Police capacity issues: Not one rape, sex assault case brought to trial since new law
Despite additional funding for the police to hire extra vice detectives in the run-up to a new law against sexual violence, the police are still struggling with massive capacity issues. Since the new law took effect on July 1, not a single rape or sexual assault case has reached the courtroom, Trouw reports.
The new law made more forms of sexual misconduct punishable. For example, perpetrators can now be convicted if they knew or should have known that their partner did not want to have sex with them. That takes the burden off the victim to prove that they objected.
The expectation was that the law would lead to more sex crime reports, so the police received 5 million euros extra to expand its vice team’s capacity. The idea was to recruit 70 new people. According to Trouw, the police only recruited eight.
“We simply cannot fill vacancies,” a police spokesperson told the newspaper. “Not everyone likes this work.” They added that training also takes time. “It is very specialized work and mentally taxing. Simply not the most popular position in the police.” A relatively large number of detectives in this department quit in the past period, partly due to how taxing the work is.
Over eight months after the law took effect, the police still have to process almost 4,000 cases. Not a single sexual assault or rape case reached the courtroom after 1 July 2024.
According to Trouw, the police estimate that around 1,000 reports from 2024 could go to court under the new category of “rape or assault without coercion.” But the police added that convictions are not their main goal. According to the police, the new law does not make it easier to bring perpetrators to court but is mainly intended to “change behavior in society.”
According to the police’s own standards, sex crime detectives must transfer the investigation to the Public Prosecution Service within six months of the report. Last year, this happened with 57 percent of cases.
