Immigration and crime in Germany

Immigration and crime in Germany refers to crimes committed by immigrants, and to fears that immigrants will commit disproportionate numbers or particular types of crime, and to the assumption that those fears can have significant political impact.

Moral panic

According to criminologist Simon Cottee, sociologist Stanley Cohen analyzed fear of immigrant crime among Germans and other contemporary Europeans in the 1960s as a form of moral panic.^[1]

Correlations

The social science data in the question is complex, but while some studies show a correlation between immigrant populations in Germany and crime, ^[2][3] but most social studies of the question have shown little correlation between migrants and crime in Germany.^[4][5]

According to the Gatestone Institute, which refers to a Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police Office) report filed in September 2016, migrants committed 142,500 crimes during the first six months of 2016. This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, and constitutes an increase of nearly 40% over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a suspect has been caught. The institute also criticizes that relevant crimes are concealed by the authorities and the press.^[6]

Criminality by immigrants was said to be rising in all German states since 2015. For example, Hamburg police reported criminal proceedings being opened against 38,000 people in the first six months of 2016, of which 16,600 persons or 43% of the defendants had no German papers. This represents a rise of 41% of defendants in 2015.^[7] The proportion of foreigners living in Hamburg was 14.7% in 2015, representing a rise from 2014's 13.9%.^[8] The number of foreign criminals increased by 16.7% over 2015; 9.5% of the suspects were refugees. The figures did not include crimes against the German alien law. Foreign crime gangs were named as one reason for the rising figures. Refugees committed mostly pickpocketing, representing 30.6% of all suspects. 27.5% of suspects in drug dealing also arrived as refugees. Another common crime committed by refugees was bodily injury, with 1,014 cases reported, mostly in the asylum centers.^[7]

Furthermore, the German government admitted in February 2016 that more than 130,000 asylum seekers may have disappeared, raising concerns over "terrorism and organised crime". This included people who never arrived at the refugee centers assigned to them. The German Interior Ministry later said that "figures had been exaggerated by errors in data entry".^[9] In August 2016, Minister President Bodo Ramelow (The Left) of the state of Thuringia said that he knew of 200,000 people who lived in Germany without maintaining contact with the authorities, and called for their legal registration and integration into Germany.^[10] There are currently many people living without valid registration papers in the country; German Diakonie estimated their number in Hamburg alone to be between 6,000 and 22,000 in 2011,^[11] while Die Welt wrote of "hundreds of thousands" of such people on 6 October 2016.^[12]

Criminal cases in 2016

Although the number of crimes committed by immigrants may not be out of proportion to immigrant numbers, incidents such as a bombing in Ansbach, a mass shooting and an unrelated knife attack in Munich, an attack on a train in Würzburg, a döner knife attack in Reutlingen, and the New Year's Eve mass sexual assaults have received an enormous amount of attention.^[4] There was also extensive media coverage of the murder case of Niklas P.^[13]

In addition, debates about the refugee policies of Angela Merkel and the handling of criminal asylum seekers were sparked by attacks and failed terrorist plots starting in early 2016. These included a January 2016 attack on a Paris police station, prior to which the perpetrator lived in a center for asylum seekers in Recklinghausen, Germany; and failed terrorist plots like the one in Düsseldorf, which also involved alleged terrorists using the asylum system to enter and reside in Germany.^[14][15][16]

The president of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution), Hans-Georg Maaßen, showed some concern that terrorists were mingling among the refugees starting in the beginning of 2016, while on 4 February, police raids were conducted at refugee residences, among other types of residences, in Attendorn. In one such refugee residence, a 35-year-old alleged ISIL terrorist from Algeria was detained. He was reported to have planned a terror attack in Berlin, which was compared with the Recklinghausen case because both perpetrators used multiple identities. German police investigated nineteen similar cases in February 2016.^[17]

In March 2016, a 19-year-old Syrian man, who arrived as an asylum seeker in the summer of 2015, was arrested in an asylum center near Potsdam in the former East German state of Brandenburg. On 27 October, the German Federal Prosecutor charged him of scouting targets and planning terrorist attacks in nearby Berlin as well as acting as a contact person for other suspected terrorists in Germany. He was trained in Syria since 2013 and fought for ISIL near Deir ez-Zor.^[18]

On 10 August, four Muslims who entered the country as refugees were detained in centers for asylum seekers in Mutterstadt and Dinslaken under the suspicion of planning a bombing attack at a Bundesliga football match. Two of them were released shortly afterwards, though investigations continued into their backgrounds. The other two suspects remained in custody. The arrests were part of a larger police raid that also included the cities and towns of Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Tönisvorst, and Hildesheim.^[19][20]

On 13 September, 200 forces of federal and local police arrested three Syrians who lived disguised as refugees in Ahrensburg and Großhansdorf near Hamburg, as well as in Reinfeld near Lübeck. All were small towns in the state of Schleswig-Holstein. Two of the men were previously considered as "perfect refugees" who were learning German and completely inconspicuous. According to the Federal Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maiziere, the men had links to the perpetrators of the November 2015 Paris attacks.^[21]

