Crime,crime control and criminology in Germany

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the situation of crime, crime control and criminology in Germany. Official crime data, victimization studies and self-reported delinquency studies consistently indicate that crime rates have been rather low in recent years, and that the amount of crime has decreased in recent years with respect to violent as well as most non-violent offences. In contrast, increasing right-wing extremist violence and Islamist terrorism are a cause for concern. After a long decline, fear of crime has recently started to increase again for certain offences such as burglary. An increase in punitive attitudes or punishment styles cannot generally be observed, and the prison rate is comparatively low. The situation of criminology in Germany is ambivalent: on the one hand, promising research is being conducted; on the other hand, the implementation of criminology within universities has been cut back.

Keywords

Crime control crime development criminology Germany

Introduction

The situation of crime and crime control in Germany is currently ambivalent. On the one hand, the country has to cope with some serious and partly also new threats to its public security: attacks by Islamist terrorists; a rapid increase in violent offences against refugees by right-wing extremists; and certain crimes committed by some specific groups of refugees and migrants (for example, the collective sexual harassments on New Year’s Eve 2015/16 in Cologne and other cities). On the other hand, the development of crime and crime control has all in all been quite calm for a couple of years. The situation of criminology is, however, less promising.

A comprehensive overview of a country’s state of crime, crime control and criminology has to focus on those issues that are always or currently of major public and scientific concern. In this report about the situation in Germany, five issues are selected: the prevalence and development of crime and delinquency, crimes by Islamist or political extremists, fear of crime, penal law enforcement and punitivity and criminology in Germany.

Prevalence and development of crime and delinquency

The state of knowledge about the prevalence and development of crime and delinquency is mainly based on official police or court data. Some smaller victimization studies have been conducted from time to time. However, in Germany, there have up to now been no regular surveys like, for example, the Crime Survey for England and Wales. Only recently two large victimization surveys have been set up which are supposed to be carried out on a regular basis. Thus our knowledge about the prevalence and development of crime in Germany is quite limited. After reporting on police-registered crime and victimization rates, juvenile delinquency, immigration and crime, and corporate crime will be discussed.

Police-registered crime rates

As elsewhere in Western countries, Germany, too, has experienced a remarkable crime drop in recent years (Tonry, 2014), and the current level of almost all known offences is quite low. After an increase in mainly property offences in the 1970s, Germany experienced a partial decrease in crime rates in the 1980s. However, crime rates began to increase again in the 1990s (Birkel, 2015: 25–35; Heinz, 2016: 81–92), to a certain extent in the aftermath of the social transition processes in Central and East European countries. While property offences, robbery and homicide started to decline at the end of the 1990s, assault and sexual offences have been steadily decreasing since the late 2000s. In 2016, the downward trend for violent crimes (with the exception of robbery) came to a halt, and the rate of violent crime (summary category) increased by 5.8 percent (Table 1), mainly owing to a massively increased population of asylum seekers (see below).

Table 1.

Rates of offences (including attempts) registered by police (per 100,000 inhabitants).

	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Homicide^a	5.2	4.6	4.8	4.2	4.0	3.5	3.5	3.3	3.2	3.3	3.1	3.0	2.9	3.0	2.9	2.7	2.8	2.7	2.7	2.6	2.6	2.7	2.6	2.9
Rape & aggr. sex. assault	–	–	–	–	–	9.6	9.2	9.1	9.6	10.4	10.6	10.7	9.9	9.8	9.1	8.9	8.9	9.4	9.2	9.8	9.2	9.1	8.6	9.6
Robbery & extortion^b	76	71	78	83	85	79	75	72	69	71	72	72	67	65	64	61	60	59	59	60	59	56	55	52
Aggravated assault	108	108	117	124	130	134	140	142	146	154	161	169	178	183	188	184	182	175	170	166	159	156	157	170
Violent crimes (total)	198	192	209	219	227	227	228	228	229	240	247	256	258	261	265	257	254	246	241	238	230	224	223	236
Shoplifting	829	720	753	802	826	799	727	685	668	678	647	617	559	531	496	481	481	474	472	442	442	452	482	461
Car theft	265	260	247	209	168	137	114	101	92	86	77	71	61	51	48	45	49	51	50	46	47	45	45	44
Burglary	280	259	259	239	222	203	182	170	163	158	149	150	133	129	133	132	139	148	162	176	186	188	206	184

Notes:

Murder and non-negligent manslaughter.

Including robbery, extortion resembling robbery, and assault on motorists with intent to rob.

Source: Bundeskriminalamt (2017a: Table 01).

