“Crime in Upper Austria is rising again”

The good news first: Upper Austria stands out positively when it comes to internet crime. While cases rose by more than nine percent nationwide last year, they remained stable in this country. 8,571 cybercrime reports represent a slight increase of 0.7 percent compared to 2022. “This is a unique selling point for Upper Austria,” said Gottfried Mitterlehner, head of the State Criminal Police Office.

However, it is important to know that internet crime – i.e. cybercrime – is divided into two areas. Internet crime in the narrower sense includes hacker attacks on computer systems; Internet crime in the broader sense is fraud on the Internet.

Less hackers, more scammers

While hacker attacks in Upper Austria fell by 26.8 percent to 2,094, internet fraud increased by 21.6 percent. In total there were 4941 advertisements. Because hacker attacks mainly target companies and internet fraud targets the population, “companies are apparently already further along,” said State Police Director Andreas Pilsl on Monday at the presentation of the “2023 police complaint statistics” in Linz.

This includes all criminal acts that the investigators were concerned with – from murder cases to thefts. “We are above the 2019 level. The pandemic has caused a dent in crimes, but now crime is rising again” – this is how Pilsl summarized the latest developments. Upper Austria’s police issued a total of 68,571 reports last year, and 59.4 percent of the crimes were solved. This rate remained almost at the level of 2022 and is still at the top compared to other “large federal states,” emphasized Pilsl.

41.6 percent are “foreign suspects”

He highlighted the growing number of “strangers” among the suspects. The number of foreign criminals has more than doubled since 2014. Most recently, 20,274 so-called “foreign suspects” were recorded in the statistics. As a result, they make up 41.6 percent of suspected criminals. As in previous years, most of them come from Romania and Germany. It is noticeable that Hungary is already in third place. “This could be due to the economic situation in Hungary,” said the state police director. Above all, property crimes, especially burglaries and thefts, are attributed to them.

In general, many such crimes are committed by “traveling groups of perpetrators,” said the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Andreas Holzer. “The gangs have returned after the pandemic and are now acting even more professionally.” In Upper Austria, property crimes, including a number of break-ins into basements, rose by 16.2 percent to 19,950.

Children committed 1,610 crimes

640 thefts were committed by ten to 14 year olds. Chief investigator Mitterlehner spoke of “criminal children” who were said to have been responsible for a total of 1,610 crimes last year. The number has increased, but minimally. For comparison: in 2022 there were 1,594 criminal acts that were assigned to this age group. However, the increase in violent crimes is worrying: 217 reports of assault were attributed to under-14s in the previous year (2022: 168).

14 to 18 year olds appear in the statistics with 6,750 crimes. For “individual cases” like the boy from Linz who committed more than 200 crimes by his 14th birthday, Pilsl called for an exit restriction. “The police need a way to ensure that delinquent children are not allowed to leave the house at night,” he said.

Eight murder cases

Violence has increased not only among young people but also among the adult population. 10,547 reports represent an increase of 9.6 percent compared to 2022. The victims were most often attacked with knives. Five women and three men were fatally injured. The number of reports of rape has increased slightly: after 156 cases in 2022, the police were confronted with 161 in the previous year.