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Prison in Halle / Saale (symbol picture)
Photo: Hendrik Schmidt / dpa
In Germany, according to a newspaper report, suspects are being released from pre-trial detention because the criminal proceedings are taking too long.
In the past year there were at least 69 such cases, the newspapers of the Funke media group report in their Tuesday editions, citing information from the German Association of Judges.
In 2018, the judicial administrations of the federal states had recorded 65 such cases, in 2017 there were 51. In the past five years, a total of more than 250 suspects have been released from pretrial detention because courts had violated the speed limit for detention, write the Funke newspapers.
Criminal justice still at the limit
The judiciary is obliged to advance proceedings against detainees on remand as quickly as possible.
Otherwise, those affected will be released after a certain period of time, even if the allegations against them have not been dispelled.
"The judicial statistics make it very clear that the criminal justice system is still working to the limit," said the federal manager of the judges' association, Sven Rebehn.
He attributes the high burden to two factors: on the one hand, criminal proceedings are much more time-consuming than in the past, and on the other hand, the staffing levels of the criminal justice system are "still far too short".
The additional posts that were created in the federal states over the past two years had "had little effect", since the tasks of the public prosecutor's offices and courts had grown to the same extent.
Need for "hundreds of additional judges and prosecutors"
According to the Association of Judges, the public prosecutor's offices are particularly burdened.
The number of cases that were discontinued at its discretion increased by more than 200,000 cases between 2009 and 2019 - an increase of 20 percent.
According to the information, this concerns cases in which the public prosecutor sees a sufficient suspicion, but does not continue the process, for example because of insignificance.
Rebehn appealed to politicians to better equip the judiciary.
The new laws against internet hatred and hate speech, corporate crime, money laundering and child abuse created a need for "hundreds of additional judges and prosecutors," he said.
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bbr / AFP
