Status: 03/26/2023 11:17 a.m
The number of crimes in Germany is increasing again. This emerges from the police crime statistics for 2022, which the “Welt am Sonntag” reports in advance. According to this, 5.62 million criminal offenses were registered nationwide.
The number of crimes recorded in Germany has risen again after the corona pandemic has subsided. Citing the police crime statistics (PKS), which Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser plans to officially present in Berlin on Thursday, the “Welt am Sonntag” reports that around 5.6 million crimes were committed nationwide in 2022. This corresponds to an increase of 11.5 percent compared to the previous year.
More burglary despite home office
In previous years, the number of registered crimes in the Federal Republic had declined. According to the “Welt am Sonntag”, the current number of cases is also 3.5 percent higher than the comparative figure for 2019, the last year without corona restrictions. The clearance rate was given as 57.3 percent. According to the report, the number of suspects increased compared to 2021 – by 10.7 percent to around 2.1 million.
About a third of the total of 5.62 million criminal offenses are thefts. There was an increase of 20 percent to 1.78 million cases. Overall, however, the level is below 2019 (1.82 million).
There was also an increase in home burglary: This increased by 21.5 percent to 65,908 cases, although many people are still working from home and therefore there are fewer opportunities to commit crimes. The number of cases of pickpocketing and shoplifting has also increased, it is said.
Rising crime among young people
According to the “Welt am Sonntag” newspaper, there is a noticeable development in the area of juvenile delinquency. According to the report, there is a significant increase in child suspects (93,095), up 35.5 percent. That is significantly more than in 2019 (72,890).
A new “trend” is the distribution of child pornographic video and image files in chat groups among schoolchildren. In addition, the PKS identifies 189,149 suspected young people between the ages of 14 and 18 – in 2019 there were 177,082. The most common offense among children and young people is theft, followed by bodily harm, property damage and drug-related crime.
According to the newspaper report, North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister of the Interior, Herbert Reul, called for the next conference of interior ministers to deal more with the increasing violence among children and young people. A lack of social skills is one of the reasons for this: “But the Internet, with all its dodgy pages, sometimes videos glorifying violence or games that are circulating there, will also play its part,” says Reul.