We cannot accept the fact that many women do not move freely at night, that they restrict themselves because they feel threatened,” said Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) recently at the presentation of the nationwide study “Security and Crime in Germany” (SKiD ). In addition to the restriction of women’s movement, Faeser emphasizes on Twitter the increase in cybercrime and the high level of trust the population has in the police.
These results are not surprising, but the effort that was put into the “SKiD” study is. Under the leadership of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), more than 47,000 people in the federal states were asked for the first time whether they had been victims of crime or feared becoming a victim of crime. Work is already underway on the next, even larger survey for 2024.
In view of the funds used, the question arises as to what benefit the survey has. Faeser and the President of the BKA, Holger Münch, explained at the press conference that the study serves to record the dark area of crime in order to derive measures from it. When asked about women’s sense of security, Münch emphasized that they were also working with victims’ associations to advise on what to do now.
This answer is surprising given that when it comes to crime, victims are not the solution. It is true that victims can give clues about perpetrators, but prevention must then start with the perpetrators, not with the behavior of the victims. The problem with investigating crimes in public space is that the victims don’t know the perpetrators.
Contrary to what is often reported, more than half of the attacks are not carried out by the victims’ circle of acquaintances, but by perpetrators who are strangers to them – which is also confirmed by “SKiD”. A survey of these perpetrators would be an effective means of preventing further attacks on women.
Claudia Röhm wrote one of the few studies on this for the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office. She investigates convicted sex offenders unknown to the victims to improve identification and prevention of such offenders. One of their key findings is that a large number of perpetrators are repeat offenders. They not only commit crimes against sexual self-determination, but also other crimes such as physical harm, the victims of which are mostly men.
These perpetrators in particular can often be identified if the data are compared with other criminal offenses that have already been recorded. In this category of offenders, who are often young, increased violence prevention would not only prevent criminal careers, but also attacks on women and men. Röhm emphasizes, however, that one crucial criterion is missing in order to develop violence prevention for all categories of perpetrators: How perpetrators proceed has not yet been recorded.
Large-scale surveys on security provide valuable data, but more on the population’s trust in the rule of law and on living together in a society. The standard question on “fear of crime”, which is also asked in “SKiD”, i.e. how safe the immediate living environment is assessed, says more about social cohesion in certain areas than about the crime rate.
In order to fight crime effectively, the perpetrators, their actions and their socialization must be analyzed – instead of the fear of their potential victims. However, the annual discussion of police crime statistics already shows what political explosives are in data on perpetrators when they are of foreign origin. But in order to talk about perpetrators instead of victims and at the same time remove the topic from right-wing extremists, Ms. Faeser would first have to overcome her own fear of politically difficult questions.
