Child and Juvenile Delinquency

KFN has studied juvenile delinquency since 1998 with regular surveys of school students in selected urban and rural locations.

The first survey of this kind in 1998 was directed at obtaining in-depth information for the survey region on juvenile delinquency and victimization at school and in the family. More recent surveys have widened their scope to take in specific areas of interest such as truancy or media use. The age range of respondents has also been extended. In addition to ninth-grade pupils (age 14-15), fourth-grade schoolchildren (age 9-10) have been included since 2005 and are surveyed in particular about their use of the media.

The findings on unreported crime collated in these surveys are important in shedding extra light on the information provided by police crime statistics. For example, a rise in officially recorded juvenile crime evident for the last decade from police statistics is not confirmed by the survey data. Carried out in various locations and years (Stuttgart and Schwäbisch Gmünd in 1998 and 2005, Munich in 1998 and 2000, and Hanover in 1998 and 2006), the surveys of ninth-graders point instead towards a decline in juvenile delinquency. The discrepancy here between reported and unreported statistics is mostly explained by heightened awareness of crime and hence readiness to report it.