Traffic safety is an important theme for the police and the judicial authorities. In the area of traffic safety, the measures taken are often offender-focused. It is assumed that a small number of offenders of traffic regulations are responsible for a large part of the total number of traffic offences committed. In order to realise a personalised approach, it is important to have knowledge of the backgrounds and ‘criminal careers’ of the traffic offenders. The Research and Documentation Centre (WODC) of the Ministry of Security and Justice developed the Traffic Crime Monitor for this purpose. This Monitor can be used for studies into the overall scope of traffic crime in the Netherlands and into the backgrounds and recidivism of traffic offenders. This report endeavours to answer the following questions: 1 Which developments occurred in the nature and scope of registered traffic crime in the preceding years? 2 What are the background characteristics of various subgroups of traffic offenders? 3 What is the recidivism rate among traffic offenders? The study provides figures of registered traffic crime and is conducted by applying the methodology of the Dutch Recidivism Monitor. The data were retrieved from the Research and Policy Database for Criminal Records, which is a pseudonymised version of the Criminal Records System. The use of the Research and Policy Database for Criminal Records implies that the overview provided only concerns registered crime. This is presumably only a small part of the actual number of criminal offences. Offences that remain unnoticed by the police are not recorded in the registers. In addition, only the relatively serious traffic offences are recorded in the Criminal Records Register. Offences that fall under the Traffic Regulations (Administrative Enforcement) Act, such as minor speeding offences, were, for instance, not taken into consideration. This study relates to all persons in the Netherlands who came into contact with the law in the period of 1997 up to and including 2007 for violating the Road Traffic Act 1994, the Road Traffic and Traffic Signals Regulations 1990, or the Civil Liability Insurance (Motor Vehicles) Act. The total population studied consisted of nearly 1.5 million persons, varying from well over 150,000 traffic offenders in 1997 to well over 215,000 traffic offenders in 2007. In order to emphasise the figures relating to the traffic offenders a bit more, the researchers also used a reference group. This reference group consisted of all adult offenders who had been guilty of other of-fences than traffic offences in the relevant year. In the years before and after the relevant year, they may also have been involved in traffic cases. The reference group of other offenders consisted of nearly 800,000 persons, from well over 90,000 persons involved in one or more cases (not being traffic cases) in 1997 to nearly 110,000 in 2007. (Author/publisher)
Abstract