In 2016, a total of 5,884,815 offences (excluding traffic offences and offences against immigration laws) were registered by the police, as usual mainly petty offences.¹ The crime rate was 7,161 per 100,000 inhabitants (Bundeskriminalamt, 2017b: 18);² 661 completed cases of homicide were registered (Bundeskriminalamt, 2017a: Table 01) – a rate of 0.8 per 100,000 inhabitants.³

In recent years, only the rates for some specific offences, such as burglary⁴ and pickpocketing, have been steadily increasing (however, in 2016, these two offences slightly decreased; see Table 1 for burglary). Practitioners assume that this increase was partly due to a rise in professional cross-border crime. Anyhow, since the clearance rates are typically low for these offences, the picture remains incomplete (Dreißigacker et al., 2015).

Victimization

The latest nationwide victimization survey was conducted in 2012 by the Max-Planck-Institute and the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt), with a representative sample of 35,500 respondents. The 12-month victimization prevalence rates were quite low: for robbery, burglary and car theft below 1 percent, and for assault and theft below 4 percent (Birkel et al., 2014: 12–15). Similar results were obtained in victimization surveys carried out in 2012 and 2014 in the north German state of Lower Saxony (Landeskriminalamt Niedersachsen, 2016: 28–30). As far as we know, there have been no remarkable changes in the recent past. In Lower Saxony, victimization prevalence remained quite stable at this low level between 2012 and 2014. And in a national study carried out in 2004, 2006 and 2010, there was a slight decline in criminal victimization between 2006 and 2010 (Baier et al., 2011: 86–8).⁵

Juvenile violence

The increase in juvenile violence was a big media and political issue in the 1990s and 2000s. In police statistics the prevalence of youth violence tripled between the early 1990s and 2007 – from 0.3 to 1.1 percent (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Police-registered suspects of violent offences (per 100,000 inhabitants of same age group with German citizenship).

This provided grounds for several attempts to initiate a punitive turn in juvenile justice. German juvenile penal law and law enforcement is education and not punishment oriented. Nevertheless, as time went by, some of these punitive initiatives were gradually put into force: for example, short-term detention orders of up to four weeks became easier to apply (§16a of the Youth Courts Law – Jugendgerichtsgesetz, JGG), or the possibility to order preventive detention after the completion of a long sentence for serious violent and sexual offences (§7 JGG). Attempts to lower the age of penal responsibility to 12 years or to cancel the applicability of juvenile law for 18–20-year-old adolescents have so far not been successful.

Although some self-reported delinquency surveys indicated an increase in juvenile violence in the early 1990s as well (see Heinz, 2016: 62–3; Lösel and Bliesener, 2003: 5), later studies found decreasing trends from the late 1990s onward. These contrary trends in official and self-reported crime rates may partly be due to an increase in the reporting rate (Baier et al., 2009: 98; Enzmann, 2015: 520). Finally, the official prevalence rate for juvenile violence also began to decline, from 2007 until 2015 by 50 percent (with a marginal increase in 2016), from roughly 1 percent to 0.5 percent (Figure 1).

Regarding the drop in juvenile violence, there are several possible explanations under discussion: the enhanced implementation of school and neighbourhood prevention programmes, less violent parenting (Baier et al., 2013), more students attending the highest school track, changing leisure time activities (less time spent unsupervised owing to all-day schooling or internet usage), and enhanced diversion policies.

Immigration and crime

Besides the questionable increase in juvenile violence, the second big topic in crime policy in the 1990s and 2000s was the higher violence rates of migrant youths compared with non-migrant youths. Indeed, according to in this respect more reliable self-reported delinquency surveys,⁶ the prevalence rates of violent as well as repeat offenders in the 1990s and 2000s were higher among youths from immigrant families than among juveniles of German origin. Most of these differences could be explained by social and educational disadvantage, a lack of social recognition (Babka von Gostomski, 2003; Bucerius, 2014) and a higher approval of violence-legitimizing norms of masculinity (Baier, 2015; Enzmann et al., 2004). Within the last 10 years one can observe that, in particular in the third generation of former labour migrants, these differences are getting smaller (Walburg, 2014). A new citizenship law finally granting German-born descendants of guest workers German citizenship, as well as increased integration efforts (particularly in schools) and a stronger disapproval of violence, might all have contributed to this development.

A further phenomenon we currently observe is a kind of poverty criminality. Most of the offenders with poor prospects of a permanent residence permit come from South-Eastern Europe and (mainly Northern) Africa and commit property or drug offences to make a living. This happens partly also in forms of professional cross-border crime. Taking into account their large population size, refugees from Syria and other civil war regions have so far rarely been involved in street crimes such as thefts, robberies and drug offences (Bundeskriminalamt, 2017c: 142). Nevertheless, some unaccompanied minors or young men originating from these countries seem to be at risk as well.

