Final Report Summary - COREPOL (Conflict Resolution, Mediation and Restorative Justice and the Policing of Ethnic Minorities in Germany, Austria, and Hungary)
Executive Summary:
Recent European Social Survey datasets comprising of 21 European countries and minority group members from 66 countries of origin, revealed that individuals who feel that they belong to a discriminated group have less trust in the police than individuals who do not perceive group discrimination. Such macro data analysis is in line with COREPOL research findings. COREPOL research has a European dimension which points at the necessity to establish more accountability regarding police work in EU member states.
Across modern societies research findings leave no doubt that minority populations are at a higher risk of being exposed to problems with the police. Additionally, they have less trust in law enforcement. Although police are not solely responsible for failed integration processes, they are a central player in what could be called the micro-politics of integration. Police can add to the ‘otherness’ of minorities and even reinforce it, or they can act as a human rights agency and serve and protect minority communities and their vulnerable members, mostly women and children. Even more, they can also help the communities to understand the work and the tasks of police and citizens in civil society. Most important, they can help to strengthen the norms and the fabric in civilized cultures, even among people who live in segregated circumstances.
After incidents of spectacular crime and violence committed by persons of a migrant or minority origin, parts of the general public, of politics and the media tend to reinforce the notion of ‘otherness’ of all minority persons and new citizens. Measures to control migration (‘send them home’) are set high on the agenda of public concerns. Occasionally, this may foster expectations that law enforcement should proceed with more strictness, or somehow take care of crime and disorder associated to minority neighbourhoods. Police work in some minority quarters is often difficult and can be frustrating due to the fact that it is a ‘mixed bag’. The enforcement of the norms of civil society, the prevention of violence and victimization, the maintenance of public order, and the solving of crimes, taken together this can create real challenges to the forces of order. However, police are not the main culprit when it comes to the failures of European integration politics. Police need more support to professionally carry out what is needed and has to be done with regard to minority problems. To carry out community policing in problematical areas and circumstances is a task that asks for a shift of paradigm: The often somewhat fictitious image of police as the ‘crime-fighting’ force has to make space for an understanding of police as a service and central actor for the protection of Human Rights.
Project Context and Objectives:
The original description of work made strong reference to restorative justice (RJ) theory as a potential approach to improve conflict resolution between police (LEAs) and minorities and underscored the scope of non-adversarial methods like conferencing. Through the review of research literature and expert interviews the COREPOL team members made themselves familiar with RJ approaches abroad and in the partner countries. In particular, the first high profile workshop in Vienna (January 2012) included RJ researchers from the partner countries, European networks and overseas research institutions (among them the Foresee Research group, University of Melbourne Criminology Research on Aboriginal Justice, E. Weitekamp, O. Hagemann, C. Pelikan and others).
Although we were not able to find any explicit RJ models run by police or minority organizations to address conflict resolution, we imported questions concerning RJ methodology (conferencing) into our research design and asked minority members and police practitioners from all ranks whether they were aware of RJ practices in their communities/agencies. While conferencing, victim-offender mediation or other methods based on a wider scope of RJ could be identified in the judicial and corrections system, particularly in prisons and custodial institutions, it became obvious that the same is simply not the case when it comes to policing. Minority interviewees did not know about their legal rights or had no information about their possibilities to complain about police actions or the behaviour of individual officers or groups of policemen or –women. At the same time, practically all interviewed police practitioners had never heard of RJ or had never contemplated the use of RJ approaches in dealing with police-citizens’ conflict.
At this stage, the very philosophy of RJ appears to be unfamiliar among continental European police circles. In that respect, expert, practitioner, and minority interviews in the partner countries showed similar results in that RJ is not used as a practical tool in conflict resolution.
RJ operates both as a normative theory in that it posits an idealised set of responses to the deficiencies of traditional adversarial justice, and as a set of practical tools – largely through conferencing - for conflict management. With regard to its normative status, it is by no means without its critics. With regard to the latter, COREPOL findings show a virtually unanimous indifference to or ignorance of its programmatic features. As we have pointed out elsewhere, these are born of the Anglosphere existence of law enforcement discretion which has no analogue in the German, Austrian, and Hungarian Eurosphere.
In short, COREPOL research has explored the relevance of RJ to the field of minorities and policing, and it came up short. That is what COREPOL set out to test.
