About 8,000 convicted criminals have escaped from prison, most of them abroad

Currently, about 8,000 convicted criminals are out of jail, 90% of whom cannot be traced because they have fled the country, a figure requested by the Ministry of Justice. gelderlander show.

Of the 7,853 wanted criminals, 606 have been convicted of serious crimes. One of them, Sherwin Windster, shot a man during a robbery in 2015, fled a long-term care clinic in Nijmegen last year and has been missing since.

Most, however, were convicted in absentia and “disappeared” after failing to respond to letters instructing them to appear in prison. Suspects do not have to appear in court.

Police official Peter Hominga, who heads the Rotterdam Missing Convictions project, said searches for criminals escaping prison have stepped up since 2017. Parole.

About 11,000 convicted criminals were on the run at the time without any action taken, Mr Homminga said. “At the time, Holland was seen as a place where people could roam around as they pleased, even if they were sure of their name,” Hominga told the newspaper.

In 2021, the project has led to the creation of a special team charged with identifying criminals who have arrested and detained at least 435 people by October last year.

Homminga said the current number of 8,000 will not drop significantly. Ninety percent of them have fled abroad, often to countries that do not have extradition treaties with the Netherlands.

“That doesn’t mean we won’t catch them at some point. The files are reviewed regularly, and from time to time we find that some have returned to Holland,” Homminga said.