On 19 September, a 24-year-old Syrian man was arrested in a refugee center in Böblingen near Stuttgart, under the suspicion of "membership in a foreign terrorist organisation".^[22]

On 20 September, a 16-year-old Syrian immigrant was detained in a refugee center in a gym in Porz, Cologne. He was a radical Islamist who plotted to commit a bombing, and had received advice on how to build explosives from an ISIL contact person.^[23]

On 8 October, a bombing plot in Chemnitz was uncovered. Three immigrants were detained, while the main suspect, a Syrian male named Jaber al-Bakr, who arrived in Germany in 2015 under the guise of a refugee, was considered at large.^[24][25] Al-Bakr was arrested in Paunsdorf, Leipzig, in the early hours of 10 October with the assistance of three Syrian immigrants. He hanged himself in his prison cell and was found dead on 12 October. An accomplice, Khalil A., was also put in custody.^[26][27]

In the evening of 16 October, a 16-year-old boy, identified by police as Viktor E. according to German privacy law, was stabbed near an Alster lake bridge in Hamburg. His 15-year-old girlfriend, with whom he sat on the stairs near the waterfront, was also thrown into the water, but was uninjured and managed to swim to the shore again. Viktor E. died in the hospital shortly afterwards, while the attacker escaped. On 30 October, ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack.^[28]

On 25 October, police raids were conducted against Chechen terror suspects in five German states, who entered into the country as asylum seekers. The police searched a dozen flats and a refugee center. Most of the flats were located in Thuringia, namely in Arnstadt, Suhl, Leinefelde, Hildburghausen, Schmalkalden, and Weimar. Further raids were conducted in Hamburg, Dortmund, Leipzig, and in the Munich area. A 28-year-old man, who was found in Suhl and had expressed desires to join ISIL, was considered the main suspect being sought, but he was released after questioning. Ten further men and three women were also suspected of having sponsored terrorism. Computers, cellphones, and further material were confiscated and currently undergoing examination as part of the investigation. In addition, an unidentified chemical was discovered in one of the flats.^[29] During the previous months, more than 3,000 people from Russia, most of them Chechens, had immigrated into Germany, mostly into former East German states. Authorities expressed concerns that Islamists were among the immigrant groups.^[30]

On 2 November, further police raids against Chechen suspects were conducted in three German states. Sixteen people were arrested in the Saxonian cities of Dresden, Leipzig, Pirna, and Radeberg, in Gotha in Thuringia, and in Konz in Rhineland-Palatinate, all under the suspicion of forming a criminal association. Additionally, the GSG 9 special forces were deployed for the raids because of the high potential of violence from the suspects.^[31]

Also on 2 November, a 27-year-old Tunisian man named Ashraf al T., who arrived in Germany in 2015 pretending to be a Syrian asylum seeker, was arrested in the Schöneberg district of Berlin. He was living in the flat of a "refugee helper" (Flüchtlingshelfer), who was also arrested that day.^[32] Al T. attempted to commit suicide in prison by banging his head against the wall, and was subsequently brought to a prison hospital for observation. The Federal Prosecutor's office accused him of having links to ISIL, based on information provided by the US Secret Service. Since a court judged that there was not enough evidence for a planned terrorist attack at the moment, he was imprisoned only for unauthorized entry into Germany.^[33][34]

On 13 November, Die Welt reported about a BND warning issued in the end of October, that ISIL deliberately trained its fighters to disguise themselves as refugees, to show a certain behaviour during interrogations, and to apply for asylum correctly.^[35] On 25 November, Klaus Bouillon, the chairman of the German Standing Conference of Interior Ministers, called for belated checks of Syrian immigrants and admitted that authorities now knew that "a number of people ready to use violence and persons likely to threaten public safety" mingled among the refugees, that there were "tens of thousands" of immigrants who were "hardly identifiable", and that legalizing false identities was a "danger that is known to us for some time". The background for Bouillon's statement was the fact that the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, BAMF) had suspended case-by-case reviews for certain nationalities, including Syrians, for an unspecified amount of months during the migration crisis, starting in the autumn of 2015.^[36]

On 3 December 2016, a 17-year-old "underage unaccompanied" immigrant from Afghanistan was arrested in the Murder and rape case of Maria L. in Freiburg, Germany. A DNA sample convicted him unambiguously.^[37]

Political impact

Four violent crimes committed during the week of 18 July–three of them committed by asylum seekers–created significant political pressure for changes in the Angela Merkel administration policy of welcoming refugees.^[38] Politicians reignited debate on whether deploying the military to fight domestic crime, a practice restricted by the country's post-World War II constitution, should be resumed, and in what manner for which cases.^[39]

See also

• Immigration to Germany
• Crime in Germany
• Immigration and crime
• European migrant crisis
• Flüchtlingspolitik (German Refugee Policies)
• Wave of Terror in Europe

References