Police arrest 585 fugitive criminals through app

The police have been able to track down 585 fugitive criminals with the help of a new app in recent months. In the app they can see whether people who are stopped still have an outstanding sentence.

This is reported by the Algemeen Dagblad today. A total of 11,000 people were fugitives last year. These are people who still have to serve a prison sentence. One of the problems is that the criminals reside in many different computer systems and are therefore often not visible to the right people. Normally a special team of agents sits on the group of criminals with the most severe sentences, but smaller criminals often remain at large.

In the past seven months, the police have been using a new single computer system instead of multiple different systems. The data from the single system is also accessible to ordinary agents. If they stop someone on the street, they can immediately see via the app whether the person has such a punishment open. Agents can also view residential addresses in the app. The app has been used by agents since October 1.