The prison system in Germany is warning of collapse as the number of offenders continues to rise and violence in the country reaches unprecedented levels.

Berlin Police Commissioner Barbara Slowik is calling for stricter weapons laws in response to an escalating number of knife crimes committed in the city and the increasingly lower age of assailants.

The police chief recently said that violent crime in Berlin is on the rise, especially among children, youth and adolescents, and that non-Germans are „over-represented” in official crime statistics.

„To put it bluntly: according to our data, violence in Berlin is young, male and from a non-German background. This also applies to knife violence,”

she said, writes the Catholic news portal kath.net.

Anti-Semitic attacks have also skyrocketed across Germany. The Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) has documented 4,782 cases.

This represents an increase of more than 80 per cent compared to the previous year. According to the monitoring organisation, the surge was seen primarily in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October.

At a joint press conference in Berlin, Felix Klein, the federal government’s commissioner for combating anti-Semitism, described the figures as „absolutely catastrophic” and stressed that the Hamas attack had served as a „catalyst” for a surge in anti-Semitic acts.

„Jewish life in Germany is under greater threat than at any time since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany,”

Klein said, underlining the seriousness of the situation highlighted in the RIAS report.

Disastrous conditions in German prisons

As crime soars, the head of the German Prison Officers’ Association, Rene Muller, has sounded an urgent alarm over the serious crisis the country’s prison system is facing. Muller, who represents 38,000 staff, highlighted several critical problems in German prisons.

Since 2016, around 2,000 positions remain unfilled in the prison system, with only one staff member for every 70 prisoners in some facilities. „It is impossible to provide good care for prisoners in these conditions. If politicians don’t react, everything will collapse,” says Muller.

She also pointed out that threats and insults from inmates have become a daily reality for prison staff.

„Some prisoners even go as far as threatening their families. In such cases, we advise you to report them. However, many colleagues do not report such cases, such as verbal abuse, because prosecutions often close without appropriate sanctions,”

she remarked.

There is also a serious drug problem affecting almost all prisons, reports Muller. „Synthetic drugs, smuggled into prisons in the form of saturated papers, are now a real problem. Their numbers have increased in recent years. After using them, inmates suddenly become unpredictable,” she explained.

The staff association chief also highlighted the challenges posed by the high number of prisoners of a foreign background.

In cities such as Hamburg, two thirds of the prison population are foreigners, many of whom do not speak German and find it difficult to communicate their needs to staff. Some migrants deliberately attack police officers because they know that „another crime will delay their deportation”.