As to newly arrived refugees (see Walburg, 2017), precise suspect rates are not yet available. Especially in 2015, their population size fluctuated strongly. Compared with 2015, the number of refugees who have been registered for assault and sexual offences doubled in 2016 (Bundeskriminalamt, 2017d: 13–22). Regarding these offences, the number of suspects from civil war countries in particular has increased substantially. Yet, compared with 2015, their population size was much higher with regard to 2016 as a whole. Many refugees arrived in Germany in the autumn of 2015, and they were placed in crowded mass accommodation centres for several months. The number of violent conflicts increased noticeably under these conditions. Violent conflicts mainly took place within refugee facilities with most of the victims being other refugees (Bayerisches Staatsministerium des Innern, 2017: 50–52).

Aside from the current refugee movements, Germany has previously experienced two big immigration movements: one from Turkey and other Mediterranean countries, beginning in the late 1950s, and one from Russia as well as from East and South-East European countries in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, one-fifth of all people living in Germany have a migration background. The two largest migrant groups are 3 million resettlers of German origin from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and 3 million people of Turkish origin.

Based mainly on experiences with these two groups, there is now some knowledge of how to deal with the issue of migration and crime. First, it is all about public attitudes. One needs a conscience sociale that is open to and actively interested in the integration of other people. It is crucial to convey a sense of acceptance and belonging. Second, it is all about education. A differentiating as well as integrating school and vocational training system can offer programmes and courses that are also suitable to the needs of migrant youths. Third, it is all about the job market. If there is no access to legal jobs, crime problems are inevitable. With regard to both education and access to jobs, there is no time to lose. For newcomers, the period of uncertainty about their legal status and separation from society should be as short as possible. And fourth, it’s all about time. The integration of these migrant groups will take more than one generation. The cultural transition may need time, in particular, with respect to basic values and norms such as gender and partner equality, non-violent child-rearing or tolerance of different lifestyles (see Pollack et al., 2016).

German politics still has problems taking all of these experiences into account. Although Germany has in fact been an immigration country for decades, this has not been generally recognized for many years. And in the face of the current influential populist movements against further immigration, one can observe a revival of the expectation that immigrants will return to their home country either after they have earned enough money or after the political situation in these countries has improved. To refrain from integration efforts is risky since this expectation has turned out to be wrong in many more cases than expected.

Economic and corporate crime

During the last 20 years, major German corporations, including Siemens (Lord, 2014; Klinkhammer, 2015), Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank and ThyssenKrupp, have been involved in huge corruption and fraud cases. Although an accurate assessment of the prevalence of corporate crime remains difficult (Walburg, 2015), these cases give rise to the impression that serious corporate rule-breaking was and remains widespread.

Explanations mostly refer to shortcomings inside the corporations. This includes a closer look at the specific governance structures and business culture in German corporations, often characterized by so-called ‘Rhineland capitalism’, with hierarchical management styles and strong links between corporations, politics and unions (Huisman, 2016). In the light of Siemens’ and other corruption cases, and under the pressure of increasing legal demands, most large corporations have strongly expanded their compliance measures to avoid liability (see Kölbel, 2013: 523). It remains to be seen whether these initiatives will effectively strengthen law abidance and business ethics. The Volkswagen emissions scandal – which occurred after the Siemens scandal – has severely shattered such confidence, and research suggests that the goals of rule- abidance and profit maximization will indeed to some extent remain irreconcilable (Boers et al., 2015).

As to German criminal law, the debate about the introduction of corporate criminal liability has gained new momentum in recent years (Jahn et al., 2016). Although the existing system of administrative fines for corporations is in need of reform, it remains doubtful whether ‘real’ criminal penalties for corporations would actually have an additional deterrent effect. Despite lively scientific debates, politically it is currently rather unlikely that corporate criminal liability will be implemented any time soon.

Extremist crime

In Germany, the number or intensity of extremist crimes committed by Islamist terrorists and by right-wing extremists create the biggest danger to public safety at the moment. Yet violent offences committed by left-wing extremists have reached a concerning level as well.

Islamist terrorism

Germany has long been spared from major Islamist terror attacks like those in France, Belgium, England or Turkey. However, the Islamist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin on 19 December 2016, where 12 people were killed, points in this direction.⁷ Police and secret service prevented some planned attacks by arresting suspected groups or individuals. Some offenders were home grown terrorists, others came as refugees from Islamic countries.

Like the Berlin attack, the more brutal and successful attacks were committed by single offenders. In the first Islamist attack on German soil two US airmen were killed and two others seriously wounded by a Kosovo-Albanian in a shooting at Frankfurt Airport in March 2011. In 2016, an adolescent of Afghan or Pakistani origin injured five passengers on a regional train with an axe and a knife, and was later killed after attacking a SWAT team. A 15-year-old German-Moroccan girl injured a police officer with a knife in Hanover. And a young adult from Syria committed a suicide bombing at the entrance to a music festival, injuring 15 people and killing himself.