The following text contains also an abridged and edited version of the text provided for the final conference in Brussels (the brochure).
Aiming at an improvement of European police-minority relations, COREPOL has focussed on three countries, their populations of ‘visible others’ police and their mutual relationship and experiences:
- In Germany: Persons from Turkey who came to Europe to work and then brought their family members to their host country;
- In Austria: Africans who decades ago, came to the country for study purposes or more recently because they had to flee or because they wanted a better life for themselves and their children;
- In Hungary: The resident discriminated minority of Roma in cities and the countryside.
COREPOL findings serve as a steppingstone towards the reflection of the structural problems in minority-police interaction and conflict, and the development of better communication strategies in minority-police relations. Furthermore, findings contribute to enhanced knowledge about policing in European democracies amongst minority populations and their representatives, and also - the advancement of police education and training to achieve these aims. In that respect, COREPOL findings address the needs of European stakeholders, politicians, NGOs, security experts, police management and academics in the area of migration, integration strategies for minorities, refugees and asylum seekers, community policing, order maintenance and crime prevention.
Being nation states based on an ideological tradition of ethnic homogeneity, the immigration and living conditions of persons/families from other countries and continents, or in the case of Hungary the living conditions of a resident rural and urban minority, have been seen and declared as ‘a problem’ of the minorities and not as a failure of the societal, political, and cultural main stream. Reforms, many of them of a hesitant nature, have not yet led to a dynamic of successful integration of ethnic minorities, neither have they fundamentally changed the set-up of state services, nor foremost the organizational culture of police.
Historically, by being civil (Roman) law cultures Germany, Austria and Hungary have no deep-rooted tradition of critical police review on the part of civil society. In a normative view police is assumed to always act in accordance with the law and the country’s constitution. In many European countries the institutionalized organizational answer to the question: ‘Who guards the guards?’ does not allow for a comparison to the civilian (or hybrid) oversight agencies that can be found in the majority of English-speaking countries.
The concept of police oversight originates from the English-speaking common law countries, many of them with a more or less explicit self-definition as multi-cultural and/or immigration societies. There, the structural friction between police and minorities and related riots and police scandals have led to a long-lasting political, often research based-reflection of police practices regarding citizens with a minority status. The results of such studies have implications for the European situation, even if a one-to-one adaption of oversight approaches practiced elsewhere is not feasible.
In the last decade ethnic minority riots have become a feature of conflict in some European countries. Nearly all of them broke out after police was accused of killing minority adolescents or minority males, e.g. in the UK, France and Sweden. The question of improved police-minority relations, among them police oversight concerning minority communities, is of utmost significance for the future of professional and democratic policing in Europe.
Police have an extraordinary amount of power as they are able to observe, stop, arrest, and detain citizens. Organizational studies of police have described features of a ‘police culture’ and a ‘police code or blue wall of silence’. These norms occasionally resemble the codes of tightly woven family clans. Likewise the occupational police culture tends to deal with incidents of violence in a non-transparent and clandestine manner. While in family clans this may pertain to acts of violence against members of their own or other families, acts of police abuse of force are being handed out by officers against civilians.
Accordingly, ‘peer accountability’ or ‘whistle blowing’ is not a regular feature in many police organizations. Similar codes and norms may be observed in other professional cultures but rarely is the ‘blue wall of silence’ as thick and as high as in many front-line police organizations. Admitting mistakes or handing out gestures of apology or regret about wrongdoings on the part of officers has no established tradition in most European police cultures, even in cases of blatant scandals.
Project Results:
Because of the legal and constitutional cultures in which policing is embedded RJ had little to no significance for conflict solving between police and minorities in the partner countries. It is one of the results of COREPOL empirical research, that RJ as a philosophical movement has some impact on the practical carrying out of conflict resolution in other fields (correctional institution, victim-offender medition). However, it has not yet become known as an alternative to bureaucratic and adversarial approaches in the area of complaints against police. Accordingly, COREPOL could only rely on what could be found out about existing processes of successful (or less successful) conflict solving.
COREPOL was always defined as an explorative research, and as a result of the research carried out in 2012, and partly also 2013, there was little doubt that in comparison to identified issues regarding the lack of police accountability, in particular when it came to minority policing, RJ seems a rather academic philosophy of little demonstrable practical use for police organizations and community projects dealing with conflict solving in the context of the present research findings.
