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Many of the Dutch blame politicians for encouraging permissiveness that engenders crime. Others accuse the courts, specifically judges whose views were shaped in the 1960s and '70s and who continue to hand out minimal, sometimes absurdly lenient, sentences. In one notable case last year a young man was stabbed to death outside a disco in Hilversum by a punker. The 23- year-old killer was given four years in prison, two of them suspended.
Overcrowding in jails has reinforced the trend toward leniency. A convict who escaped from prison last year and was subsequently recaptured was pleased to discover that his cell had been assigned to a newcomer. The former inmate was released in his own custody to await a jail vacancy. Each Friday in Amsterdam, a district attorney tours detention cells to determine who can be released to make room for more serious offenders.
As public alarm over crime has risen, the government has responded. Minister of Justice Frederik Korthals Altes last February won overwhelming parliamentary approval for a $40 million omnibus crime bill that calls for hiring more police and creating a criminal-investigat ion arm to assist municipal detective bureaus. Meanwhile, Housing Minister Nijpels announced the construction of 3,000 jail cells to supplement the 5,000 currently in use.
Many foreign visitors are shocked by the Netherlands' wide-open drug scene. Heroin is still overtly sold on some streets, despite increased police vigilance, while soft drugs such as marijuana and hashish are readily available at coffee shops. Waiters bring the fixings right to the table. An enterprising service called Home Blow Couriers even offers free delivery of drug orders in excess of $12.50. Small wonder that youthful "hash tourists," especially from West Germany, flock to Amsterdam's Dam Square, or that visitors who do not understand Dutch occasionally experience strange feelings from the marijuana pastries they unknowingly eat in coffee shops.
The de facto legality of marijuana and other soft drugs is a vivid example of what Erasmus University Sociologist Jan van Doorn calls the Dutch practice of "repressive tolerance." He argues that much of the country's leniency is actually "tactical," in that it is aimed at isolating and controlling a problem "under supervision of the authorities." The technique has long been used in the Netherlands. As Van Doorn explains, "Allow open prostitution, but limit it to certain neighborhoods, that is, the notorious walletjes ((red- light districts)) in Amsterdam and other cities." Similarly, the sale of soft drugs is condoned at certain youth clubs.
Hard drugs are usually sold in more menacing surroundings. On the Zeedijk, a narrow enclosed street near the central railroad station where few residents walk after dark, peddlers sidle up to passersby, within sight of policemen patrolling in pairs. On Dam Straat, Amsterdam's other notorious drug row, a span over a placid canal dubbed the "pill bridge" served as the main bazaar for illicit prescription narcotics until police cracked down recently.