There is still a serious risk of larger terrorist attacks. One major reason is that 890 individuals, known to the police, moved from Germany to Syria or Iraq between 2012 and November 2016, almost all of them to live as jihadists, mainly within the so-called Islamic State. These emigrants are mainly adolescents or young adults (most of them younger than 30 years) and male (80 percent). The largest emigration took place after the proclamation of the Islamic State in June 2014. However, between May 2015 and November 2016 these emigrations decreased remarkably to roughly 100 people per year. According to police and secret service investigations, 81 percent have a migrant background. The vast majority grew up in Germany or immigrated as children or adolescents, and more than 60 percent have a German passport. This may also be one example of inadequate or rejected integration efforts.

By November 2016, roughly one-third of these 890 drifters have returned to Germany, and almost one-sixth had lost their life. Although half of the returnees went back to their Islamist milieu, returnees might, at the moment, represent a lower risk for terrorist attacks than those who are still in Syria and Iraq: at least one-quarter of them are cooperating with the authorities. Moreover, among returnees, the number of those who participated in social or medical activities (22 percent) while abroad is thought to be larger than the number of those who gained combat experience (14 percent). Among those who have remained abroad, the number of combatants is thought to be 40 percent (Bundeskriminalamt, Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz and Hessisches Informations- und Kompetenzzentrum gegen Extremismus, 2016: 4, 12, 27–8., 30–1, 42; Bundesministerium des Innern, 2017: 169–72).

Right-wing extremism

A further serious problem of extremism is the development of right-wing extremist crime. After German reunification in 1990, the total number of politically motivated offences,⁸ and among them the number of violent offences committed by right-wing extremists (as registered by police), increased significantly, and sharply within the last two years. In 2016, it reached an all-time high of in total 22,471 right-wing extremist offences, of which 1,600 were violent right-wing extremist offences,⁹ including one completed and 18 attempted homicides,¹⁰ 113 arson attacks, and (as the most frequently registered single violent offence) 1,313 assaults (Bundesministerium des Innern, 2017: 23–4). Since 1990, between 75 and 150 homicides (Möller, 2016: 141)¹¹ have been committed with a right-wing extremist motivation¹² – with, fortunately, far fewer killings since 2004. Nevertheless, between 2000 and 2007, a right-wing terrorist group called ‘Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund’ (national socialist underground) assassinated nine immigrants and a policewoman. They remained undetected until 2011, not least because the threat from right-wing terrorism had been underestimated by the authorities (Koehler, 2016). Many observers are critical that the political will of the government to investigate and uncover the networks behind this terrorist group, the knowledge of intelligence agencies and the role of confidential informants is still weak.

Currently, refugees are a prime target of right-wing extremists. With 1,190 violent offences, and, in particular, 12 attempted homicides and 92 arson attacks on refugee homes xenophobic motivated violence has increased significantly in 2016 (Bundesministerium des Innern, 2017: 26; Möller, 2016: 141–2). Attacks and threats against politicians and volunteers as well as hate crimes, usually via social media, have become a major matter of concern, too.

The latest rise of right-wing extremist crimes comes with the recently increased refugee immigration and the growth of xenophobic and nationalist movements as well as the remarkable success of a populist party that has also established itself in Germany during the past few years. Right-wing offenders as well as right-wing voters originate disproportionately from East Germany, although the average rate of residents with a migration background in the East is, with five per cent, more than four times lower than in the West. This is only one of the paradoxes accompanying the obviously ongoing social transition process after the German reunification.

Left-wing extremism

The total number of 5,230 politically motivated offences committed in 2016 by left-wing extremists is only a quarter of those committed by right-wing extremists, mainly because left-wing extremists are not prosecuted for propaganda offences. Yet, the level of violent offences is, by and large, about the same for both extremist groups. After a remarkable increase of 62 percent (up to 1,608 offences) between 2014 and 2015, violent offences committed from a left-wing extremist motivation declined again: in 2016 police registered 1,201 offences,¹³ including 6 attempted homicides,¹⁴ 134 arson attacks (mainly on cars) and, as the most frequently registered single violent offence, 628 assaults (Bundesministerium des Innern, 2017: 29).

However, there are also some remarkable differences in the patterns of registered left- and right-wing extremist violence. Whereas left-wing extremist violence is more frequently directed against police and against political opponents (mainly right-wing extremists),¹⁵ right-wing extremist violence is mainly motivated by xenophobia (see the previous section), and whereas registered right-wing violence has increased more steadily, left-wing extremist violence instead develops in an on-and-off-fashion, with its ‘ons’ occurring in connection with major political events (for example, the opening of the new main building of the European Central Bank in 2015 in Frankfurt). Given the massive violent events surrounding the recent G20 summit in Hamburg, it is very likely that the annual rate of left-wing extremist violence will have significantly increased again in 2017.

There is currently no evidence of left-wing terrorist structures (Bundesministerium des Innern, 2016: 104). And whereas right-wing extremism is a pressing issue across the whole country – not least because of its interconnection with broader xenophobic tendencies within the population (Heitmeyer, 2003) – left-wing extremists who are ready to use violence do not attract significant political support within relevant sections of the population.

