Criminology: counting crime

Almost every figure on this list begins with one act: somebody goes to the police and erstattet Anzeige. The phrase is formal, and in the files it usually stands without an article; at home people say eine Anzeige machen. Two prepositions complete it, each with its own case. The person follows gegen in the accusative, gegen den Vermieter; the offence follows wegen in the genitive, wegen Betrugs. When nobody knows who did it, German writes Anzeige gegen Unbekannt: a capital letter, no article and no ending. The adjective has been frozen into a legal formula and no longer shows its case, although gegen still governs it. Such a report enters the statistics all the same, but it only counts towards die Aufklärungsquote once der Tatverdächtige has a name.