Alarming increase in violent attacks by minors in Czechia – what could be to blame?
Violent crimes committed by under 18s have increased by 25% in Czechia over the past two years, leaving the country worried about its children. What could be the cause? And the solution?
Czechia has been shocked once again by a horrific crime committed by a minor, following the murder of two women by a sixteen-year-old on February 20th in the city of Hradec Králové. The youth entered a store in the local shopping mall, took a knife from the shelves, and stabbed two shop assistants to death. They were aged 19 and 38 and succumbed to multiple injuries on the spot, despite being given immediate first aid by a member of the police.
A sixteen-year-old man was arrested about ten minutes later on the other side of the river Elbe, less than a kilometre from the shop, and police recovered a twenty-centimetre-long knife near the crime scene. The accused, who has not been named, faces a sentence of ten years in prison for the double murder. On February 21st, it was announced that the juvenile, who had no former criminal convictions, had fully confessed to police investigators. They also reported that the victims were chosen at random, and that the accused wanted to live out his “fantasies”.
The attack in Hradec Králové follows the attempted murder of a schoolteacher in Rudolfov near České Budějovice only last month. The general statistics are bleak. In January 2024, children were responsible for twenty-two acts of violence, whereas in the first month of this year, ninety-two such acts were recorded, according to police spokesman Ondřej Moravčík.
Furthermore, police statistics show that in 2021, 458 violent acts were committed by adolescents aged fifteen to seventeen. In 2024, it was 707. For children aged fourteen and under, the number in 2021 was 237, and three years later it was 427. Over recent years, the police have therefore recorded an unsettling increase of one quarter in violent attacks with young perpetrators.
Reeling from the shock of another double murder committed by a minor, people are asking what is at the root of the problem, and what can be done. Police spokesman Moravčík has stated that imitation plays a big role; children and adolescents may be inspired by previous acts and by the violence they see in the media or online. “The more society in general pays attention to it, the more interesting it is for them. They see it as a legitimate means to get a reaction” explains Mr. Moravčík.
Psychologist Jan Lašek, however, states that psychologically dangerous individuals can be hard to recognise and responding to crisis situations is not easy for the victims:
“It is very difficult to find a simple solution – that is to say, if you do this, nothing will happen to you. Unfortunately, in such cases, the element of surprise is always on the side of the attacker … We still have the idea that there must be a cause and effect, and that there are some logical connections. That may not always be completely true. In this case, he simply reacted to the stimulus he received and went to implement it without necessarily having to know his victims or be in any relationship with them.”
Nonetheless, police are working hard to combat this trend. Communication is key, not only with the police, but between children, parents, teachers, support staff and child psychologists. Preventative workers are visiting schools to hold discussions with pupils, to offer them a chance to talk and to help them spot the signs of danger.
This programme has met with some success; at the beginning of February, police intercepted a child who was preparing to murder her classmates in Hodonín in the Brno region. Furthermore, on February 20th, it was reported that a young man who was planning to commit a murder at the University of West Bohemia in Plzeň was apprehended by police and taken to a psychiatric hospital, following an alert by concerned friends and university staff.