Fear of crime

The question of how crime affects people personally can be answered by measuring the fear of crime. Immediately after German reunification in 1989, fear of crime, and not crime itself, was the major criminological phenomenon in connection with the social transition process in East Germany. Also, in international comparison, exceptional fear of crime levels were observed in East Germany, whereas in West Germany things – by and large – did not change remarkably, even though crime rates were quite similar in the two parts of the country (Boers, 2003). In 1996, roughly 35 percent of the East German population were ‘much afraid’ and ‘very much afraid’ of getting mugged¹⁶ or burgled.¹⁷ However, during the 2000s people obviously became more and more familiar with typical crime situations and media reporting styles in Western societies.¹⁸ In both East and West Germany, fear of mugging or burglary rates declined to an all-time low of 10 percent and 14 percent, respectively, in 2013. Since 2014, fear rates have been increasing again, and reached a level of up to 20 percent in the spring of 2016, in particular for burglary (Figure 2).¹⁹ This matches the increased burglary rate and is an indicator that people are able to distinguish quite reasonably between crime and other social or political problems: they do not usually redirect their worries about the latter problems onto crime problems.

Figure 2.

Fear of crime (percent of combined values 6 and 7 of a 7-value scale, where 1 = ‘not afraid at all’, 7 = ‘very much afraid’).

There are big and in part dramatically increasing worries about terrorism, political extremism, the refugee movement, the financial crises in Europe or the retirement insurance system but not (yet) about crime problems. In spring 2016, worries about becoming a victim of crime ranked 19th among 20 other political and social problems (R+V Versicherung, 2016).

Crime control and punitivity

When talking about crime control, the question of punitivity is of great interest. Punitivity has been a major concern ever since Garland (2001) analysed trends of punitivity in the USA and UK (see Kury and Shea, 2011; Ruggiero and Ryan, 2013; Snacken and Dumortier, 2012; Tonry, 2016). The concept of punitivity has both behavioural and attitudinal dimensions: on the one hand, law-making and law enforcement; on the other hand, public attitudes towards punishment.

Penal law-making

Within the last 20 years there have been several changes in criminal procedural law that facilitate surveillance and law enforcement, as well as changes in criminal law implementing new crimes or tightening penalties or control (see Schlepper, 2014). For example:

eavesdropping in private residences (§100c Code of Criminal Procedure – Strafprozessordnung, StPO)

computer and network surveillance (§100b StPO)

the retention of telecommunications data (§100g StPO)

post-sentence preventive detention for adults and adolescents (§§66 Criminal Code – Strafgesetzbuch, StGB; §7 JGG)

stiffer penalties for sexual offences (§§177, 181i, 181j StGB), burglary (§244 StGB) and resisting enforcement officers (§§113, 114 StGB)

the implementation of new criminal offences such as commercial and international commercial bribery (§299 StGB) or the establishment of contacts with a terrorist organization, or the preparation of terrorist acts (§§89,a,b StGB)

The character of most of these changes may be punitive in the sense of stiffer penalties. However, punitivity, here, is more of a by-product, because the major intention of these changes is to follow a strategy to transform criminal law from reacting to committed offences to a pre-active, preventive criminal law. The preventive state promises security, that is, fighting risks to the political and social order before they manifest themselves in victimization and other damage (see Singelnstein and Stolle, 2012). This is at the expense of the legal safeguards of a classic criminal law system – above all the principle of individual guilt. However, this strategy still has one politically valuable benefit: it guarantees notable publicity effects at low organizational and financial costs.

Law enforcement

Punitive trends in law enforcement can be analysed by diversion, conviction and imprisonment rates.

Diversion

Since the 1980s, the diversion rate has been steadily increasing, while the conviction rate decreased considerably to 37 percent in 2015 (last year available). Of all cases that could have been charged by the prosecutor, in adult penal cases 60 percent and in juvenile cases 76 percent (in big cities even more) were dismissed in 2015 (Figure 3), most of them without any further intervention (Heinz, 2017: 84–93).

Figure 3.

Diversion rates in adult and juvenile criminal cases, 1981–2015 (percent of those criminal cases that could have gone to trial).

Conviction rates

Corresponding to increasing diversion rates as well as to decreasing police-registered crime rates, conviction rates for both violent and property offences have also declined by more than half within the last 20 years. In 2015, 588,448 people were convicted (the last year available; convictions for traffic offences not included). The conviction rate for Germans was 645 per 100,000 residents of criminally responsible age (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2017: 16–17).²⁰ As the result of a penal law reform in 1969, more than 80 percent of all convictions for adults end up in fines, less than 14 percent in probation and 5–6 percent in unconditional prison sentences (Heinz, 2017: 112, 115–17).²¹ These figures do not indicate an incarcerative penal practice and have remained stable over the years (see Heinz, 2016: 259–72).

