Bank robbers have become a rare species in Germany: the number of attacks on banks, savings banks and post offices has fallen by 95 percent over the past three decades. In 1993 the Federal Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden counted 1623 attacks on “financial institutions and post offices”, last year there were only 80, as the time series of the Federal Criminal Police Office show. Police, banks and insurers see several causes for the phenomenon. In the mid-1990s there were still almost 70,000 bank branches in Germany; at the end of last year, according to the Bundesbank, there were still a good 24,000. So bank robbers now have less choice than before. Added to this are technical advances and the declining importance of cash. The risk for the perpetrators is also extremely high: the police can now solve three quarters of all attacks. “If additional security measures such as low cash holdings lead to correspondingly low loot expectations, robbery usually turns into unattractive crimes from a risk-benefit perspective,” explains a spokeswoman for the BKA.
Federal Criminal Police Office – Hardly any more bank robberies – Economy
