Austria is facing a youth-crime wave fuelled by immigration, as the number of offences by minors has more than doubled since 2015 and cases involving young Syrians have risen fortyfold.
Figures from the Interior Ministry show that in 2015, police recorded around 5,160 cases involving children and adolescents aged 10 to 14. By 2024, that figure had soared to more than 12,000.
Particularly striking is the increase in offences involving young Syrians. While only about 25 cases were registered in 2015 among suspects of Syrian origin, that number has now reached roughly 1,000.
Interior Minister Gerhard Karner of the centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP) announced a series of measures aimed at curbing the rise, including a temporary suspension of family reunification (which has already been implemented), the introduction of an “integration barometer” to determine future immigration quotas, and a planned ban on carrying knives.
Other initiatives include mandatory police briefings for young offenders and their parents, with fines of several thousand euros for those who fail to attend. For repeat offenders, meetings with police, schools, and youth authorities will become mandatory.
The government also plans to establish special secure facilities for particularly violent or persistent juvenile offenders.
The opposition right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) blamed years of “open-border policies” for the surge in youth crime.
FPÖ general secretary Michael Schnedlitz accused the government of “naïve welcome politics,” saying the figures represented the direct consequence of “years of failure.” He dismissed Karner’s measures as “PR theatre” and renewed calls to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 and to implement a tougher deportation policy for convicted asylum seekers.
As we recently reported, the vast majority of Austrians—85%—support sending convicted criminals back to their home countries, regardless of safety concerns. Only 12% of respondents expressed satisfaction with the government’s current asylum and migration policies.
