Justice
More and more unfinished cases at the public prosecutor’s office
Numerous files are laid out on a desk. photo
© Lando Hass/dpa
More procedures, complex investigations, few lawyers. A mountain of unfinished work is piling up in public prosecutors nationwide.
Hamburg is at the top of all countries. The number of open investigations there increased by 57 percent within two years and stood at 35,629 (June 30, 2021: 22,691) as of June 30th. The numbers are based on a survey of the judicial administrations of the federal states carried out by the “Deutsche Richterzeitung” published by the Association of Judges.
The number of procedures is increasing in almost all countries
According to the survey, even in the most populous federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, more and more criminal cases remain unfinished. The public prosecutor’s offices on the Rhine and Ruhr recorded 231,291 cases by the middle of 2023 – an increase of 36 percent.
Bavaria, Schleswig-Holstein, Rhineland-Palatinate and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are below the national average, where there were almost a fifth more unfinished cases at the public prosecutor’s office within two years.
With an increase of 10 percent, Berlin is said to be well below the national average. Saxony-Anhalt was the only federal state to record a decline – which, according to the information, is due to the conclusion of a white-collar crime complex with several thousand cases of fraud in the first half of 2023.
New record for public prosecutors
Nationwide, there were more than 5.2 million new cases in public prosecutors’ offices in 2022, said the Federal Managing Director of the Association of Judges, Sven Rebehn. That is a new record. This upward trend has continued so far this year.
Rebehn sees the reasons, among other things, as increased criminal offenses under the Residence Act, more cases in the area of child pornography, also as a result of recent tightening of penalties, or the increased criminal liability for money laundering.
“A criminal justice system that is depleted of personnel is hardly able to keep up with the growing tasks,” said Rebehn. The criminal justice system needs to be better equipped in view of the growing tasks, he emphasized. However, there is a nationwide shortage of 1,500 lawyers in public prosecutors’ offices and criminal courts alone.