With these results in mind the COREPOL team undertook a gradual shift of emphasis. From the micro level of RJ encounters between minority members and police practitioners the empirical and theoretical perspective moved to a much more relevant area of concern for democratic policing: police accountability. The data left no doubt that minority communities and individuals had substantiated reservations against police practices. Too a considerable extent this was based on experience and incidents, and not simply stereotypical notions against officers or other negative attitudes.
According to persons interviewed during COREPOL field research, lack of respectful behaviour of officers towards persons or groups with a minority background or even cases of excessive use of force have been witnessed personally or incidents of such gravity have been brought to their attention by friends, family members or people from their neighbourhoods. Recent research findings by Skogan/Craen and COREPOL show that minority citizens lose confidence in law enforcement and their host state when they hear that profiling is being practiced. This pertains even to those who have no personal experience of being profiled. They still tend not to cooperate with the police in the future.
Perceived fairness of police acts determines trust in police (and the state)
Research on police accountability affirms: Across EU member states marginalized populations tend to get on a sliding curve of immersion in criminal activities which raises the suspicion of law enforcement officers. Due to this generalized suspicion, minority people feel that they are overly exposed to police controls. As a consequence police and minorities are stuck in a system of antagonistic and confrontational interactions.
Police oversight may prove effective in providing an empirically more substantiated answer to the accusation of ‘racial/ethnic profiling’.
Minority people see the police as agents of the state. Misconduct in the context of law enforcement is perceived as unjustifiable and racist, even more so if it is perceived as unfair or as excessive use of force. For that reason, members of minority populations more frequently distrust police and voice disappointment in regard to police behaviour.
COREPOL data contains reference to instances of police misconduct that are serious and not in concordance with legal and procedural norms concerning police performance. A careful analysis of the reported incidents in the partner countries’ interview data calls for structural reform of police accountability and democratic transparency.
Abuse of police power appears to be the exception and rather not the rule.
Minority populations are particularly vulnerable with regard to excessive force, or in milder forms, inappropriate and unprofessional policing, impoliteness or the use of hateful language. They are also less likely to bring such incidents to the attention of the authorities, i.e. to file official complaints or criminal charges after being mistreated by police.
Police Perceived by Ethnic Minorities
Negative attitudes between minority members and police result in a mutual lack of trust and confidence – this reduces the chance that members of the minorities reflect on police activities as legitimate, and therefore do not volunteer to cooperate with police and report crime. Nearly all the men and women interviewed by COREPOL field researchers however saw police as an indispensable authority in dealing with violence, crime, and accidents or dangerous situations, and most said that they would call them for help. However, they usually would do this only in cases of serious crime and violence.
In the case of hate speeches, domestic violence and minor episodes of hate crime, members of the minorities tend not to ask for the help of police. Particularly, in relation to the protection of vulnerable victims (women, chidren) and to violence prevention, police have to be more pro-active in their information and prevention policies.
It is necessary, to discuss ‘accountability mechanisms’ in the form of external and independent oversight of policing. Police accountability in democratic and civilized societies may require a combination of external and internal control authorities. At present, in none of the COREPOL partner countries can one find established and efficient mechanisms or systematic approaches to independent police oversight.
Accusations of routine racial/ethnic bias and ethnic profiling can only be proven without substance if police are willing to accept oversight agencies to establish facts about such claims. On the part of police leadership and police unions independent oversight is associated with all kinds of fears and suspicions. Police work would be hampered or made more difficult and accusations would be directed against innocent officers. An increased amount of complaints does not necessarily imply an increase in misconduct. It could indicate a rise in citizens’ confidence in the oversight authority and its legitimacy.
The minority persons or groups and police meet during neighbourhood conflicts or in matters regarding complaints about behaviour, often later at night. Occasionally, clan- or ethnicity-based disputes between people from different ethnic background cause conflicts, some of them with violent outcomes in the neighbourhood.
Like Roma and Sub-Saharan Africans, Turkish and Arab people marshal similar conflict-solving mechanisms. While disputes or even violent quarrels are going on, people try to avoid involvement of police. Instead they try to involve formal or informal leaders in the extended family or seek help from trusted elders. In case of conflicts within the community, these persons act as a sort of mediator, since the community members give credit to their advice. In some instances in Germany as in Hungary, respected people of the community take care of disputes and conflict.