Thus far, penal law enforcement as a whole cannot be regarded as punitive. There may be only two exceptions. As regards prison sentences, the very small proportion of long and, in particular, life sentences²² has increased slightly for homicides and serious assaults (Heinz, 2016: 260–4). Moreover, an increasing number of serious violent offenders have been placed in forensic mental health facilities and custodial addiction treatment institutions. Both of these developments might indicate certain punitive tendencies with regard to a specific and small group of offenders, those regarded as particularly dangerous (Heinz, 2016: 272).

Imprisonment rates

Punitive trends in law enforcement are also reflected in rising prison populations. German imprisonment rates reveal a cyclical development since the mid-1960s. The peaks of this development were in 1963, 1983 (West Germany only) and 2003–5 (Germany as a whole), with rates of, respectively, 109, 106 and 98 per 100,000 inhabitants. The low points were reached in 1971 (West Germany only), 1992 and 2015–16 (Germany as a whole), with rates of, respectively, 75, 70 and 78 (Figure 4).²³

Figure 4.

Imprisonment rates in Germany, 1962–2016 (per 100,000 inhabitants on 31 March of each year).

Currently, Germany is among the few countries – along with Iceland, the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina – with a low imprisonment rate (rates below 80 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants). These countries (plus Italy and Croatia) also show a decline in imprisonment rates to a low level within the last 10 years (Dünkel et al., 2016a: 179–85; Dünkel, 2017).²⁴

Regarding West German imprisonment rates, the first low point in 1971 as well as the decline in the late 1980s can be explained by changes in legislation (short prison sentences were partly replaced by a greater use of fines – see above) and in sentencing (more probation and an increase in community penalties for juvenile and young adult offenders in the 1980s; Dünkel et al., 2016a: 195). The lower imprisonment rate of 1992 is mainly based on a low East German rate (26 per 100,000) owing to the specific circumstances of German reunification. At the end of October 1989, 31,150 people were imprisoned in East Germany, a rate of 188 per 100,000 inhabitants. This was the highest East German imprisonment rate before the fall of the wall on 9 November 1989, and was more than two times higher than the rate in West Germany, with 53,056 prisoners (86 per 100,000 inhabitants) in March 1989 (Figure 4; Essig, 2000: 85–7). Because of several amnesties, at first granted to political prisoners but later also to most other prisoners (except in cases of Nazi, war or atrocity crimes, murder, sexual or serious violent offences), only 4,375 inmates remained in East German prisons by July 1990 (Essig, 2000: 97–8). In subsequent years, rates in East Germany rose sharply to the West German level, from 39 in 1993 to 98 in 2005. The continuing rise in the prison population in East and West Germany until 2005 was also due to law reforms for violent crimes and sex offences and the (above-mentioned) rise in registered violence as well as a resulting increase in convictions. Accordingly, since rates of both police-registered violence and convictions of violent offenders have been decreasing until 2015, imprisonment rates have also been in decline since 2006 (Figure 4; Dünkel et al., 2016a: 192, 195).

This decrease might have slowed down recently. Remarkably, the number of pre-trial detainees rose by 18 percent from 2015 to 2016, which seems to be related to an increase in certain street crimes that are supposedly committed disproportionately by newly arrived young males from North Africa (Fritsche, 2017). In sum, imprisonment rates within the last decade do not allow us to assume a heightened punitivity or incarceration trend in Germany (Dünkel et al., 2016a: 192).

Attitudes towards punishment

The attitudinal dimension of punitivity can be analysed by attitudes towards punishment. Unfortunately, one cannot say anything about trends in these attitudes, since in Germany relevant data are not collected regularly.

The most recent data come from the national representative victimization survey of 2012. The results are based on a sophisticated measurement using a factorial design and not a simple enquiry into punishment stereotypes. Factorial designs vary different modes of committing an offence for different kinds of offences and ask for different kinds of sanctioning decisions. Therefore, they mirror the reality of decision-making on punishment more closely (Sessar, 1992: 88–121).

For theft, vandalism, fraud or purse snatching, a fine was respondents’ most preferred penalty (with on average up to 45 percent), followed by victim–offender reconciliation and restitution (with up to 37 per cent); only 1–8 percent proposed a prison sentence for these offences. In the case of serious assault, roughly 20 percent of respondents each voted for a restitutive reaction, a fine, parole or prison (authors’ calculations based on Leitgöb-Guzy, 2016: 253–6). This by and large matches the reluctant sentencing practice in penal courts, and cannot be viewed as ‘punitive’ either.

