Government moves to end police shelving of criminal cases

The government will require police to register all potential criminal cases as formal criminal cases and implement all recommendations from the National Audit Office on “case washing”, Danish broadcaster DR reports.

“Citizens must naturally be able to trust that the police handle their case properly and correctly, regardless of where in the country they live,” Justice Minister Nicolai Wammen of the Social Democrats said in a statement from the Ministry of Justice.

Police came under sharp criticism in May after a National Audit Office report found that cases had been shelved without genuine investigations.

“All potential criminal cases must in future be opened as actual criminal cases,” Wammen said.

The new government carried out a major leadership reshuffle in the police in June, replacing senior officials in both the National Police and the Police Intelligence Service. The changes were partly linked to the police practice of shelving cases, which was used in part to save resources. The government’s statement did not say whether the police would receive additional funding.

Several parliamentary justice spokespersons said in June that they no longer trusted National Police Commissioner Thorkild Fogde, who was later moved from his post.

At a closed meeting, Fogde told the spokespersons that he had known nothing about cases being shelved without genuine investigations to save resources. He also said he did not know the term “case washing”, which is used to describe the practice.

At the meeting, Wammen said he was open to providing additional funding for the police. He also noted that a multiyear agreement had already provided more money and better training for investigators and frontline officers.

In January 2025, then-Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said the Attorney General had informed him that there was no threshold of 500,000 kroner in three police districts for cases to be investigated.

DR later reported that the threshold was set out in writing by East Jutland Police following an agreement with the prosecution service. Hummelgaard was accused by parliamentary spokespersons and an expert of misleading Parliament.

“At the same time, police districts must not have local financial thresholds for deciding how cases involving financial crime are handled,” Wammen said.

The National Police and the Attorney General will now be required to provide regular reports on developments to the parties behind the political agreement.

The government had commissioned two reports from the State Prosecutor to gain an overview of how police shelved cases. Wammen said the National Audit Office’s report identified issues that were not covered by the State Prosecutor’s reports from December 2025. The reports were therefore not used.