5,464 crimes motivated by prejudice were recorded in the previous year In Austria. This is a significant increase compared to 2020, when so-called hate crimes were first recorded. Since an act can have several prejudice motives, the number of documented prejudice motives exceeds the total sum of criminal acts. Prejudice-motivated crimes are categorized into nine motives, most of which were belief-related.
2052 crimes fall into the belief category, followed by national/ethnic origin (1874), religion (750), skin color (408), sexual orientation (376), gender (354), social status (287), age (266) and disability (252). The most crimes motivated by prejudice were recorded in absolute numbers in Vienna (1451), Upper Austria (1006) and Lower Austria (809), but relative to the resident population most in Salzburg, Vienna and Upper Austria. This emerges from the Hate Crime Report 2021 published on Friday.
In 2021, 74.2 prejudice motives were documented in 61.3 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants across Austria, which means a significant increase in police registration compared to the numbers in the pilot report for the first recording period (November 2020 to April 2021) (22 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 6 months).
What was also striking in the case of hate crimes motivated by antisemitism was the high proportion of online crimes that were identified, especially incitement to hatred and antisemitic picture messages. More than half of anti-Muslim prejudice motives, on the other hand, are registered in the (semi-) public and private sphere. Hostility toward Christians, on the other hand, is expressed more frequently in attacks on sacred sites, especially through damage to property.