There are Risks of Informal Conflict Resolution
However, such conflict management is not carried out according to the rules of mediation. Often, the mediators are not impartial. The conflicting parties do not work out the terms of the agreement. In some cases victims and offenders do not even meet each other in person. Here police have a role as a catalyst and initiator of transparent and accountable conflict solving mechanisms. This is a genuine challenge for community policing practices. Community policing is a term with roots and a history, mostly in the context of Anglo-American policing concepts.
The Aim: Police Work with a Neighbourhood Focus
It carries with it a multitude of conceptual meanings and facets. COREPOL data give examples of good police work with a neighbourhood orientation. This increases trust in police and in the state, in general. It gives community members and citizens confidence that police take their concerns, fears and safety problems seriously. Such a rise in confidence on the part of police ‘customers’ has been reported to increase not only in cooperation with officers, but also to result in higher rates of the reporting of crime. A safer society has to rely on good police-citizen cooperation and the willingness of community members to report crimes, disorder and risks to police.
Community Policing is a city or county program requiring a network of volunteers, community organizations and city service outfits/ agencies to cope with citizens’ concerns. Community Policing differs from strict crime-control/ law and order approaches by directing police activities towards the provision of services and the maintenance of order and peace. Accordingly it can serve as a test case for democratic policing and trust-raising, in particular with regards to the relationship between police and minority communities.
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICANS AND POLICE IN AUSTRIA
The Austrian police are divided into nine regional police directorates consisting of 83 district police commands and 27 city police commands. Police-citizens ratio is at 300:1 with a proportion of 14 per cent females in the service. The Austrian police education is divided into basic police training (24 months), mid-level management education (bachelor program: 3 years) and the Master Program (3 years).
During encounters between people of African origin and police officers specific police units are more often involved, in particular the Street Crime Task Force and the Tactical Units (riot police). Additionally, among others the Police Detention Centres, the so-called Aliens’ Police (Fremdenpolizei), the Border and Immigration Police Department, and the Unit for Minority Contacts have more frequent contacts with persons of African origin who live in Austria.
Sub-Saharan Africans in Austria
In the post-war decades larger numbers of Africans came to Austria to study at the country’s universities, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. This has changed in the last decades as fewer students of African origin arrive in Austria for study purposes. At present, the reasons behind immigration or seeking asylum in Austria are predominantly political persecution, natural disasters, war and civil war and related conflicts. At the beginning of 2001, more than 40,000 people, about one third being women, predominantly from Nigeria, Ghana and South-Africa have taken residence in Austria, and about half of them in Vienna. Residence and legal status play an important role as far as the risk of being deported and access to employment are concerned. This however, also affects their ability to participate actively in civil society. As a consequence of difficult access to the Austrian labour market, Africans with an academic qualification are frequently not able to pursue their profession. They therefore have to seek work in menial jobs for which they are, by far, overqualified.
The term ‘African’ is quite often associated with drug-related crimes. African people are often confronted with discrimination, prejudice, and racism and they are frequently exposed to harassment and violence. The stigmatization of people from Africa due to their language, clothes and colour of skin is closely related to the image of ‘the black drug dealer’. This stereotype is consolidated through public, right-wing political, and tabloid media debates. Such a bad reputation of Africans often leads to repercussions when it comes to contact with public service facilities, but especially with police officers and criminal proceedings.
Conflicts between African Minority Persons and Police
Based on the data of the field studies in Vienna and Graz five main areas of conflict between the police and persons of African origin have been identified. The results indicate remarkable differences along the two spatial settings and with regard to the gender dimension.
Language problems and communication difficulties:
The results show that there are difficulties of mutual comprehension with regard to official acts. This is particularly relevant when more complex communication is needed that may have consequences for legal proceedings. Furthermore, communication difficulties sometimes accrue from cultural differences. These differences increase the likelihood of conflicts and escalation during an official act. Language differences may also be exploited to avoid communication. Such strategies seem to be used by persons of African origin in a critical situation, and also by some police officers, in which case it contributes to a misuse of power.
Disrespectful behaviour and racist slur:
Though generally, official acts take place in a respectful way, occurrences were repeatedly referred to where police officers made use of pejorative slur towards persons of African minority background. Additionally, some interviewees reported offensive and degrading actions and incidents of being ill-treated by the police. Conversely, police officers outlined disrespectful behaviour of some persons of African origin towards them. Such behaviour increases the risk of an escalation of the respective official act. In some cases, culture-based differences may be experienced as offensive behaviour. Nonetheless, many negative incidents can be attributed first and foremost to a lack of respect and friendly language, gestures, and attitude towards the vis-à-vis. They cannot simply be traced to cultural differences.
