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Court document errors: Potentially thousands of innocent Dutch have criminal records
Due to mistakes made with names in court documents, there are potentially thousands of Dutch residents who have criminal records without even realizing it. The Court of Audit identified 876 name errors in court documents in a study last year. Whistleblowers told the Telegraaf that, in reality, it's closer to around 50,000.
The Court of Audit report concerns the Judicial Information Service (Justid), the service that collects, manages, and links confidential information about the identity, criminal history, residence status, and detention of people.
The authority found dozens of ways errors can enter the criminal justice system’s databases. Sometimes a suspect’s identity is incorrectly determined upon arrest. Sometimes something goes wrong with the automatic linking of government systems. Sometimes someone legally changes their name. Other times, Justid workers make a mistake. “Perpetrators may escape punishment and innocent citizens are unfairly confronted with criminal law,” the Court of Audit said.
In one example cited by the Telegraaf, a red-haired Irish man had to serve a month-long prison sentence for reckless driving of a red-haired Brit due to a name error. In this case, the mistake happened in the way the police searched their systems. The search key is based on the first initial, the first four letters of the surname, and the year of birth. These matched for the Briton and the Irishman.
Due to a careless moment, an innocent Irishman who frequently visited the Netherlands had to serve a month in prison despite loudly proclaiming that he had never been arrested. The Supreme Court eventually acquitted the Irishman, but only after he served the other man’s sentence.
According to Justid whistleblowers, the number of mistakes is much higher than the 876 errors the Court of Audit identified. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” whistleblower Marleen de Wilde told the newspaper. Many cases go unreported. “You won’t hear about convicted criminals who never receive their sentence. And someone who, as an innocent person, has a sentence hanging over their neck, only realizes it when it starts ot affect them.”
Another whistleblower told the Telegraaf that these arrows could affect “possibly around 50,000 cases.”
The Ministry of Justice and Security expects to inform parliament about the number of name errors in court rulings and how they have been corrected by the middle of this year. The Ministry is also investigating a change in the law to allow for faster correction of name errors.
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