Criminology in Germany

In Germany, modern criminology began its development as a professional and critical observer of crime and crime control processes only at the end of the 1960s – some three decades later than in other Western countries. The racist ideology enforced by the Nazi regime created a tremendous obstacle for the development of criminology into a modern academic discipline. However, from the 1970s on, although carrying on the dispute between traditional and critical criminology, German criminology started to develop to an international level of theorizing, research methodology and teaching. Several professorships for criminology were appointed at law faculties, institutes of social or behavioural sciences, police colleges or colleges for social work. Institutes of criminology were founded at universities and outside of universities. Textbooks were published. Undertaking interdisciplinary research projects, funded by independent research foundations,²⁵ as well as the international exchange of knowledge, became standard business. All facets of thinking and of methodological approaches present in international criminology can also be found in German criminology.

There still exist two German-speaking societies of criminology: the larger one (Kriminologische Gesellschaft²⁶) consists of German, Austrian and Swiss criminologists and encompasses all criminological perspectives; the other (Gesellschaft für Interdisziplinäre Wissenschaftliche Kriminologie²⁷) is more strongly oriented towards critical criminology. Yet, the typical divide between the ‘two criminologies’ no longer has the same importance as it had in the 1970s and 1980s.

The biggest problem currently is that, in general, the state of criminology in Germany is not too promising. Over the past couple of years one can, above all, observe an ongoing decline in academic criminology, that is, a university-based criminology as a major discipline in research as well as in teaching (Albrecht, 2013). The existence of an academic discipline is based on fundamental research. Theory-guided empirical research, theory and theory testing – only this analytical understanding of a scientific discipline (see Wikström, 2017) provides the basic knowledge for good applied research, for a promising penal and preventive practice, for reliable political advice, and for the professional promotion of future criminologists and practitioners. For that reason full-time university professorships of criminology are needed (see Sessar, 2011).

The major problem is that, mainly owing to general budget cuts, the number of criminology positions not only did not increase but has instead been reduced in all faculties. In Germany, the vast majority of criminology professorships are affiliated not with the departments of sociology or behavioural science but traditionally with the penal law groups of the law faculties. Sociology or behavioural science departments never paid too much attention to delinquency and crime control (Albrecht, 2013: 74–6; Boers and Seddig, 2013). In Germany, it is mainly the law faculties that host criminology. This is also the case in other, criminologically more important, countries such as, in part, in the UK (Karstedt, 2013; Lösel, 2013). There is, however, a structural difference. German law schools can at best afford one professor of criminology and, because most of the penal law groups are also quite small, the criminologist often has to teach penal law as well, and hence has to be at least a trained lawyer. There will be no structural changes in the medium term. A further disadvantage is that the number of the university²⁸ and non-university²⁹ research institutes of criminology (which were established between the 1960s and 1980s) has not increased.

For these structural reasons the conditions for a significant growth in sophisticated empirical research are somewhat limited in Germany. One result is that publications by German criminologists in English-language journals are still quite rare,³⁰ compared with the number of those published by British, Dutch or Scandinavian authors (not to mention publications by US Americans).

Yet the good news about the current state of criminology in Germany is that, over the past couple of years, some demanding, longitudinal and internationally cooperative empirical research has been conducted. Here, in particular, we find strong interdisciplinary collaboration between the social, behavioural and legal sciences.

An exemplary selection of these kinds of current research endeavour includes the following research areas:

Juvenile delinquency: self-report studies (Baier et al., 2009; Dünkel et al., 2007; Enzmann, 2010; Enzmann et al., 2016) and analyses of the role of delinquent peers (Beier, 2014; Bentrup, 2014), schools (Seddig, 2016; Theimann, 2016), self-control (Schulz, 2016), social disadvantage (Schepers, 2017), social value orientations (Bilsky and Hermann, 2016; Pöge, 2007; Seddig, 2014), immigration (Bucerius, 2014; Walburg, 2014; Zdun, 2012), and violent media consumption (Kanz, 2016; Mößle, 2012)

Life-course criminology: Boers et al. (2010); Grundies (2013); Reinecke et al. (2016); Seddig and Reinecke (2017)

Developmental prevention: Lösel and Stemmler (2012)

Violence research: rampage killings (Bannenberg et al., 2014) and honour killings (Oberwittler and Kasselt, 2014)

Victimization studies: Baier and Pfeiffer (2016); Birkel et al. (2014); Görgen (2010)

Rational choice and norm orientation: Eifler (2016); Kroneberg et al. (2010); Pollich (2009)

Social prejudice and violence: Küpper and Zick (2014)

Corporate crime and corruption: Boers et al. (2015); Bussmann (2015); Kölbel and Herold (2016); Pohlmann et al. (2016)

Communities and security: police and ethnic minorities (Hunold et al., 2016), insecurities in European cities (Sessar et al., 2007), and community policing (Feltes, 2012)