Identity checks & stops and searches:
ID checks appear to be the most significant area of conflict and represent the fundamental experience of discrimination in the everyday life of Africans in Austria. The data reveal how visible ‘otherness’, socio-economic markers, and stereotypes (‘criminal’) merge towards specific ethnic minorities and affect the control activities of certain police officers. The selectivity of the control practice partly results from practical experiences which are not adequately reflected and thus coagulate to a ‘second code’. More frequent checks of persons of African origin feed into a kind of general suspicion against the minority.
Preferred treatment of (fair-skinned) Austrians during official acts:
In official acts where the police were called to intervene in conflicts between persons of African origin and fair-skinned Austrians, occasionally police treat ‘Austrian natives’ in a preferential manner while establishing the evidence and the relevant facts. Subsequently, a systematic disadvantage for persons of African origin may arise in the case of a subsequent legal proceeding.
Physical violence:
The interviews leave the impression that many police tend to experience the African minority as particularly dangerous. Negative expectations towards persons of African origin obviously have an effect on the professional day-to-day interactions of the police with them. They put particular emphasis on self-protection in official acts with persons of African origin. This makes the accu- sations of the latter against the police plausible, namely that police officers often and rapidly use direct physical force against persons of African origin and often call for reinforcement. This demonstrates that there is a vital necessity to thoroughly examine within the police, how experienced or imagined threats show up in practice. The resulting implications and effects on persons with an African migration background need systematic monitoring and analysis.
Complaints against the Austrian Police
In Austria, the Security Police Act forms an important legal basis for complaints against the police: sections regulate complaints with regard to the infringement of subjective rights and cover complaints due to violations of the guideline ordinance. The latter includes the possibility to stimulate a dialogue between the complainant and the respective officer. A complaint against police officers can be filed at every police station, at specific complaint departments within the Police Headquarters, at the Independent Administrative Tribunal or at Court or at NGOs concerned with anti-discrimination and anti-racism. Another address for complaints is the Austrian Ombudsman Board. The unit in charge of complaints within the Federal Ministry of Interior is the Federal Bureau of Anti-Corruption. This unit is responsible for investigations in the case of criminal acts (e.g. misconduct) of the police and other employees of the national public sectors. Within the Federal Police, the Bureau for Quality and Knowledge Management, and the Bureau for Controlling are there to ensure the efficiency and the professionalism of police work. Most of the forwarded cases relate to accusations of excessive use of force by police officers. The Citizen Information Service is responsible for the first processing of the official complaint. The case can then be forwarded to the Commissioner of Human Rights (CHR) for example, who contacts the accused officer.
The CHR has the responsibility to ensure compliance with human rights in general in all departments. Depending on the case, CHR can moderate an exchange between the victim and the officer in question. In 2010 the Unit for Minority Contact was established. This department of the Austrian police has its roots in the association Fair & Sensibel. This association was founded after the case of Marcus Omofuma became public. Omofuma was an asylum seeker who died due to maltreatment during his deportation flight. The aim of Fair & Sensibel is to sensitize police officers towards people of African origin and their culture. With the establishment of the Unit for Minority Contacts the activities of Fair & Sensibel have been institutionalised. Here dialogues are offered to settle conflicts between citizen and police officers.
Non-adversarial Approaches of Conflict Resolution
Beside the possibility of the Unit Minority Contact a second institutionalised form of informal conflict resolution is a ‘charge dismissal dialogue’, an approach that is legally fixed just in the case of a complaint in accordance with the Security Police Act. In such a meeting the involved official and the complainant discuss the incident, with the aim of the complaint to be settled and no charges being brought. In the best case the procedure is closed with a written declaration by the complainant that the complaint is withdrawn.
The interviews showed that in those very few cases (less than 10 p.a.) where such conflict resolution meetings took place experiences were mainly positive. However, there are limiting factors for the application of this dialogue-oriented possibility of conflict resolution. The complainant has to refer explicitly to the specific section of the law, so complainants have to know about this option. Additionally, sufficient support from the superiors is of crucial importance for promoting this alternative instrument in dealing with conflicts. Furthermore, it is important to raise awareness among police that the affected officers should directly take part in these meetings. It should be considered that for senior police officers who act as facilitators in conflict resolution meetings role conflicts can be a consequence.
