Record mark reached: Over one million open felony instances – launch of homicide suspects because of this | EUROtoday

The German Association of Judges is worried concerning the file variety of unfinished felony instances. “In 2025, we had around 5.5 million new criminal proceedings before the public prosecutor’s office for the third year in a row. For the first time, the number of open cases exceeded the one million mark at the end of 2025,” mentioned the Federal Managing Director of the Association of Judges, Sven Rebehn, to the “Rheinische Post”.

Courts and public prosecutors are overloaded. “At the end of 2020 there were still around 700,000 open procedures. That corresponds to an increase of almost 50 percent in five years,” calculated Rebehn. Year after 12 months, the investigators pile up an ever-increasing mountain of instances and wouldn’t be capable to deal with them with out extra employees. There was a nationwide scarcity of two,000 prosecutors and felony judges.

A harmful consequence is suspects being launched from custody. The cause: deadlines aren’t met. “In 2025, 50 suspects nationwide were urgently released from custody because the proceedings took too long. These cases usually involve allegations of a crime, for example homicide, rape or serious bodily harm,” defined the Judges’ Association managing director.

Rebehn additionally identified the rising variety of lawsuits earlier than the executive courts towards asylum choices. “The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees is now processing the cases much more quickly and the rejection rate is increasing. This is then legally challenged and it ends up in the courts,” mentioned the pinnacle of the judges’ affiliation. “We have seen the number of procedures received in asylum cases more than double in the last three years. In 2022 there were around 62,000 complaints, and last year there were more than 140,000 procedures.”