Those who flout the applicable laws and get caught will quickly find themselves in the dock. A look at the statistics reveals an interesting development.

Munich (dpa/lby) - Due to a decline in crimes on the street during the Corona crisis, the number of convictions in Bavaria also fell significantly last year. However, it is noticeable "that crimes on the Internet have increased significantly," said Minister of Justice Georg Eisenreich (CSU) on Wednesday at the presentation of the 2021 criminal prosecution statistics in Munich. However, the decline cannot be explained by the pandemic alone, and the exact reasons will only become clear in the coming years.

A total of 109,024 people were sentenced by Bavaria's criminal courts in 2021, said Eisenreich. In 2020, almost 117,000 people were finally convicted in Bavaria. In 2019, the number of people convicted was as high as 121,250. The majority of those convicted were male; women accounted for just 17.2 percent. The statistics are compiled annually and reflect the legally concluded proceedings before Bavarian criminal courts.

Of all those convicted, however, only around six percent ended up going to prison without parole, according to Eisenreich. Fines were imposed in more than 83,000 cases. "That meant you really had to have done something to go to jail."