Police Oversight by External Bodies in Austria
In July 2012 the Austrian Ombudsman Board (AOB) took over the tasks of the former Human Rights Adviso- ry Council (HRAC). The HRAC examined the situation of persons who had been detained with respect to humane treatment and investigated police actions regarding any aspect of human rights violations. Today six commissions monitor and control all institutions and facilities where people with or without disabilities are in danger of abuse, inhuman treatment and measures that may deprive them of their liberty. The AOB gives recommendations to pre- vent human rights violations.
Apart from the above mentioned, NGOs are relevant concerning the control of police actions. These comprise of non-university research institutes that are usually po- sitioned between science and practice with a strong application orientation (e.g. Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights). At the moment there is no independent complaint office in Austria. Most of the existing possibilities are closely connected to the police, high-threshold, and not anonymous. Furthermore they carry a risk of costs and have limited possibilities for the success of a complaint.
MUSLIM MINORITIES AND GERMAN POLICE
Germany is a federal state and therefore each of the sixteen states in Germany has its own police and its own police law. In addition there is also the Federal Police, which is responsible for border control and the safety of railways, the German Federal Criminal Police Office and the Police of the German Parliament. Since all ministries of the states work together closely, the police laws of the federal states are at least similar and comparable and are all based on common principles of the German constitution. The main task of the police is addressing safety and security needs, to do criminal prosecution and to deal with conflict situations. In 2012, 243.982 police officers were employed by the police and about 20% of the police officers were female.
The police operate in fields of uniformed beat policing, traffic police, criminal investigation, task force/riot police or the water police. Nowadays the police continue efforts to employ people with migration background, since minorities are still underrepresented in the organization even though this part of the German population is steadily growing.
Labour Migration from Turkey to Germany
Muslims began to migrate to German cities in the early 1960s when the building of The Wall between East and West Germany stopped the inflow of East Germans coming into the West German labour market. ‘Guest workers’ from Southern European countries were no longer available, and so the migration of Muslim contract workers from Turkey commenced. To a large extent Turks did not return to their homeland but remained in the cities of West Germany. After 1973 contract worker recruitment came to an end. Migration from Turkey to Germany continued however as family reunion. The size of the migration from Turkey to Germany has made it the 5th largest migration movement in the world. The largest Turkish community outside of Turkey live in Berlin.
German-Turks: Moving between two Worlds
First-, second-, third-, and fourth-generation people with a Turkish background reside in Germany. Many of them keep tight bonds with their relatives in Turkey and still have Turkish citizenship and passports. A large part of this minority lives an everyday-life according to Turkish traditions, gets their groceries from Turkish shops, and watches TV stations from their home country. As a result, many German-Turks have hyphenated identities and ‘move between two worlds’. This is not always easy and can cause misunderstandings and conflicts, particularly in contacts with the police. Although many Turks are residents of districts in German cities, they and their families do not fully take part in German main stream social activities. Furthermore, in comparison to average Germans, a majority of Turkish-Germans still live in disadvantaged conditions, in particular when it comes to housing. In general terms, these city districts are termed ‘communities’.
A German-Turkish ‘Community’?
At a closer look the expression ‘community’ appears somewhat misleading because it implies a coherence which more often than not, does not exist. For example, the Muslim neighbourhoods of Berlin consist of people of very diverse ethnic origin, religious affiliation and cultural roots: Turks (mostly from Anatolia), Kurdish people from different regions, Palestinians, Lebanese, and most recently people from Syria. They do not form a homogeneous but rather a complex and instable situation with numerous internal conflicts between individuals, family clans, and their neighbouring Germans.
Inequality originates from the eduaction system
Problematical attitudes towards education and in particular, the educational status of parents/mothers are seen as contributing factors to ongoing processes of discrimination in the German education system. These problems lead to minimal educational achievement, and accordingly, restrict the access of younger people with a migration background, in particular young males, to the labour market.
