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300,000 convictions missing from Belgian criminal records database

Xinhua, October 10, 2015 Adjust font size:

Details of 300,000 criminal convictions in Belgium over a seven-year period are missing from the country's central criminal records database, local media reported on Saturday.

According to Flemish newspapers De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws, the mix-up means an estimated 120,000 repeat offenders have benefited from more lenient sentences than normal, because judges had no idea about their previous convictions between 2007 and 2014.

Belgium's federal justice minister Koen Geens said there was a delay in putting the details into the criminal records database, and a team of 30 civil servants have been working on clearing the backlog by 2018.

A technology upgrade within the next six months will allow about two-thirds of the missing convictions to be uploaded to the system automatically, but the remaining 100,000 have to be inputted manually, the newspapers reported. Endit