Samenvatting

The ‘Shortlist troublesome youth groups’ is a compact survey that enables police-officers to categorize problematic youth groups on a general level. The ‘shortlist’ results in three categories. The least troublesome groups are labelled ‘annoying’, the more serious groups are referred to as ‘disturbing’ and the most serious ones are called ‘criminal’ youth groups. As a quick scan, the shortlist tool has originally been developed in order to prevent criminalization of youth. It has now become a compulsorily used instrument for all 25 police services in the Netherlands. The shortlist is seen as the central starting point that should ultimately lead to the implementation of multidisciplinary interventions to tackle the specific problems that the youth groups cause.This article briefly discusses the highly subjective judgements of perceptions of disorder in society. Against this background this article describes the aim, the benefits and limits to the use of the shortlist. This analysis is based on fifteen years of experience with the annual listing of troublesome youth groups by means of the shortlist at the Haaglanden police service.This contribution concludes that the shortlist is a useful instrument that enables police officers to efficiently categorize problematic youth groups. Several changes by the Haaglanden police service with regard to the content as well as to the procedure further optimized the use of the shortlist. However, its global characteristic hampers evaluation of local safety interventions on the group. Also, comparisons of results between police services are not possible just like that. For those purposes (evaluations and comparisons) additional, i.e. more detailed information on the groups are to be gathered. The shortlist-methodology consists of further steps that include more in-depth analyses.Having said this, the shortlist is a valuable quick scan tool that enables professionals to swiftly categorize problematic youth groups.