Crime prevention: A community policing approach

Situated in the very heart of Europe, Austria is a relatively small country with an area of only 83,857 square kilometers (32,378 square miles). Austria is home to eight million people, nearly one minion of whom are foreigners who cannot speak the German language or are only partly familiar with it. The capital of Austria is Vienna with about two million inhabitants. It is situated in the eastern part of the country, neighboring Prague, Bratislava, and Budapest. It is widely accepted that more than 100,000 people live in Vienna illegally. The Austrian Penal Code of 1974 differentiates between serious offenses (felonies) and less serious offenses (misdemeanors). The total number of all criminal acts in Austria has almost doubled since 1975 (see Table 2-1). Figures specifically for Vienna show similar increases. The Austrian police are organized nationally. The Federal Ministry of the Interior is responsible for the internal security in the country, and the Federal Minister of the Interior is the executive responsible for maintaining public order in Austria. Austria employs about 32,000 police officers. In rural areas, where approximately 5.2 million people live, the federal Gendarmerie (federal rural police) are active with about 12,000 officers. In the fourteen largest cities of Austria, with a total of 2.8 minion inhabitants, the federal police operate with about 15,000 officers (Institute for Demographics, 1996).