The package of laws against “hate online” had little effect in the first year. The expansion of offenses brought slightly more reports in 2021, but no more charges. This emerges from the answer to an SPÖ request in the National Council by Justice Minister Alma Zadic (Greens).
The conviction statistics are not yet available. With the new “upskirting” offense (secret filming under the skirt, note), there have been 22 charges in 129 cases so far. The new victim protection offer was used less than expected. Only 65 people have so far made use of the opportunity to have anonymous perpetrators investigated by the authorities. Only 16 people took advantage of the psychosocial process support.
The more than three million euros that were budgeted for this were far from being exhausted. There were only costs of around 11,500 euros. Zadic therefore announced a comprehensive information campaign to make the offer better known.
With the reform that came into force at the beginning of 2021, cyberbullying can be punished with the first posting – and not only with repetition. There are also penalties for hounding an individual because of their religion or ethnicity. So far, this protection was only available for groups of people.
56 cyberbullying charges
Despite the reform, the number of cyberbullying charges remained the same as in 2020 at 56.
There was a slight increase in hate speech from 84 to 92. However, the workload for the public prosecutor’s office on these paragraphs has increased. They were busy with a total of 1,329 cases, before the reform it was between almost 1,000 and 1,173 per year. The new offer of having authors of anonymous Internet postings investigated with an informal application was only used 65 times in 2021.
Source: Nachrichten
