The social effects of lockdown, working from home and homeschooling can only be assessed with some distance.

As early as spring 2020, the President of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Holger Münch, suspected that isolation and stress factors such as confinement, existential fear or tension could lead to an increase in violence against children.

This is now statistically proven.

Helen Bubrowski

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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According to the report on the crime situation during the pandemic, which the Federal Criminal Police Office published on Tuesday, significantly more children were sexually abused in 2020 and 2021 than in previous years.

The authors can prove a connection between low mobility and increased case numbers.

In 2021, 15,507 cases of abuse were registered, an increase of 6.3 percent;

between 2019 and 2020 there had already been an increase of 6.8 percent.

The registered increase in child pornography was even greater: in 2021 there were 39,171 cases, which corresponds to an increase of 108.8 percent;

between 2019 and 2020 the number had already grown by 53 percent.

However, in a significant proportion of cases, the time of the crime was well before registration.

The increase can also be explained by the fact that the German authorities have received more information from the American National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

In addition, a phenomenon that has been known for some time has increased: children and young people share child pornography material on social networks, often without knowing that they are committing a crime.

According to the registered data, violence in partnerships has grown less rapidly during the pandemic than investigators had feared.

Nevertheless, the absolute figures are frightening.

In 2021 there were 139,327 cases, an increase of 0.6 percent;

compared to the previous year, the number has grown by one percent.

Digitization means more attack surface

In the area of ​​cybercrime, on the other hand, the forecast increase actually occurred.

Cyber ​​crime in the broader sense, i.e. using the internet as a means of crime, saw an increase of 19.7 percent in 2021.

A third more crimes have been recorded here since 2019.

Advances in the digitization of society mean increased opportunities for cybercriminals to attack.

Especially in the second year of the pandemic, the Federal Criminal Police Office recorded an increase in connection with the corona protests.

A total of 9,201 politically motivated crimes related to Corona were reported for 2021, which is an increase of 158.5 percent compared to 2020. 1,971 of these offenses were violent crimes.

There are also declining numbers

In other fields, crime has gone down.

It's crimes like shoplifting, pickpocketing or burglary: when people are at home and the shops are closed, there are fewer opportunities.

In the years before the pandemic, the federal and state police had already achieved success with home burglaries by setting new priorities.

In 2020 and 2021, the numbers fell again significantly, the Federal Criminal Police Office recorded a minus of 36.6 percent.

The number of shoplifting fell by 10.2 percent in 2021.

In 2020 it had already fallen by twelve percent.