcement), other factors relate to socialdemographic developments which appeared coincidentally.