Filing a police report in the Netherlands: aangifte, rights and deadlines

Filing a police report in the Netherlands, an aangifte, means formally notifying the police of a criminal offence and asking that it be investigated and prosecuted. Anyone who has knowledge of an offence may report it, whether they are the victim, a witness or a bystander, and the police record the report in an official statement (proces-verbaal) that you sign. For a small number of very serious offences, reporting is not a choice but a statutory duty. What happens next is decided by the police and the Public Prosecution Service, not by the person who reported.

Aangifte, melding and an anonymous tip are three different things

The most common source of confusion at the counter is that Dutch practice distinguishes three ways of bringing something to the attention of the police, with different consequences. An aangifte is a formal report of a criminal offence in which you ask for prosecution. It is recorded in an official statement, it carries your name and contact details, and you sign it. It becomes part of the criminal file and the suspect and his lawyer will normally be able to read it.

A melding, or notification, is passing information to the police without formally requesting prosecution. Neighbours who report a suspicious situation, or a company that wants an incident on record without starting a case, are making a notification. The police register it and it may contribute to a broader investigation, but on its own it does not start one.

An anonymous tip is given through the independent reporting line Meld Misdaad Anoniem, which passes the information to the police without your identity. It is intended for situations in which someone knows something about a crime and fears reprisals. It is not a substitute for an aangifte: information from an anonymous tip generally cannot serve as evidence on its own, and no case can be built solely on it.

There is a middle route that is not widely known. A victim or witness who fears the suspect can ask to file an aangifte with a chosen domicile, giving the police station as the address instead of a home address, or in exceptional cases under a number rather than a name. Whether that is possible depends on the assessment of the risk, so raise it at the start of the interview rather than after the statement has been typed out.

Who may report, and when reporting is a legal duty

Article 161 of the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure allows anyone with knowledge of a criminal offence to report it. You do not have to be the victim, you do not have to be Dutch or resident here, and there is no minimum age. A minor can file a report, although in practice the police will want a parent or guardian involved and, for younger children, will normally speak to them differently.

Reporting is normally voluntary. There are two important exceptions. Article 160 of the Code imposes a duty on anyone who knows of a small group of very serious offences to report them without delay: offences against the security of the state, abduction, rape, and offences such as manslaughter and murder. Article 162 imposes a broader duty on public officials, who must report offences involving official misconduct that they discover in the exercise of their duties.

Professional confidentiality complicates the picture rather than removing it. Lawyers, doctors and other professionals with a statutory right to refuse to give evidence cannot simply be compelled to report what a client or patient told them in confidence, and the interaction between that privilege and the duty to report is a question that has to be assessed case by case. Separately, particular sectors carry their own reporting obligations, such as the duty of financial institutions to report unusual transactions and the mandatory reporting code in health care and education for domestic violence and child abuse, which requires a documented assessment rather than an automatic report to the police.

One thing to be aware of in the other direction: knowingly making a false report is itself an offence under the Dutch Criminal Code. That is not a reason to hesitate when you are unsure whether what happened is a crime, because assessing that is the job of the police and the prosecutor. It is a reason not to add facts you are not sure about in order to make a report look stronger.

How to file a report: online, by telephone or at the station

The route depends on the offence. Straightforward property offences without a known suspect and without violence, such as bicycle theft, pickpocketing, vandalism and many forms of online fraud, can be reported online at politie.nl using DigiD. The online form produces a proper aangifte and a reference number, which is what insurers ask for.

Anything more serious is reported in person. Call the national police number to make an appointment, and call the emergency number instead if the offence is happening now, if there is a threat to anyone, or if the suspect may still be nearby. Violent offences, burglary of a home, sexual offences, threats, stalking and any case with a known suspect are dealt with at the station or, in some cases, at your home. In urgent situations the police come to you and the report is taken there.

The report can be made anywhere in the Netherlands, not only in the municipality where the offence took place, and the police may not refuse to record an aangifte of a criminal offence. If you are told at the counter that something is a civil matter and not worth reporting, you are entitled to insist that the report is recorded; the assessment of whether the facts amount to an offence is for the prosecutor to make afterwards. Where a report is genuinely refused, a lawyer can submit the aangifte in writing to the police or to the Public Prosecution Service on your behalf.

