Criminologist claims:

“Prison doesn’t scare young offenders”

Helmut Hirtenlehner has been dealing with crime professionally for more than 25 years.(Bild: Markus Wenzel)

Linz University professor Helmut Hirtenlehner has been researching crime for decades. In an interview, he explains: "Almost everyone does something wrong at some point in their lives, but nine out of ten crimes go undetected. But when teenagers become serious criminals, there is a special reason, according to the researcher.

In Helmut Hirtenlehner's (55) office at Johannes Kepler University, one book on the subject of crime follows the next. The sociologist has co-written some of them himself. He recently published a study on juvenile delinquency in Upper Austria.