Bürgerrechte & Polizei/CILIP 65 (1/2000)

Summaries

Alien Citizens as a Category of Crime Policy
by Wolf-Dieter Narr
The concept of alien is an ideal instrument for purposes of discrimination. One becomes alien through a specific definition of crime policy which has grave consequences. Alien citizens are incomparably more suspicious as potential offenders than "domestics".

Compulsory Best Behavior
by Anja Lederer
In Germany, all foreign citizens are subject to a whole series of special laws. They can be expelled from the country if the corresponding agencies consider them to present a "particular danger" to society. Their political activities can be both constrained or prohibited. There are special criminal law regulations which apply only to alien citizens. Police surveillance and the free interagency exchange of information about them guarantee the enforcement of such legislation.

Crime Rates Among Aliens - No Decline!
by Oliver Brüchert
Police crime statistics are no measure for (alien) crime rates. On the contrary, they say more about the population's propensity for filing complaints and the intensity of police surveillance of alien citizens. It is much easier to criminalize alien citizens due to their insecure legal and social status and due to the fact that they are subject to considerably more intensive and extensive surveillance by state agencies.

Alien Citizens Caught Up in the Net of the Dragnet Controls
by Martina Kant
Since 1994, the majority Germany's Länder police forces have been given powers to stop and search independent of any concrete suspicion against a person. These controls officially are aimed at preventing international crime and illicit immigration. The available police statistics, however, show that they inevitably lead to disproportionate surveillance of non-German individuals. Between 50% and 80% of all checks conducted involve alien citizens.

Special Police Units against Aliens
by Norbert Pütter
The article draws three example out of the maze of interaction between the police and alien citizens which demonstrate the manner in which the police criminalize alien citizens. The brief description of the "Working Group Aliens" in Berlin, the "Joint Working Group Felony" as well as the specialized investigative activities which target specific ethnic or national groups all provide evidence of the fact that alien citizens are subjected to considerable more extensive police control.

Immigration and Police Data-Banks - an Unholy Alliance
by Heiner Busch
The relation between data-bank of immigration and asylum authorities and those of the "security" field is twofold. On the one hand, both police and intelligence services have broad access to the data-banks of immigration and asylum authorities. On the other hand, immigrants and refugees are over-represented among the persons stored on police files.

The Prohibition of the PKK
by Eberhard Schultz
Criminalization of political organizations is based on two legal pillars: the special political criminal law and the power of the Minister of the Interior to prohibit political organisations, which might affect internal security. The potential of these mechanisms can best be demonstrated in the case of the Kurdish Workers Party and a number of associated political and cultural organizations which since 1993 has been outlawed.

Swiss Authorities against the Tamil Tigers
by Johannes Wartenweiler
In a major police raid in April 1996, the leader of the Tamil Tigers in Switzerland, Mr. Muralidaran, and 15 other members of the group were arrested according to an order by the Zurich prosecutor, who charged them for supposedly blackmailing members of the tamil community and establishing a "criminal organization". The raid and the investigations, during which Mr. Muralidaran spent several months in custody, took place against the background of a new repatriation accord between Switzerland and Sri Lanka. The charges were unsustainable, the proceedings, however, have not been closed until today.

The Criminal Procedure Revision Act of 1999
by Norbert Pütter
Finally, after years of discussion and debate a revision of the Criminal Procedures Act is nearing passage by the German Federal Parliament. The revised act contains provisions for extended observation and surveillance, search procedures for suspects and witnesses as well as data-processing procedures for prosecutors offices. Current police practice will be backed up by this legislative framework whose standards have been formulated as broadly as possible to provide the police with as much freedom of action as possible instead of curtailing and limiting such activities.

New Ammunition for the Police
by Oesten Baller
In 1999, the conference of the Länder and the federation's ministries of the interior approved the provision of all police forces with new ammunition with greater man-stopping potential thus providing greater protection for third parties in the vicinity. What this decision does not take into consideration is that such ammunition seriously increases the potential risks of injury or death for offenders but suspects too.

The Diallo Shooting - Paranoid Police Racism in the U.S.A.
by Wolf-Dieter Narr
A total of forty-one bullets fired by police weapons riddled the body of Amadou Diallo, a west-african immigrant in New York. The acquittal of all the police officers involved elevated the incident to an international media event. Yet it is doubtful if the acquittal will have any consequences in terms of police brutality or the criminalization of Afro-Americans.