Prosecutor General Yury Chaika painted a dismal picture of corrupt investigators and rising crime Wednesday, telling a Federation Council hearing that fewer crimes were solved last year even though law enforcement officers tried to boost crime-solving rates with tricks like failing to register crimes.
Chaika said the sharpest increases in registered crimes last year involved extremism, corruption and child abuse.
Law enforcement officials registered a 19 percent increase in extremist crimes in comparison with 2008, Chaika said.
"Last year, there were 548 extremist crimes, of which 484 were solved," Chaika said, reading his annual 2009 report to the Federation Council, Interfax reported.
"Last year, we detected 80 members of organized groups, half of whom were minors, who had engaged in extremist crimes," he added. "We also detected 70 individuals who had committed crimes for political and nationalistic reasons or because of religious hatred."
A total of 19 murders were motivated by extremist beliefs, an increase of 12 percent from 2008, according to Chaika's report, a copy of which was published on his agency's web site.
Chaika said law enforcement officers were trying to boost crime-solving rates by failing to register crimes and attributing unsolved crimes to people without sufficient evidence.
In 2009, prosecutors detected 155,000 crimes, including 250 murders, that law enforcement officers knew about but failed to register, the report said. This is an increase of 9 percent from 2008.
Law enforcement officers in the North Caucasus often attribute unsolved crimes to slain suspected militants without sufficient evidence, Chaika said.
More than 1.3 million crimes remained unsolved last year, Chaika said. This is 43 percent of all crimes registered last year, according to figures on the Interior Ministry's web site.
The number of unsolved crimes last year was an increase of 62,000 from 2008, Chaika said.
Investigators closed criminal cases against more than 1,300 people last year after establishing that they were innocent, almost double the number from 2008. One in five of the 1,300 falsely accused people were jailed.
The number of terrorism-related crimes increased by 2 percent to 654 cases last year, Chaika said.
More than 400 militants were arrested or killed last year, including 40 rebel leaders. A total of 15 terrorist attacks were carried out, compared with 10 in 2008.
About 32,430 of last year's crimes were directed against children. Registered cases of child sex abuse rose by 11 percent to about 10,100, while 60 percent more cases were opened into the distribution of child pornography.
Juvenile crimes stemming from alcohol and drug abuse rose by 28 percent, Chaika said, without specifying the number of crimes, Interfax reported.