Will this show up in your certificate of conduct?

The question when you have a criminal record and the question who finds out about it have different answers. In terms of the register, you have a criminal record once the conviction has become final. It becomes visible to an employer who asks for a certificate of conduct only where none of the exceptions in § 32 Abs. 2 BZRG applies.

For the exception that matters most in practice, what counts is the number of daily units. A fine is imposed under § 40 Abs. 1 StGB in daily units; it is a minimum of five and, unless the law provides otherwise, a maximum of 360 full daily units.

The amount of an individual daily unit is set under § 40 Abs. 2 StGB at a minimum of one and a maximum of 30,000 euros. For § 32 Abs. 2 Nr. 5 BZRG only the number counts: not more than 90 daily units. Whether the daily unit is 15 euros or 300 euros makes no difference to that.

The same number has a second variant that is easily overlooked: a prison sentence or a short custodial penalty of not more than three months is likewise not taken into the certificate of conduct if no further penalty is entered in the register. A short prison sentence therefore does not rule out the exception from the outset.

Two limitations are important. First, the exception applies only where no further penalty is entered in the register. If a second conviction is added, the first one too can appear in the certificate of conduct.

Second, § 32 Abs. 1 Satz 2 BZRG provides that the exceptions in subsection 2 numbers 3 to 9 do not apply to convictions for an offence under §§ 174 bis 180 oder 182 StGB.

Here too, two periods run alongside each other, and they are not the same length.

The first period concerns the certificate of conduct. Under § 34 Abs. 1 BZRG, the period after which a conviction is no longer taken into the certificate of conduct is three years in the cases of number 1, ten years in the cases of number 2 and five years in the remaining cases.

Under § 34 Abs. 3 Satz 1 BZRG this period is extended by the length of the prison sentence, the short custodial penalty or the youth custody sentence, but only in the cases of subsection 1 number 1 letter d and numbers 2 and 3. For the remaining cases of subsection 1, such as a fine, this extension does not apply.

The second period concerns removal from the register itself. It is governed by § 46 BZRG. Under § 46 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 Buchstabe a BZRG the period is five years for convictions to a fine of not more than 90 daily units, where no prison sentence, no short custodial penalty and no youth custody sentence is entered in the register.

For the remaining cases of § 46 Abs. 1 BZRG the law provides for longer periods: 10, 15 or 20 years, depending on the group of cases. Entries about convictions are removed once the period has expired (§ 45 Abs. 1 BZRG).

§ 45 Abs. 2 BZRG matters in practice: an entry that is to be removed is taken out of the register one year after it became due for removal, and during that year information about the entry may be given only to the person concerned.

Where the entry has been removed, or is due to be removed, the prohibition on use in § 51 Abs. 1 BZRG applies: the offence and the conviction may no longer be held against the person concerned in legal dealings and may no longer be used to their detriment. The wording matters here.

The protection begins as soon as the entry becomes due for removal, and not only when it is actually taken out of the register after the year has passed. The rights of third parties, statutory legal consequences and decisions already given remain unaffected by this (§ 51 Abs. 2 BZRG).

A discontinuation of the proceedings is not a conviction. § 4 BZRG ties the entry to a final decision by which a penalty was imposed or one of the further consequences named there was pronounced. Anyone wondering whether a discontinuation against a payment changes their position in the register will find the details in our guide on the discontinuation of proceedings under § 153a StPO.

Special rules apply to juveniles and young adults. In addition to the central register, the Federal Office of Justice keeps an Erziehungsregister (§ 1 Abs. 1 BZRG); under § 59 BZRG the provisions of Part Two apply to the keeping of that register, unless §§ 60 bis 64 BZRG provide otherwise.

What is entered there is governed by § 60 BZRG, in particular the measures ordered under the Youth Courts Act. For convictions to youth custody, § 97 Abs. 1 JGG provides that the youth court judge may declare the stigma of the conviction removed where the judge is satisfied that the convicted person has shown themselves through irreproachable conduct to be an honest person.