Knife crime soars in Germany’s most populous state, nearly half of suspects are foreigners

Knife crime is plaguing Germany, and in the country’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, it already rose sharply in 2023. Now, the latest figures for 2024 show this worrying trend is continuing, along with other serious crimes.

The state interior minister, Herbert Reul (CDU), said that there were 7,296 knife crimes last year, an increase of 20.7 percent. That comes after a 44 percent increase in 2023. These crimes include both the use of a knife and crime involving a threat of a knife, according to police data.

Like many other serious crimes, approximately half of the suspects are foreigners, equating to 47.6 percent. In the state, foreigners make up only 16.1 percent of the population. Germans, in turn, are often victims of these crimes, with 60.1 percent of all victims having German citizenship while 39.9 percent are foreigners.

As always, these statistics can be highly misleading, as many German citizens are foreigners who recently received citizenship or have a foreign background, however, Germany does not usually keep statistics about the foreign background of German citizens. One of the strategies used to ascertain how many foreigners are involved in a crime is to request the first names of criminals. In North Rhine-Westphalia, gang rapes, for instance, are revealing. Supposedly half of all gang rapes are committed by foreigners, but when the first names of suspects are revealed, it becomes clear that at least 75 percent of suspects have foreign names.