Change of policing policy?
01 January 1991
Change of policing policy?
artdoc March=1995
The new Minister of Justice, Mrs Winnie Sorgdrager, in the new
`purple coalition' government in Holland, composed of the Social
Democrats and two Liberal parties (excluding the
Christian-Democrats for the first time since 1945), has some
markedly different views from the former Christian Democrat
Minister Mr Ernst Hirsch Ballin. Together with Minister of the
Interior, Mr Hans Dijkstal (VVD, Liberal Conservatives), she has
managed to limit the influence of police chiefs and attorney
generals on policy - taking the lesson of the IRT affair to
heart. Mrs Sorgdrager has voiced her concern over threats to
privacy posed by certain proactive police methods such as
`inkijkoperaties' in private homes (peeping operations, ie:
burglarizing without a search warrant), and has announced her
intention to withdraw some bills which would introduce wider
police powers, including bugging by microphones and deals with
crown witnesses.
The new Minister has come up through the ranks as a public
prosecutor and an attorney general and has warned against an arms
race between the police and professional criminals. One of her
first initiatives was to start a debate and encourage local
experiments to supply long-time drug addicts with heroine under
strict medical guidance, a novelty in Holland. She has expressed
the desire to stop the building of new prison cells in 1996 while
bringing more prisoners into alternative punishment programs
including social work during the second half of their detention.
On Monday 21 November, a The Hague chief police inspector
testified to the Amsterdam court how the team he led in a major
cannabis investigation had executed no less than six
`inkijkoperaties' in the 1990/1991 period without informing the
public prosecutor who was in charge of the investigation. The
chief inspector stated that the permission of public prosecutor
Mr J Van Eck was not sought as `he would never have approved the
methods'. He added that such sensitive methods were never put
down in writing to avoid discovery by the suspects' lawyers. Also
his superiors in the police force were kept unaware under a
strict need-to-know doctrine to avoid embarrassment. The
president of the court Mr J Willems voiced his strong disapproval
of the modus operandi. The result may be that the imprisonment
of three detainees will have to be overturned and considerable
damages paid. Police chiefs fear that these developments may
create a domino effect, in which one big trial after another will
have to be reconsidered, ending in the discrediting of Dutch law
enforcement in serious crime cases and police credibility.
Statewatch, Vol 4 no 6, November-December 1994