On August 29, 2018, a man was arrested in Berlin. The prosecution considered it proven that the 38-year-old has sexually abused two children for years and possessed child pornography. A judge imposed pre-trial detention. But because nothing happened for more than six months, except that charges were brought, the Court of Appeal ordered the detention last week. Not an isolated case, as figures from the German Judges Association show. According to them, more and more suspects are released from custody for overdue criminal proceedings.
Last year, the higher regional courts abolished arrest warrants for urgent suspects nationwide in at least 65 cases. These are mainly alleged felons or potential repeat offenders, the legal hurdles for remand are high.
Danger of flight can also be a reason. For offenses such as theft, property damage or personal injury, judges usually refrain from this measure.
The statistic of the German Judges Association shows a lasting trend for years: In 2017, 51 suspects were released because the courts did not progress fast enough with their work. In 2016, there were still 41. The number has thus increased in almost three years by almost 40 percent.
One reason is that more and more complex procedures are involved
The Association of Judges sees several reasons for this development. "A role sure plays, that criminal courts and public prosecutor's offices are strongly stressed and work on the stop," says national managing director Sven Rebehn. The procedures would become more and more complicated. Especially in international entanglements, the judiciary would have to deal with branched groups of offenders. The bottlenecks are often prosecutors.
"The amounts of data to be evaluated have multiplied," says Rebehn. Not infrequently, several terabytes of data were generated in extensive criminal cases. A current example of the problem described by Rebehn is the case of abuse in Lüdge. The investigators confiscated thousands of child porn files, the data volume is 14 terabytes. This corresponds to the equivalent of 3.5 billion fully written Din-A pages.
The judicial association fears that the tense staff situation in the courts could be aggravated, because by 2030 more than 10,000 lawyers have to retire and have to be replaced. Although the federal government supports the countries until 2021 in the recruitment of 2000 new prosecutors and judges. However, it is important to fill these positions quickly in all countries as well. According to Rebehn, the funds earmarked for this are not enough to cushion the approaching wave of retirements. There must be much more money in hand.