Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Young Muslim criminals reoffend less often

Muslim young offenders are much less likely to reoffend once released from prison than their Christian cellmates, a study from western Germany shows.

Published: 19 February 2012 09:15 CET
Young Muslim criminals reoffend less often
Photo: DPA

Scientists analysed data on 400 male criminals held and then released from prisons across Rhineland Palatinate between 1996 and 2000.

Nearly 80 percent committed crimes again within the first four years of being released from prison, the data showed. That fitted with the nation average reoffending rate, a report in Der Spiegel said on Sunday.

Of those who said they were Catholic, that figure was 78.8 percent, and of the Protestants 88.8 percent reoffended. The figure for Muslims was just 64.1 percent, the study showed.

Stefan Giebel and Martin Rainer, who conducted the study which was published in the German Criminologist magazine, said the social surroundings in which the young men concerned came from, seemed to be crucial.

The young Christian men often came from broken families and were more likely to have been living in various different places than the Muslims in the study. The latter were also more likely to be accepted by their families after serving a prison sentence, the study showed.

The Local/hc

CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

SHOW COMMENTS