Dutch Justice vs. U.S. Justice

From Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post:

What are the choices about crime each country [U.S. vs. Netherlands] made, and what are the costs of those decisions?

In the Netherlands, there are roughly 2.6 guns for every 100 people; there are more than 120 guns per 100 people in the United States. In the Netherlands, it is very, very hard to get a gun; in the United States, it is ridiculously easy to get guns. In fact, according to a report by Mariel Alper and Lauren G. Beatty in the Bureau of Justice Statistics, roughly “21% of state and 20% of federal prisoners said they possessed a gun during their offense. … About 29% of state and 36% of federal prisoners serving time for a violent offense possessed a gun during the offense.”

In the Netherlands there are about 27 gun homicides a year. Not 27 per 100,000. Total. In the United States, the Pew Research Center reports, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in 2021. (The U.S. population is about 20 times that of the Netherlands; U.S. gun homicides are more than 1,777 times the number in the Netherlands.)

Also, the Dutch do not incarcerate people for drug addiction. It’s one reason they have locked up so few people. The Guardian reported, “Since 2014, 23 prisons have been shut, turning into temporary asylum centres, housing and hotels. … The number of prison sentences imposed fell from 42,000 in 2008 to 31,000 in 2018 — along with a two-thirds drop in jail terms for young offenders. Registered crimes plummeted by 40% in the same period, to 785,000 in 2018.”

By contrast, a report from the Prison Policy Initiative found that in the United States, “Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of over 350,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. And until the pandemic hit … police were still making over 1 million drug possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences.” As a result, “Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses.” In short, the United States has 163 times the number of incarcerated people as the Netherlands, more than eight times as many per 100,000 people.

The cost of the U.S. criminal justice system is notoriously high. The conservative American Action Forum reported in 2020, “The United States spends nearly $300 billion annually to police communities and incarcerate 2.2 million people.” That’s just the tip of the iceberg. “The societal costs of incarceration — lost earnings, adverse health effects, and the damage to the families of the incarcerated — are estimated at up to three times the direct costs, bringing the total burden of our criminal justice system to $1.2 trillion.” Moreover, a massive body of data confirms that disproportionate numbers of Black people are arrested, incarcerated and killed by police.

These two very different systems didn’t just happen. Each country made choices. For all the money spent on police, courts and incarceration, do we in the United States feel safer than the Dutch? Almost certainly not. Because we are not. The Netherlands made choices about guns and drug addiction that have led to startlingly different outcomes.

Our choices have not made us safer and have cost us dearly.