Crime suspects

A suspect is a person who is charged with a crime. A person can be charged one or several times a year and one summons may include various offences. The data refer to suspects not to persons who are convicted. An estimated 90 percent of suspects are found guilty at a later stage or are offered a transaction.
A transaction can prevent prosecution, if certain conditions set by the police or the public prosecutor are met, e.g. paying an amount of money (fine). Data of suspects are drawn from the Suspects Identification System (HKS) kept by the police. Data on various types of crimes, such as economic and environmental offences and social security fraud are usually not entered into the HKS and therefore underrepresented in the figures. The same applies to so-called Halt settlements.
Data on suspects are included since 1996. A parent is registered as a suspect if he/she was suspected of one or more criminal offences after 1996 and if his/her child was under the age of 17 at the time of registration.

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