Higher unemployment rates of parents, higher rates of physical abuse in families against children and against partners, together with a higher visibility of adolescent offenders with a Turkish/Arab family background are seen as consequences of failed integration. On the part of the German majority this can add to feelings of resentment and prejudice. Recently, the perceived radicalization of segments of the Turkish/Arab population in relation to Jihadist and IS involvement has added to the estrangement between a growing number of Germans and ‘the Muslims’.
Conflicts between minority members and the Police
In the restricted sample that has contributed to our data and in consideration of our observations, Islamism or even Jihadist fanaticism found no mentioning at all. In the neighbourhood interviews and mostly among younger males we have occasionally encountered disaffection with police and German society. This is a group where police ‘micro-politics’ can achieve a lot by practicing fair policing. However police officers may use hostile or overly harsh approaches and by doing so may contribute to disaffected or alienated attitudes. This may steer young men to pursue avenues of masculine identity which starts with them joining gyms and becoming part of neighbourhood cliques, and finds them ending up on the battlefields of Syria or elsewhere.
Over- and Underpolicing of Minority Neighbourhoods
Similar to research findings in other Western societies, COREPOL data points at features of underpolicing and overpolicing in minority neighbourhoods. Residents, particularly interviewed females ask for more police presence, faster police responses to emergency calls and better protection, while others (more often younger males) complain about police stops and frequent ID checks. For more than a decade now, in our field research sites, police organizations have been actively trying to improve police-community relations. At the outset, the contacts were concentrated on local Mosque associations. At a later stage, cooperation with other community groups and activists was initiated.
Feeling Safe on German Streets
Field research data from minority neighbourhoods revealed surprisingly strong segments of minority men and women who said they felt safe from crime. However, the data pointed at gender specific differences in trust in police and the willingness to call police and report crimes. In general, the willingness to report hate crimes and racist crime was low. In many instances the community itself maintains and exercises practices of social control. Still, for some a sense of safety comes from police presence in Germany.
According to the interview data, the image of the police within the Turkish minority is mixed. In Germany, a sizeable proportion of them hold a general opinion of police being fair, friendly, helpful, and of ‘solving problems’. At the same time, others have reported encounters with officers who were hostile and unsupportive, or in individual cases they said that the officers had been seen by them as prejudiced towards minorities – mainly towards young males.
German Police Perception of Minority Persons
Among the interviewed German police officers through the ranks, most individuals and families from an ethnic minority background are seen as ‘normal’ people with ‘normal’ problems, and of no special threat to safety, disorder, or criminal issues. Apart from this general opinion there are some groups of young males and adolescents who are seen to frequently act in a rude manner and who tend to insult police officers. Similarly, demonstrations of misled masculinity and misogynist behaviour abound in some strict Muslim households. These norms lead to conflicts within families, groups and frequently appear as a source of conflict with police.
The Need to Know Ones‘s Rights
On the part of the German-Turks, the demand to empower this minority to be self-confident in situations of contact with the police needs to be strengthened. German-Turks should learn which rights they have as people living in Germany. Furthermore, they also need to develop a correct understanding of the legal framework of policing and its roots and role in a democratic society. Many older migrants and also some male adolescents are brought up according to the rules of patriarchy and its hierarchy. To them the typical German non-hierarchical structure appears strange and hard to understand.
Schools, for example, must become places where children with Turkish and Arab backgrounds can learn about democracy, democratic values, about the role as well as the authority of the police, and about their own rights and obligations within German society. An improved understanding of the police’s role in society will be enhanced if German-Turks and Arabs are in direct and positive contact with the police.
German Police and Human Rights
According to Amnesty International, the police can be viewed in terms of a human rights organization. However, the public image of police relies still quite often on a crime-fighting paradigm. Although research findings across countries clearly prove that crime-fighting is NOT the bread-and-butter business of modern police, this image is also partly reinforced by police management. Thus, the awareness of police as a human rights service needs to be strengthened and will be a vital part of successful police reform. However, as police work is very often about solving problems within the context of unpleasant or even violent circumstances, the vision and knowledge of the purpose of good policing needs to be called into consciousness on a more routine basis.
Intercultural Competence
Although police officers normally attend basic and advanced intercultural training courses, COREPOL results leave no doubt that police officers are still irritated or uninformed about Muslim minorities and their behaviour. Therefore police officers need further empowerment to be self-confident when dealing with migrants. Language problems often contribute to misunderstandings between German-Turks and the police. Especially in stressful situations (e.g. accidents, violent offences) migrants who are involved, often are not able to express themselves well in the German language (although they might speak it in daily life). To reduce the tension, to detangle confusion, and to build trust, it is a simple but crucial recommendation that police officers working with German-Turks learn at least some helpful Turkish phrases.
