Crime statistics: cybercrime falls – but only at first glance

Crime in the digital space continues to occupy federal and state police forces intensively. This is according to the police crime statistics (PKS) presented today by Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD), the President of the Federal Criminal Police Office Holger Münch and Bremen's Senator of the Interior Ulrich Mäurer on behalf of the state interior ministers this morning in Berlin.

131,391 crimes such as computer fraud, i.e., the use of other people's data with the aim of obtaining goods, services, or other financial benefits, or computer sabotage – including encryption Trojans – were recorded by the police, which were committed from within Germany. This represents a decrease of 3,016 cases compared to the previous year. Just under a third of these cases were solved. However, only those cases are counted in which at least one suspect is located in Germany.

At the same time, however, the number of cybercrime offenses from abroad continued to rise to 201,877 cases, explained BKA President Holger Münch on Wednesday morning: “If we look at the offenses committed abroad, we have an increase of 6 percent.” And their clearance rate is negligible at 2.2 percent. Münch explains this by saying that both the investigation and the cooperation with the perpetrators' countries of origin in the prosecution are extremely difficult.

As many of these cases involve criminals who make call centre-like promises of profit, he believes that the most effective way of achieving this is prevention by raising public awareness. According to Münch, the focus of investigative work is different here: “We need to focus less on the individual case and more on the structures.”

Decrease in depictions of sexual abuse of children, increase in adolescents

The police crime statistics for 2024 also contain some positive news in the area of child sexual abuse: The number of cases fell by 5.2% to 42,854. On the other hand, there was a further increase in the distribution, acquisition, possession, and production of pornographic content for young people.

There were a total of 9,601 cases in this area, of which 8,700 have been solved. Many of the cases involved young people who had forwarded their own nude images or similar. The volume is particularly high on social media platforms, which often automatically detect such content and forward it to the police. Many people are apparently unaware that this could be a criminal offense, at least for the recipient. Young people need to be made aware of this, said Münch. From a police perspective, the role of the young people themselves poses a further problem: “They only realize this very late in the investigation of the case.” It therefore ties up resources that are urgently needed elsewhere.

The traffic light government had actually intended to take another legal look at criminal liability for possession and to treat such cases of sending by young people themselves differently in the future, which had led to a significant increase in cases. However, the reform fell victim to the end of the traffic light coalition. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser appealed to the future federal government: “I believe it would be helpful to bring about a legal clarification.”

(dmk)