Cybercrime is an increasingly important issue for investigators and courts. In 2020, 22 perpetrators were legally convicted in Bavaria, 46 percent more than in the previous year, said Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich (CSU) at the presentation of the criminal prosecution statistics on Wednesday in Munich. There were also more convictions in relation to sexual offenses such as child sexual abuse. The corona pandemic was also reflected in the judgments. According to statistics, there were 70 judgments for subsidy fraud, compared to just 14 in 2019.
A total of almost 117,000 people were legally convicted in Bavaria in 2020, more than 82 percent of them are men. In 2019, the number of convicts was 121,250. Fines were imposed almost 90,000 times. More than 16,000 convicts received a term of imprisonment, but more than 63 percent of them were suspended. Around a quarter of the cases involved road traffic offenses, followed by property and property offenses and, in third place, theft and embezzlement. 4.2 percent of all convicts were between 14 and 17 years old, 7.4 percent between 18 and 21 years.
Eisenreich sees an urgent need for improvement in connection with depictions of abuse of children – there were 473 judgments in Bavaria in 2020 (2019: 373). This material is distributed around the world on the Internet, primarily through forums. He called for the minimum fine to be increased for the operators of such exchange forums. “Anyone who operates a marketplace for pedo criminals should be behind bars for at least three years,” said the minister. In Eisenreich’s opinion, there is also a lot in need of reform when it comes to cyber attacks. Criminals caused enormous financial damage, 220 billion euros a year in the German economy alone. If, for example, ventilators in hospitals fail as a result of such acts, they could even cost human lives. Some of the criminal offenses, however, originated in the 1980s, and some of the penalties were in the minor range. A thief of objects can be punished more heavily than someone who steals data. Eisenreich called for the penalty framework to be raised and for attempts to be made punishable when spying on data or stealing data. In addition, the injustice must be particularly punished in the event of attacks on critical infrastructures.