Over the past decade, German authorities have increasingly turned their attention to criminal networks rooted in large Middle Eastern extended families. In some places, clan crime has grown to extraordinary proportions.
Saxony’s State Criminal Police Office has classified a Syrian extended family of more than 60 people in the Leipzig area as part of the clan-crime milieu. One man in the family is married under Islamic law to three or more women and has at least 32 children, some already adults, according to Focus Online. Police say he also has more than two dozen grandchildren in Saxony.
Almost two-thirds of the core family have come to police attention, some repeatedly, Raiko Märtins, who heads Saxony’s organized crime division and its Task Force Clan, told the publication. Police have recorded a triple-digit number of offenses, including cases of serious violence and drug crime.
Police estimate the Syrian clan milieu in Saxony at up to 1,000 people, most of them active around the city. Some 130 people in the Leipzig area have police records for offenses, while four extended families form the core of the scene. Märtins said relatives not directly involved in crimes could still assist by putting vehicles, bank accounts or property in their names or by providing incomplete witness statements. Such support can conceal assets, impede investigations or facilitate welfare fraud.
There is no single national German clan-crime statistic because the states use different definitions and methods.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s 2024 report recorded around 6,700 clan-related offenses and 4,282 suspects. For its analysis, the state uses a list of 118 family names associated with Turkish-Arab extended families with links to Lebanon or the Mhallamiye population.
The state’s 2023 figures show how concentrated the crime is: 216 repeat suspects – around 5% of the total – accounted for 27% of recorded clan offenses.
Lower Saxony uses a broader approach. In 2024, it recorded 3,145 clan-related offenses and 2,903 suspects. Children and adolescents under 18 made up 16.8% of the suspects. Of the total, 1,632 – 56% – were German citizens, 1,310 of whom had been born in Germany.
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What German Research Shows
The most extensive recent German research comes from the federally funded KONTEST report, published in 2024. The underlying project ran from 2020 to 2023 and examined crime and stigmatization among members of Arabic-speaking extended families through a series of empirical sub-studies. Researchers used interviews, fieldwork, criminal records and case files and included both people involved in crime and relatives who were not.
The findings varied sharply. Some offenders acted without family support, while others drew on relatives during conflicts involving family honor, assaults or threats. Police officers repeatedly described relatives gathering quickly when conflicts broke out. Researchers also found that a family name could itself carry weight, helping to intimidate others or signal that support was close at hand. At the most serious end were highly criminal extended-family structures in which strong kinship loyalty helped shield offenders and crime persisted across generations, even though many relatives remained uninvolved.
One sub-study examined the federal criminal records of 45 people whom police had assigned to the clan-crime milieu. Nine had no entry, while 25 had at least five, including 10 with 10 or more. Among the 36 with entries, the average was 7.7. Nearly two-thirds had received their first sanction as juveniles, at an average age of 17.7.
A 2024 study analyzed 32,113 pupils in Germany and sought to distinguish between Muslim religiosity, honor culture and clan-style social integration. It identified an independent association between Muslim religiosity and violence-accepting gender attitudes, particularly support for violent control of girls and women within the family, even after the other factors were taken into account.
The study measured attitudes rather than criminal behavior, so it does not establish a link to street violence. It does, however, show an association between religious and cultural beliefs and views about when violence is considered legitimate.
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Polygamy, Benefits and the Law
The Leipzig case is unusual because the man has three or more wives under Islamic law. Germany bans plural civil marriage, but additional wives and their children can still have individual legal and welfare rights.
There is no reliable count of polygamous families in the country. The federal government has said that their number is unknown and that such marriages are not systematically recorded. Religious marriages may also never appear in official registers.
German law does not allow a second civil marriage while the first remains in force. A second spouse also cannot normally enter through spousal reunification once one spouse already lives with the man in Germany. Additional wives may nevertheless be in the country under their own residence or protection status.
German welfare law does not treat a man and several wives as one benefit household. Only one person can be recognized as his partner for means-tested benefits. A second or third wife who qualifies for support is normally assessed separately and may, depending on her circumstances, be treated as single or as a single parent, according to a 2025 Bundestag review.
Kindergeld is currently €259 ($303) a month for each qualifying child and is paid to only one eligible recipient. Where several people qualify, priority generally goes to the person whose household the child lives in under the payment rules. The father therefore does not necessarily receive the payments himself. Free statutory family health insurance through the husband is generally limited to the wife he married first. Subsequent wives need coverage in their own right.
Beyond Germany
France has no reliable national count of criminal clans, but polygamy among immigrant communities has been a policy issue for decades. A 2021 parliamentary report cited an estimate of 16,000–20,000 polygamous families living in the country, while acknowledging that reliable statistics were unavailable.
Older French research raised questions about the role of family culture. In 2010, sociologist Hugues Lagrange analyzed data on more than 4,000 adolescents in disadvantaged districts west of Paris. As Le Monde reported, adolescents from Sahel-origin families were three to four times as likely to have been implicated by police in offenses as native French adolescents living in comparable social conditions. Lagrange pointed to factors including polygamy, very large sibling groups and strong male dominance.
A 2025 Dutch study found that family ties play an important role in criminal networks and that some extended families develop distinctly clan-like characteristics. Such traits can include strong internal loyalty, distrust of outsiders and forms of informal justice within a closed parallel society. The researchers argue that Dutch police and prosecutors have so far paid too little attention to these cultural and family structures when dealing with serious crime.
Sweden adds another dimension. A 2026 inquiry describes family- and kin-based criminal networks in which members are often brought in at an early age and given greater responsibility as they grow older. Such networks have been identified in Gothenburg and Malmö and may seek not only financial gain but control over people and the areas in which they operate.
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In parts of Europe, however, kinship-based criminal structures long predate the recent waves of mass immigration. Italy offers the clearest example. A 2026 study of the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta analyzed 906 marriages creating 770 alliances among 623 clans. It found that powerful families occupied central positions in the marriage network, while alliances between less powerful clans were particularly important in holding the wider structure together. The authors describe marriage as an organizational tool that helps the ’Ndrangheta consolidate family lines, forge alliances and maintain a resilient criminal network.
The broader European picture is examined in the 2026 Springer volume Clan Crime and Criminal Families, by Mahmoud Jaraba, Hans Moors, Dina Siegel and Toine Spapens. Drawing on research from several European countries, it examines kinship, migration, loyalty, secrecy, conflict regulation and the transmission of crime between generations, asking under what conditions family networks become involved in criminal activity.
The Leipzig family, with three wives, 32 children and at least 25 grandchildren, is an extreme case, but one with parallels across Europe. The wider evidence shows what can happen once crime takes hold in a close kinship network: family ties help shield offenders, draw in younger relatives and carry the pattern into the next generation.
