The theft follows a simple pattern. A little girl asks a customer in a shop for help reaching something on a shelf and, while he or she is distracted, another child steals a wallet or cash from their pocket or bag. The thieves are victims themselves, from a rising number of children from poor eastern European countries smuggled into the wealthy West and forced to steal. “The number of children smuggled for theft is still on the rise across Europe,” Norbert Ceipek from Vienna’s Juvenile Affairs Office told Reuters.

Precise numbers are hard to come by. Austrian authorities estimate that up to 250 000 children and teenagers, most from Albania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova and Romania, are sent out daily by organised criminal gangs to steal on the streets and in shops across Europe.

The European police agency Europol says the problem is part of a wider pattern of human trafficking, mainly in women and children, from the developing world and eastern Europe to the West for the sex trade, forced labour and crime.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in a report on child trafficking in the European Union found that “most trafficked unaccompanied minors come from broken families or families experiencing internal conflict as a consequence of high unemployment, low income, social insecurity and high birth rates.” Some are sent to the West by parents who hope they will do better there, while others run away to escape difficult homes, find refuge after parents die or are jailed, or in pursuit of an idealised life, the IOM said.

In Vienna, the Juvenile Affairs Office said trafficked children are under constant threat of violence. They cannot return to their shelter in the evening without stealing a certain amount of money set by their bosses.

“Children are often forced to steal at least 300 euros ($365.9) a day,” Ceipek said. If they fail to meet the target, they suffer severe punishment or can be forced into prostitution to make up the missing money. “The children are not afraid of the Austrian police, they fear only their supervisors,” Ceipek said.