Criminal justice research: deterrence (Dölling et al., 2009), punitivity (Kury and Shea, 2011), perceived effects of juvenile criminal procedures (Dollinger et al., 2016), evaluation of criminal justice programmes (Baur and Kinzig, 2015; Bliesener and Riesner, 2012; Klatt et al., 2016), imprisonment of fine defaulters (Bögelein et al., 2014), reconviction studies (Jehle and Albrecht, 2014), European comparisons of criminal justice systems (Dünkel et al., 2011; Dünkel et al., 2015), and participation in international comparisons of crime and criminal justice statistics (Aebi et al., 2014)

Prison research: long-term imprisonment (Drenkhahn et al., 2014), reintegration of high-risk offenders (Dünkel et al., 2016b) and violence in prisons (Boxberg et al., 2016)

Furthermore, criminology is very attractive for students of different faculties and for further education, and, finally, there is an increasing demand for criminological knowledge among practitioners, the media and policy-makers.

One promising way to improve at least the research situation is to establish synergetic interdisciplinary networks between different faculties and universities, both nationally and internationally. The conferences of the European Society of Criminology (ESC) and the ESC Working Groups play an important role for the success of such developments.

Summary

In Germany, the situation of ordinary crime and crime control has all in all been quite calm during the past decade. As elsewhere in Western countries, even violent crime has decreased in recent years, including with respect to violent offences committed by adolescents. Only the rates of some specific offences, in particular for burglary and pickpocketing or for cybercrime, as well as (in 2016) for violent offences (except robbery), have recently increased. The increase in violent offences is almost solely due to offences committed by newly arrived refugees. At the same time, the number of refugees (in particular, younger males) has also increased substantially,³¹ initially often living in crowded refugee centres. In general, victimization rates were also low according to some national and regional victimization surveys.

Although the criminologically relevant events around Siemens, Deutsche Bank or Volkswagen (which the international public became aware of) seem to suggest an increase in corporate crime, we cannot say anything reliable about its prevalence and development. As elsewhere, it has up to now de facto been impossible to collect reliable data in commercial surveys. Although business leaders, consultants and politicians share optimistic expectations about the effectiveness of compliance programmes, it remains to be seen to what extent these programmes are actually able to reduce corporate crime.

Increased crime can be observed in connection with right-wing, left-wing and Islamist extremism. Although the number of homicides committed from right-wing political motivation has decreased considerably during the past two decades, other violent offences, in particular arson attacks against refugee homes, have increased enormously in the past two years. Mainly owing to confrontations with right-wing-extremists and with police forces, violent offences committed by left-wing extremists increased as well.

Until the end of 2016, Germany was widely spared from Islamist terrorist attacks. The public reaction to the attack on a Christmas market in Berlin is characterized by an increasing fear of terrorism and the typical knee-jerk political demands for more legal measures of surveillance and repressive intervention. The problem actually appears to be that existing laws could not always be enforced sufficiently.

The increasing fear of terrorism (and of other social problems such as refugee movements, financial crises or a break-down in the retirement insurance system) is much larger than the fear of crime. The fear of mugging or burglary increased to an all-time high in East Germany shortly after German reunification in 1990, decreased thereafter to an all-time low until 2013, and has since then been increasing again, mainly in line with rising burglary rates.

Trends of punitivity can be observed by means of (i) policy trends in penal law-making, (ii) the practice of penal law enforcement, and (iii) public attitudes to punishment. During recent years, a stronger punitive tendency has occurred only in the legislation of some tighter penal laws. In law enforcement, diversion has increased whereas convictions and imprisonment rates have fallen (except in the case of somewhat longer prison sentences for homicide offences). And public attitudes towards punishment appear to be in line with the moderate penal sanctioning regime.

In the near future, simply owing to the more than 1.5 million refugees who have recently arrived to Germany (disproportionally younger males), one may expect increasing property and violent crime figures, and in the aftermath also more convictions, pre-trial detainees and prisoners. Whether this will lead to an increase in the rates of crime, conviction or imprisonment as well (that is, in relation to the increased population size) remains to be seen. Future developments will depend on how well the newcomers can be integrated and whether they are provided with opportunities (for example in the labour market).

Finally, German academic criminology has been experiencing an adverse trend for several years. In contrast to other countries, criminology has never been strongly implemented within university departments of sociology or the behavioural sciences. Most criminology departments are hosted by law faculties, usually as single professorships within the group of penal law professors, and most of them have to teach penal law as well. Besides these structural disadvantages, the biggest problem for German criminology is that, owing to general budget cuts, the number of criminology professorships has been significantly reduced.

However, the good news is that in recent years academic sociologists and behavioural scientists have become interested in criminological research questions and in cooperation with criminologists. As a result, some remarkable interdisciplinary, as well as international and longitudinal, research has been conducted. It is to be hoped that this may stimulate a (re)institutionalization of academic criminology within law faculties as well as within the university departments of sociology and the behavioural sciences.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

This report is based on a speech given at the opening plenary of the 16th Conference of the European Society of Criminology in September 2016 in Münster.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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