Official report that the police and BOAs draw up of violations contain so many defects that the Public Prosecution Service had to return nearly four in ten official reports last year. Because the mistakes could be restored in only half of the cases, tens of thousands of offenders have been unnecessarily free and the treasury has missed millions of fine income. This is according to figures and an explanation that NRC requested the OM.
Last year, the Public Prosecution Service received 317,200 reports of traffic violations such as driving without a driver’s license and other violations such as public drunkenness, rowing, wild peeing and fireworks nuisance. In 36 percent of those cases, the official reports appeared to contain such imperfections that they had to be returned by the OM to the police and other organizations with an investigation task. In the official report, for example, the identity of the suspect was not correctly established or there was no information to prove the criminal offense determined by the investigating officer.
According to the OM, 75 percent of all official reports come from the police annually. The remainder is issued by BOAs (extraordinary investigating officers) in the service of municipalities and public transport companies, among others. There are no substantial differences between the police and boas when it comes to which imperfections occur in the reports they provide, according to the OM.
Improvement program
The substandard quality of police reports were already found in 2012 by the Court of Audit. At the time, the cabinet, police and the Public Prosecution Service promised and improved and an improvement program was used. But instead of improving the quality of official reports, it-at least when it comes to violations-is further backwards. In 2021, 30 percent of the official reports were returned. That number has since risen by 20 percent, to 36 percent. According to the OM, it is not possible to check the error percentage from before 2021 because switching to another computer system.
As soon as an official report is returned by the OM, the investigation body will receive fourteen days to restore the defects. According to the OM this actually happens in about half of the cases. In the other half of the cases, the defects have not been restored or not correctly recovered. That means that last year around 57,000 offenders were not punished because the police and BOAs did not correctly repent the violation. Over the past four years, there have been more than two hundred thousand violations, a calculation learns NRC.
If the official report meets the requirements, the Public Prosecution Service decides whether a punishment must be imposed for the criminal offense. That can be a penalty decision with a fine, but also a community service or driving denial. The public prosecutor can also decide to submit a case to the court. Because of these different settlement possibilities, it is difficult to stick a exactly amount on the fine income that the treasury misses out on the errors in the official reports. It is estimated that this is in the many millions.
Efficient
The high number of official reports with defects and the time that the criminal justice chain is wasted with it at odds with a core priority of the College of Procurators General of the Public Prosecution Service to finish more things faster and work more efficiently. Defects in official reports that the police deliver are CEO Rinus Otte have been a thorn in the eye for some time.
The Court of Audit previously noted that the lack of quality of official reports across the board and therefore also with heavier criminal offenses. A spokesperson for the OM states when asked that the quality of quality currently occurs mainly in violations. “This is less the case with crimes.”
To help overcome the deficit of police officers, the police training was shortened from three to two years in 2021. Since then, the number of official reports has increased with imperfections, according to the OM figures. However, it does not dare to make a link with the short police training. Other causes for the high error percentage and the increase thereof also remains guilty. A spokesperson states that the Public Prosecution Service hopes to reduce the margin of error “by reconnecting what is missing in a file and why certain information is needed”.
A spokesperson for the National Police is looking for the explanation for the high margin of error in the transition for a fully digital system of verbalization. The quality control in that digital process, which previously took place on paper, must take “even further shape”. Relatively many mistakes would be made when noting the ‘reasons of science’: the way in which the investigating officer records his observations of the criminal offense. According to the spokesperson, the issue is “very serious” and a project runs through, among other things, police training to improve the quality of the official reports.
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