‘Scum’ village for nuisance neighbours

Social misfits to be sent to caravan and container camps to reform

AMSTERDAM is to create “scum villages” where nuisance neighbours and anti-social tenants will be exiled and rehoused in caravans or containers with “minimal services” under constant police supervision.

The Dutch capital already has a squad of municipal officials to identify the worst offenders for a compulsory six-month course on how to behave.

Problem families living in council houses or tenants who do not show an improvement or refuse to go to the special units face eviction and homelessness.

Amsterdam mayor Eberhard van der Laan has tabled the £810 000 (R11.5-million) plan to tackle 13 000 complaints of anti-social behaviour every year. He complained that long-term harassment often led to law-abiding tenants, rather than their nuisance neighbours, being driven out of their homes.

“This is the world turned upside down,” the mayor said this week.

The project also involves setting up a telephone hotline and systems for victims to report their problems to the authorities.

The new punishment housing camps have been dubbed “scum villages” because the plan echoes a proposal from Geert Wilders, the leader of a populist Dutch right-wing party, for special units to deal with persistent troublemakers.

“Repeat offenders should be forcibly removed from their neighbourhood and sent to a village for scum,” he suggested last year. “Put all the trash together.” While denying that the new projects would be punishment camps for “scum”, a spokesman for the mayor stressed that the residential units would aim to enforce good behaviour.

“The aim is not to reward people who behave badly with a new fiveroom home with a south-facing garden. This is supposed to be a deterrent,” he said.

The tough approach taken by Van der Laan appears to jar with Amsterdam’s famous tolerance for prostitution and soft drugs but the plan reflects a hardening of attitudes to routine anti-social behaviour that falls short of criminality.

There are already several smallscale trial projects in the Netherlands, including in Amsterdam, where 10 shipping container homes have been set aside for offenders, under 24-hour supervision from social workers and police.

The new policy will go into affect in January next year when the first offenders will be moved to the new units.

In the 19th century, troublemakers were moved to special villages in Drenthe and Overijssel outside Amsterdam. The villages were rarely successful, becoming estates for the lawless.

“We have learnt from the past,” the mayor’s spokesman said. – The Daily Telegraph