More than 3.25 million violations of the penal code were recorded in 2000, up 12.1 percent from the previous year and the largest number ever in the postwar period, the government reported Friday.

According to the 2001 white paper on crime by the Justice Ministry's Research and Training Institute, only 42.7 percent of the 3,256,109 cases were resolved by police through arrest or other means, down 7.9 percent from the previous year and the lowest rate since 1945.

For offenses excluding traffic-related cases, the rate of resolution dropped to 23.6 percent, marking the worst record in the postwar era.

The overall number of reported penal code offenses has been increasing consistently since 1975, with an even sharper rise seen since 1995, the report says. Violent robbery, physical assault, indecent assault and property damage have shown a marked increase in the last two to three years.

Thefts and traffic-related offenses accounted for 90 percent of all reported cases, with thefts totaling 2.13 million and traffic-related cases coming to 810,000. However, police resolved only 19.1 percent of the theft cases.

Prisons and detention houses held 61,242 prisoners awaiting trial or serving a sentence at the end of last year, 95.4 percent of the capacity of 64,194. The figure was up 7.9 percentage point from the year before, maintaining a gradual increase since 1993.

Roughly 30 percent of all detention facilities suffer from overcrowding, the report says.

There were 50,126 convicted prisoners as of the end of last year, surpassing the overall inmate capacity of 48,393 by 3.6 percent, up 9.1 percentage point from the year before.