Denmark’s justice minister has sharply criticized Rigspolitiet after reports that an error in the police fingerprint system may have left crime-scene traces unlinked to suspects. The error was found in 2023, but the independent evidence oversight board was not told until 2025.
An investigator at the National Unit for Special Crime, NSK, discovered the fault by chance in 2023. The system links crime-scene traces with fingerprints held in the police register. DR reports that Rigspolitiet only informed the Independent Supervisory Board on Evidence Matters about the fault in 2025.
Justice Minister Nicolai Wammen of the Social Democrats directed criticism at Rigspolitiet in a written reply to Ingeniøren and DR Nyheder. According to DR, Wammen said the ministry itself had not been informed of the case. He described it as very unsatisfactory that the oversight board was not told in time about such a serious error.
Wammen noted that the police have apologized for the handling of the case. He has nevertheless requested a formal account from Rigspolitiet, and will decide on further steps once he receives it. He has also asked the police to review their case procedures, including whether notification rules for the oversight board are sufficient.
Thousands of cases affected
The fault meant that fingerprint codings from crime scenes were missing in several thousand criminal cases between 2014 and 2023. Without the coding, possible connections between traces found at crime scenes and known individuals could not be identified.
Ingeniøren, which has read the account submitted by Rigspolitiet, reports that NSK examined 10 percent of the affected cases. That sample produced matches between individuals and 77 traces in 35 criminal cases. Because the review covered only a tenth of the cases, the total number of matches may be considerably higher.
Rigspolitiet has apologized for the error, both to Ingeniøren and in a written statement to DR Nyheder. In its account of June 25, 2025 to the evidence oversight board, Rigspolitiet and the Director of Public Prosecutions concluded that legal consequences cannot be ruled out. Had the coding been in place, identification through fingerprints could have occurred in several investigated cases.
The police also stress that a fingerprint cannot stand alone as evidence in a criminal case. Per Rigspolitiet, it is not possible to say whether cases went unsolved because of the missing coding, or how many. The 35 cases identified in the sample are serious criminal cases, and Rigspolitiet is examining their current status.
The case became public after DR and Ingeniøren obtained written responses and material on the delayed reporting. According to DR, the minister’s criticism followed those media inquiries. Questions about how police review procedures function have surfaced in other Danish cases as well.