You may be accompanied. A victim can bring a person of their own choosing to the interview, and a lawyer may attend as well. Ask when the appointment is made, so that time and a suitable room are allowed for it. An interpreter is provided where the report is not made in Dutch, and it is better to ask for one than to give a statement in a language you are not comfortable in: the wording of the statement is what ends up in the file.

Preparing the report and what to bring

Bring valid identification, since the police record your identity in the statement. Beyond that, the quality of a report is decided by what you can put in it. Write down, before the appointment, what happened in chronological order: the date and time, the place, what was said and done, who was present and what you did afterwards. Memory for detail fades quickly and the notes made on the day are worth more than a reconstruction three weeks later.

Take the evidence with you rather than describing it. Photographs of damage or injuries, screenshots of messages including the sender details and timestamps, transaction overviews for fraud, the serial numbers and purchase invoices of stolen items, medical records, and the names and contact details of witnesses. For digital offences, do not delete the account or the conversation before it has been secured; export it first. Where physical traces may exist, at a burglary for example, leave them alone and say so to the police before entering.

Read the statement before you sign it. The officer types up your account and it becomes the document everyone later relies on, so a summary that is subtly different from what you said should be corrected on the spot rather than accepted for the sake of politeness. Ask for a copy, and note the report number. You will need it for the insurer, for your employer if the offence happened at work, and for any later claim.

What happens after you have reported

The report goes to the police, who assess whether there are investigative leads. Not every report leads to an investigation and not every investigation leads to prosecution: the decisive factors are the available evidence, the seriousness of the offence and the capacity available. A report of a bicycle theft with no camera images and no suspect is recorded and, in most cases, goes no further. A report with a named suspect, witnesses and physical evidence is a very different proposition.

Where the police do investigate, the file goes to the Public Prosecution Service, which decides whether to prosecute. Dutch criminal procedure is built on the principle of expediency: the prosecutor may decide not to prosecute even where there is sufficient evidence, if prosecution is not in the public interest. The alternatives are a decision to drop the case (sepot), sometimes on conditions, a punishment order issued by the prosecutor without a court hearing for lighter offences, or a summons to appear before the criminal court.

As the victim you have statutory rights throughout. You are entitled to be informed about the progress of the case and about the decisions taken in it, to inspect the documents in the file that concern you, to add documents, and to be assisted by a lawyer. For serious offences, victims and certain relatives have the right to speak at the hearing about the consequences of the offence. Victim Support Netherlands (Slachtofferhulp Nederland) provides free practical and emotional assistance, including help with a compensation claim.

If the prosecutor decides not to prosecute

A decision not to prosecute is not the end of the road. Article 12 of the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure allows a directly interested party, in the first place the victim, to file a written complaint against a decision not to prosecute or not to continue a prosecution. The complaint goes to the court of appeal in whose area the decision was taken, and it must be filed within three months of the day on which the complainant became aware of the decision.

The court of appeal examines whether prosecution should nevertheless take place. It can hear the complainant, it can hear the person whose prosecution is sought, and it can order the Public Prosecution Service to prosecute. Such an order is binding. The procedure takes time, often considerably more than the parties expect, and it is not an appeal on the facts: the question is whether prosecution is warranted, not whether the suspect is guilty.

Complaints about how the police handled the matter follow a different route. Those go to the police force itself under its complaints procedure and, if the outcome is unsatisfactory, to the National Ombudsman. Neither route can force a prosecution; only the article 12 procedure can do that. Where the criminal route closes altogether, a civil claim against the person responsible remains available, and the standard of proof in civil proceedings is lower than in criminal ones.

How long you can still report an offence

There is no deadline for making a report as such, but there is a deadline for prosecuting, and once the right to prosecute has lapsed a report can no longer lead to a case. The limitation periods in the Dutch Criminal Code depend on the maximum sentence for the offence, running from a few years for minor offences up to twenty years for the most serious ones. Offences punishable by life imprisonment do not become time-barred at all, and serious sexual offences committed against children are also excluded from limitation.

Reporting early nonetheless matters enormously in practice, and not because of limitation. Camera footage is overwritten within weeks, telecommunications data is retained for a limited period, forensic traces degrade, and witnesses forget. The gap between the offence and the report is one of the strongest predictors of whether an investigation gets anywhere.

