A recent report by the German Judges’ Association, published in the Deutsche Richterzeitung, aimed to gather more detailed information on the number of unprocessed cases from colleagues in the justice administrations of the German states. The investigation focused on “only the proceedings against specifically named accused individuals”, as reported by the magazine Der Spiegel. Surprisingly, only the capital city of Berlin can currently report a positive development, with “34,176 fewer pending cases than in 2021 (34,763)” according to data from 2024.
According to the Judges’ Association, more than 5.3 million new cases were received by the federal public prosecutors’ offices in 2024, exceeding the 5 million mark for the third consecutive year, with 4.7 million cases in 2021.
The analysis of the numbers revealed that there were almost 30 percent more open cases in Germany in the previous year compared to 2021, leading to longer criminal proceedings and fewer indictments, as explained by the German Judges’ Association. Further details showed that the “mountain of files” in the city of Hamburg, governed by a red-green coalition since 2015, has more than doubled since 2021, from 22,900 unprocessed cases to 47,953. The state of Saxony, governed by the CDU, saw the number of open cases increase by 54 percent over three years, from 29,915 in 2021 to 46,079.
The article in Der Spiegel also stated that the most unprocessed cases were found in the most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with 255,245 cases in 2024, followed by the states of Hesse, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony.
In the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, the number of open investigations remained relatively stable, with around 33,000 cases unresolved at the end of 2024, similar to previous years.
The managing director of the German Judges’ Association, Rebehn, warned against the growing signs of an overburdened justice system, stating that the public prosecutors’ offices are struggling with increasing case backlogs across the country.
Rebehn demands that the federal government and the states fulfill their promise to establish a new justice pact to support the justice system. In the previous year, the justice system was forced to release more than 60 seriously suspected individuals from pre-trial detention due to the slow processing of their cases, with the majority of these cases found in the states of Saxony and Hesse. The jurist calls for an immediate program to improve the dramatic situation.