Annual Report Gives Crime Statistics for 2015

An annual report on the activities of state prosecutors indicates that 89 percent of the cases brought by prosecutors in 2015 ended with convictions. In 68 percent of those convictions, defendants agreed to a plea deal, while 15 percent of the cases were decided in favor of the prosecution in court. In an additional 6 percent of cases, courts imposed punishment on defendants, even though they were not convicted.

The indictments filed by the Prosecutors Office are generally for serious crimes. Thirty-six percent of them involved violence, 13 percent were based on assault, 10 percent were for fraud, and 6 percent were for property crimes. In all, prosecutors file 5,339 indictments in 2015, 5.5 percent fewer than in 2014.

Ninety-nine percent of those charged by prosecutors were male.

In only 4 percent of cases, defendants were found innocent of the charges leveled at them, the report said. The report did not discuss whether the convictions were for all or some of the charges brought, nor did it indicate the relationship between indictments, convictions and punishments.

The State Prosecutors Office files about 10 percent of indictments. The vast majority – 80 percent – are filed by police directly, while the rest are filed by local authorities and other law enforcement agencies.