Beatings, kicks, sexual assaults: more cases of violence are being reported in schools in Bavaria. The number of violent crimes registered in Bavarian schools rose by 24.5 percent in 2023 compared to the previous year, as the deputy head of the State Criminal Police Office (LKA), Guido Limmer, said on Monday in Munich when presenting the police crime statistics. The number is particularly notable because the increase is significantly more drastic than in violent crimes in Bavaria as a whole, regardless of the crime scene. The increase there was around four percent. “The school stands out as a crime scene,” said Limmer.
Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) spoke of “problematic developments”: “We take this very seriously.” According to Limmer, 690 of the 9,620 cases “with the school location” last year were violent crimes. In other areas, such as drug-related crimes, the number fell. In 2022, the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office registered 554 cases of violent crime – which includes crimes such as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, predatory extortion or dangerous and serious bodily harm – in the school context. Three years earlier there were 424. That was an increase of 23 percent. From 2022 to 2023 the increase was even higher.
In 2022, the LKA registered 1,674 cases of violent crimes with minor bodily harm. That was around 15 percent more than in the pre-Corona year 2019, when 1,422 cases were recorded. According to the state statistical office, the number of students in the Free State increased by a little more than one percent between 2019 and 2022 – from 1.65 to around 1.67 million children and young people.
The data from the police crime statistics includes public schools, special schools, private schools, other schools, boarding schools and training institutions – this refers to crimes in the school building or on the school grounds. 744 students and 43 teachers were slightly injured in 2022. In 2019 there were 575 girls and boys and 41 teachers.
In other federal states, the number of recorded violent crimes has also increased compared to the period before the corona pandemic – sometimes significantly. For example, if you compare the statistics from the State Ministry of the Interior in North Rhine-Westphalia for the years 2019 and 2022, there is an increase in cases by more than half, even if the number of students at general education and vocational schools as well as at health care schools only increased increased by around one percent (between school year 2019/20 and 2022/23).
According to the General Association of School Management in Germany, many teachers have the feeling that the willingness to use violence has increased. “We have noticed that more weapons are being taken to school than before,” said association chairman Sven Winkler. These are primarily knives and so-called apparent weapons. These are objects that look deceptively similar to real firearms. It is unclear whether children and young people carry weapons because they are prepared to use violence or because they are afraid and want to use them for self-defense.