Let’s Calmly Say the Number: PKS 2018

The Police Crime Statistics (PKS) is a comprehensive record of police-registered offenses, aggregated from the data of individual states and systematically processed until final resolution. This foundational statistic depicts the development of crime since 2004. However, it is important to understand that only offenses reported to the authorities are included in this statistic. A multitude of offenses—especially those that fall directly under the jurisdiction of the public prosecutor, such as financial and tax crimes, perjury offenses and state security offenses—remain unaccounted for. Moreover, foreign crimes, administrative offenses and most traffic violations are not included.

Even within the realm of police responsibility, many offenses escape recording. The so-called dark field can be substantial. To shed light on this, victimization surveys are conducted, such as in 2012 and 2017, and will be repeated every two years in the future. In these surveys, randomly selected individuals are asked whether they have fallen victim to a crime within a given period.

These surveys can partially illuminate the dark field, yet many influencing factors on the PKS remain unaccounted for, such as the reporting behavior of the public, legislative changes, modifications in statistical recording and the intensity of police controls. The PKS primarily reflects the crime development of the past year compared to the previous one, even though the time of the offense may relate to earlier years, often due to prolonged investigations. Only upon completion of the police investigations does an offense become relevant in the PKS.

The aim of the PKS is to depict the development of crime in terms of victim numbers, types of offenses, offender groups and crime rates. The insights gained from this analysis feed into preventive and repressive police work, organizational planning, empirical research and the identification of legislative gaps. Some of these gaps have hopefully been closed in recent years, which complicates the comparability of recorded offenses.

A notable example is the “Fiftieth Act to Amend the Criminal Code: Improvement of the Protection of Sexual Self-Determination,” which significantly tightened sexual criminal law following the Cologne New Year’s Eve incidents. This is one of the reasons for the massive increase in sexual offenses in the past two years. In part, the changed legal situation was already factored into the previous period (2017) and in part only in the current one.

Another significant legislative amendment is the “Fifty-First Act to Amend the Criminal Code: Criminalization of Sports Betting and Manipulation of Professional Sports Competitions” from 11 April 2017. This amendment closed a long-standing legislative gap and now ensures that fraud in high-stakes professional sports can be prosecuted.

Also noteworthy is the “Fifty-Second Act to Amend the Criminal Code: Strengthening the Protection of Correctional Officers and Rescue Workers.” Even though direct comparative figures are lacking, a separate recording of such offenses was necessary due to the massive increase in these types of violent crimes.

The Interior Minister proudly announced a decline in registered offenses to the lowest level since 1992. Compared to the previous year, the rate declined by 3.6 percent to 5,555,520 offenses excluding immigration-related violations—pronouncing this number clearly demonstrates the magnitude of the issue.

It is positive to note that many forms of theft-related offenses declined. Simple theft decreased by 7.5 percent, robberies by 5.4 percent and burglaries even by 16.3 percent. Street crime (down 6 percent) and fraud (down 7.6 percent) also registered a decline. However, the comparability of these data with previous years remains complicated due to legislative changes.

Particularly pleasing is the decline in serious sexual offenses by 18.2 percent. Yet with sexual crimes, the dark field remains high because many incidents are not reported due to shame, fear of prejudice or other personal reasons.

Additional good news came in the form of reduced fraud offenses involving cashless payment methods (down 2.9 percent), violent crimes (down 1.9 percent), bodily injury (down 1.2 percent) and offenses against personal liberty (down 0.3 percent). Even dangerous or serious bodily injury and the mutilation of female genitalia recorded a minimal decline (down 0.2 percent).

However, some offenses have increased in frequency. In particular, computer crime and insults each rose by 1.8 percent. A widespread misconception is that there exists a special offense of “insulting a public official”—this, however, does not exist.

There were also rising case numbers in economic, corruption and official offenses (up 3.1 percent) as well as in offenses in the environmental and consumer protection sector (up 3.4 percent). Particularly striking is the increase in homicide offenses (up 3.9 percent) and offenses against the Weapons Act (up 5.5 percent). This development reflects the heightened perception of incidents involving knives.

Drug-related offenses increased by 6.1 percent and offenses under the Medicinal Products Act by 8.3 percent. The rise in the distribution of pornographic writings by 13.6 percent underlines the legal tightrope that digital content must walk. Such content is subject to increasingly stringent controls, and even innocuous “likes” or retweets can raise suspicions of distribution.

Particularly alarming is the massive increase in acts of resistance against state authority (up 39.9 percent). This surge is partly due to legislative amendments but also reflects the dramatic rise in violence against police officers and rescue workers.

Despite an overall decline in the crime rate, the proportion of non-German suspects is rising disproportionately. For example, offenses against personal liberty by immigrants increased by up to 19.3 percent. Particularly alarming is the 56 percent increase in acts of resistance and physical assaults on state authority by immigrants. Violations of the Weapons Act in this group also increased by 36.2 percent.

Notably, drug-related crime among immigrants increased by 21.6 percent, led by amphetamines and their derivatives (up 60.6 percent). Nevertheless, a small ray of hope is that so-called migration-related crime overall declined by 9.3 percent, even though the dark field is likely difficult to quantify.

In summary, the crime statistics reveal positive developments. However, detailed analyses show that the public’s subjective sense of security is entirely justified. In 2018, a total of 2,051,266 suspects were recorded, of which 708,380 did not hold German citizenship and 281,628 were immigrants. These numbers paint a very clear picture of the state of affairs.

Sources for this article:

Bundeskriminalamt. (2018). Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik 2018. Bundesministerium des Innern, für Bau und Heimat.