Ahead of the Federal Criminal Police Office’s (BKA) 2025 crime figures, sociologist, psychologist and legal scholar Susann Prätor reflects on nationality and crime statistics. Her interdisciplinary work highlights how simplistic comparisons can mislead.
More than a third of suspects in police statistics are non-German. Non-citizens make up about 16% of Germany’s population but accounted for roughly 34% of suspects in offences ranging from theft and burglary to violent crime. Prätor warns that such comparisons are often like comparing apples and oranges.
Age and gender are central factors. Prätor, a professor at Lower Saxony’s police academy, notes that young men are disproportionately represented among suspects worldwide, independent of ethnicity. Non-Germans in Germany are, on average, significantly younger than Germans, so demographics matter when interpreting rates.
Reporting bias also skews statistics. Studies indicate people perceived as foreign are more likely to be reported to police. A 2024 study by the Criminological Institute of Lower Saxony found non-Germans were reported nearly three times as often as Germans.
Unreported crime studies offer additional context. By randomly surveying many people about victimisation and offending, researchers capture incidents that never reach police records and can question victims and perpetrators about underlying factors. Prätor says this produces a more nuanced picture than relying only on officially known crime.
Research on youth crime shows immigrants’ living conditions can differ markedly from those of Germans. Contributing factors cited include domestic instability, lower education levels, criminal peer groups and cultural norms around masculinity.
A breakdown by nationality shows complexity. In 2024, just under 13% of suspects were from Ukraine, yet Ukrainian refugees comprised 35.7% of refugees in Germany — a disparity partly explained by demographics: around 63% of adult Ukrainian refugees are women, so fewer are in the high-risk young-male cohort. Conversely, people from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Georgia made up about 3% of suspects but less than 1% of registered refugees; asylum seekers from North Africa are heavily male (74–82%), which corresponds with higher suspect shares.
Syria is the second-largest source of refugees, roughly one-fifth of the refugee population. About 900,000 Syrians live in Germany, while around 115,000 were identified as suspects in 2024. Many Syrian asylum seekers are young men, a demographic linked to higher offending rates.
In 2024 violent crime involving non-German suspects rose by 7.5%, but experts caution this may reflect increased reporting rather than more incidents. They also stress that many non-German nationals are victims of violent crime.
This article has been translated from German.