A separate deadline applies to offences that can only be prosecuted on complaint (klachtdelicten), such as defamation and stalking. There, prosecution requires an express request from the victim, and that complaint can be withdrawn within eight days of being filed, after which the withdrawal is final and no prosecution follows. For all other offences, an aangifte cannot be withdrawn: you can inform the police that you no longer wish to pursue the matter and that will be recorded, but the decision to prosecute remains with the Public Prosecution Service.

Claiming compensation as a victim

A victim who has suffered loss can join the criminal proceedings as an injured party (benadeelde partij) and claim compensation from the suspect in the same case, without separate civil proceedings and without a court fee. The claim covers material loss such as damaged property, medical costs and loss of income, and non-material loss for physical or psychological injury. The claim must be submitted on the prescribed form before the hearing and must be substantiated with invoices, statements and other documents.

The limit is procedural. The criminal court will only deal with a claim that does not place a disproportionate burden on the criminal proceedings; a complex damages assessment requiring expert evidence will be declared inadmissible in whole or in part, leaving the civil court as the route for that element. Preparing the claim properly, and keeping it to what can be proven with documents, is therefore what determines whether it is dealt with at all.

Where the court awards compensation it will usually also impose a compensation measure, under which the state collects the amount from the convicted person on behalf of the victim. If the convicted person has not paid within the statutory period, the state pays out the awarded amount to the victim itself, without a ceiling for victims of violent and sexual offences and up to a statutory maximum for other offences. Victims of violent crime may in addition apply to the Violent Offences Compensation Fund (Schadefonds Geweldsmisdrijven), which pays a one-off sum and does not depend on the offender being caught or convicted.

Sexual offences, domestic violence and threats

Sexual offences follow a distinct procedure. Before an aangifte is recorded, the vice unit (zedenpolitie) holds an informative interview in which the officer explains what a report involves, what the investigation would look like and what the possible outcomes are. That conversation is not itself a report and it does not oblige anyone to make one; its purpose is to allow the decision to be taken with the facts available. Reporting quickly matters here more than anywhere, because forensic evidence has a short life, and a medical examination can be carried out before the decision to report has been made.

In domestic violence cases the mayor can impose a temporary restraining order requiring the person posing the threat to leave the home and stay away from it, initially for ten days and extendable. That is an administrative measure that runs alongside any criminal investigation and can be imposed before anyone has been convicted of anything. Safe Home (Veilig Thuis) is the advice and reporting point for domestic violence and child abuse and can be approached anonymously for advice.

Threats and stalking are criminal offences, and modern cases are usually built on digital material. Secure the messages before blocking the sender: export the conversation, photograph the screen with the sender details and timestamps visible, and keep a dated log of every incident. A pattern is what turns a series of unpleasant messages into a prosecutable case of stalking, and the log is what demonstrates the pattern.

Being asked to report, and being reported against

Employers, landlords and insurers regularly ask for a report to be made. An insurer is entitled to require a report number for theft or vandalism, and an employer may need one for an internal investigation. Making a report because a third party asks for it does not change what it is: a statement to the police that has to be truthful and complete, and that becomes part of a criminal file over which you have no further control.

The mirror image is being on the receiving end. A person against whom an aangifte has been filed is not automatically a suspect, and being questioned is not the same as being charged. Anyone invited for an interview by the police in connection with an offence should establish first, in writing where possible, in what capacity they are being asked to attend. A suspect has the right to remain silent, must be cautioned before questioning, and has the right to consult a lawyer before the interview and to have a lawyer present during it. Those rights are worth exercising before the first question rather than after the statement has been signed; our criminal lawyers assist on both sides of that situation.

Mistakes that weaken a report

Waiting is the first and most damaging. Every week that passes reduces the evidence available and the chance that anything can be done. The second is leaving out details that feel embarrassing or unflattering; the police decide what is relevant, and an account that later turns out to be incomplete undermines the credibility of the whole statement. The third is signing a statement that has not been read properly, which is how an inaccuracy becomes the official version of events.

The fourth is destroying evidence without meaning to: cleaning up after a burglary, deleting an account, blocking and removing a sender, washing clothing. The fifth is confusing a notification with a report and assuming an investigation is under way when nothing has been requested. The sixth is doing nothing when the case is dropped, when the three-month period for an article 12 complaint is running from the moment the decision became known. And the seventh, in cases involving damage, is failing to keep any record of the loss, which makes a claim as an injured party impossible to substantiate later. Further background is set out in our criminal law guides and in our article on reporting a crime to the police in Eindhoven.

Filing a police report in the Netherlands