Three thousand reports of serious crimes were not processed in 2024 because the police or the Public Prosecution Service had insufficient (investigative) capacity. That shows an investigation that the Court of Audit did into police expenditure and the priorities set by the organization. This included possible violent and sexual crimes, subversion cases and serious theft.
The regional differences are large, the Court of Audit concludes: declarations were most often left undone due to capacity problems in Limburg and less often in Eastern Netherlands and Rotterdam. Because investigation teams are overloaded, the investigation of serious crimes such as home burglaries, robberies, sexual offenses and violent crimes also increasingly shifts to basic police teams.
10,000 reports of serious crimes remained unresolved in 2024, the Court of Audit writes: in addition to the 3,000 that were not processed due to capacity problems, 7,000 cases were “rejected in advance”. It is not clear from the research why this happened.
In addition to capacity, the Court of Audit also looked at the priorities set by the police and saw that the most serious cases, those with the most social damage, do not receive the most attention. For example, the Ministry of Justice and Security pays a lot of attention to cybercrime and digitalized crime, even though the social damage from these matters is relatively low. The Public Prosecution Service spends a relatively large amount of time on shoplifting and possession of hard and soft drugs.
In a response to NOS and ANP, Minister David van Weel (VVD, Justice and Security) says that the ten thousand declarations on which the Court of Audit reports paint a “distorted picture”: they were not only declarations, but also notifications. Van Weel acknowledges that improvements are needed, but says that the police’s field of work is “extensive” with “scarce capacity”.