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New crime statisticsFewer crimes in Germany in 2025, BUT…
Bavarian police officers on an operation.
picture alliance / dpa / Matthias Balk
The number of crimes in Germany fell in 2025. This is the result of the police crime statistics presented by Federal Interior Minister Dobrindt. Declines in violent crimes are offset by an increase in sexual assaults. Underage suspects are also of particular concern.
The police in Germany registered around 212,300 violent crimes nationwide in 2025 – 2.3 percent fewer than in the previous year. However, the continuing rise in the number of children suspected of committing crimes is a cause for concern.
Part of the decline in crimes – excluding violations of residence rights and other immigration law requirements, a total of 4.4 percent fewer crimes were recorded than in 2024 – is due to the partial legalization of the possession and cultivation of cannabis in April 2024.
The most important key figures for 2025:
In addition to the lower irregular immigration and the change in the law on cannabis, there is another special effect. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) points out that the increase in cases of murder, manslaughter and killing on demand does not fall outside the fluctuations that are regularly observed. 79 of the murder cases listed in the statistics can be attributed to a series of murders in Berlin, in which a former palliative care doctor is suspected of having taken advantage of killing seriously ill people.
The BKA assumes that the proportion of sexual crimes that are reported has increased. In around three quarters of these cases, the victim and perpetrator knew each other beforehand. According to the BKA, a change in the law in 2016 and the Me Too movement may have contributed to the long-term increase in sexual crimes.
A total of around 29,200 crimes involving a knife attack were recorded last year, which represents a slight increase of 0.8 percent compared to the previous year. According to statistics, knife attacks are “acts in which an attack with a knife is threatened or carried out directly against a person”.
In search of explanations for the renewed increase in violent crime among children, the BKA refers to studies that cite psychological stress caused by “increasing fears for the future in the face of multiple crises”. A possible connection between the use of certain social media offers by children and young people and the likelihood of delinquent behavior has not yet been sufficiently researched.
An extensive dark-field study on crime, which the Federal Ministry of the Interior published at the same time as the police crime statistics (PKS) for 2025, shows that the proportion of people who become victims of cybercrime (18 percent), theft (12.7 percent) and fraud (12.6 percent) is relatively high. The participants in the study, which is representative of the resident population aged 16 and over, were asked about their experiences with crime in 2023. The results also show that 16 and 17 year olds are most affected by physical assault (8.5 percent). The proportion decreases steadily with increasing age and, according to the study, is 0.2 percent among those over 84 years old.
According to the study, there are clear differences between the genders when it comes to certain violent crimes. While 11.2 percent of women said they had been victims of sexual harassment within a year, the figure was 2.9 percent of men. Men, on the other hand, were more often affected by bodily harm (3.1 percent) than women (2 percent).
Sources used: als/dpa
