German public prosecutors completed almost five million preliminary investigations in 2020.
That is around 1.2 percent more than in the same period last year, the Federal Statistical Office reported on Monday, citing internal figures from the public prosecutor's offices.
Property and property offenses remain at the top.
Around one third of all the proceedings that were carried out involved theft, robbery, fraud or breach of trust.
As a result of the lockdown in spring and from autumn onwards, the number of burglaries is likely to have decreased significantly because many working people stayed at home.
This decline had already been predicted by criminologists.
Marcus Jung
Editor in business.
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From March 2020 on, other allegations were in the foreground for the prosecutors. Sven Rebehn, Federal Managing Director of the German Association of Judges (DRB), spoke to the FAZ in February of this year of 20,000 cases alone due to fraudulent Corona emergency aid or other pandemic-related crimes. He expected that it would probably take until the end of the year to complete all the accrued investigations.
At 17.4 percent, road traffic offenses follow at a considerable distance.
Here the number of completed proceedings fell noticeably by 3.3 percent.
The statisticians in Wiesbaden attribute this to the significantly lower volume of traffic in lockdown.
The greatest increase, because they came from a low level, was recorded in procedures in state security matters.
46,000 completed procedures mean an increase of 30.6 percent.
More than half of all proceedings ended with a suspension in 2020, so there was no trial before a criminal court.
In the most frequent cases, the prosecutors discontinue the investigation due to a lack of suspicion (28.9 percent) and unconditionally (24.3 percent).
Only every fifth case resulted in an indictment or a penalty warrant.