Towards Constructive Conflict Management
Some police stations in Germany already do a lot to come into contact and to maintain contact with German-Turks.These activities can be understood in terms of prevention and pre-conflict management. However, when conflicts occur, police need to be additionally empowered to provide long-term conflict resolution. Existing conflict resolution strategies should be publicized to other city or federal state polices. This should include practical training courses with stakehol- ders of Turkish-German conflicts (e.g. housing managers, social workers). This could also reveal important resources for effective conflict resolution. Minority members need to participate more strongly in democratic activities.
Complaining, including criticism of police practices, is part of a living democracy and transparency of the state.
Police stations already offer email addresses, where praise and critique can be communicated. However, the following proceedings often remain incomprehensible or obscure. Therefore, easy-access complaint systems (e.g. special offices) should be established.
POLICE IN HUNGARY AND THE ROMA POPULATION
The Hungarian Police are the largest of all law enforcement organisations in Hungary after the 2008 merger of the Hungarian Police and the Border Guard. The police organization is divided into county police headquarters; these are then partitioned into urban police stations. In Hungary there is only one uniformed police service. According to the Hungarian Police Yearbook of 2011 the number of total staff is more than 46,000 (460 police officer per 100,000 inhabitants). The average age of the Hungarian police members is between 34 and 35 years. The average years of service is 14 (2011). The sex ratio has remained similar over the previous years: one third is female, two thirds are male.
Roma Migration to Hungary
Historical sources of the 13th and 14th century mention the presence of groups of Roma in Hungary. An exact date however of the Roma arrival in Hungary, when they started to arrive from the Balkans following the Turkish advance, cannot be determined. These days Roma who were born and raised in Hungary are Hungarian citizens who mostly speak the Hungarian language.
Socio-Demographic Data of Roma in Hungary
Data on the number of Roma who live in Hungary differ considerably. According to a recent survey, about 8% of the Hungarian population, i.e. 800,000 citizens out of a total of 10 million belong to Roma and are the largest minority in Hungary. The latest national census of 2011 put the number of Roma at 315,000 meaning those who defined themselves as Roma as a self-assigned ethnic identity. Roma organisations in Hungary consider this number to be much higher. The highest rate of Hungarian Roma population can be found in the north-east of Hungary, roughly a third of the Hungarian Roma live in this area. Current demographic changes in Hungary show an aging and all in all decreasing population while the Roma population is on the rise. The age distribution reveals that Roma are much younger than the overall Hungarian population. In contrast to the increase in the Hungarian population of Roma, their life expectancy is considerably lower than that of the general population. In general and in comparison to the majority of Hungarian citizens, the housing situation of Roma is miserable, and their educational achievement levels are low. Accordingly, Roma persons have difficulties in their access to the labour market. This affects the average income and the unemployment rate of minority persons in Hungary.
Images of ‘Criminal Roma’
In present-day Hungary, ‘gypsy crime’ has become a widespread stereotype attached to the Roma, as it appears mainly in the media and in the radical right-wing Jobbik party rhetoric. Jobbik was voted for by 20% of the electorate. The New York Times described Jobbik’s para- military arm and its ‘openly anti-Semitic and anti-Roma views’. Apparently, the prevailing vulgarity in relation to Roma has become an acceptable feature in present-day Hungarian main stream discourse. As a result, hate speech and hate crime incidents have become more numerous.
Roma: Images and Acceptance of Police
A smaller section within the group of COREPOL interview partners expressed positive attitudes towards the work of the police. These Roma had not encountered police misconduct like abuse of force. They were satisfied with public safety, i.e. they felt safe and appreciated the work of the police. In contrast, the majority of the Roma claimed that police officers have strong prejudice to- wards Roma. Officers would tend to look down on Roma and they would feel contempt for the members of this minority. According to COREPOL interview data, police members in the capital are trusted more than those out- side the cities. Interviewed Roma deemed police in the countryside to be more of the ‘tough’ or ‘redneck’ type because more often members of the minority are treated in a harsh manner.
Police: Image and Acceptance of the Roma
Most of the police interviewed during COREPOL field work described members of the Roma minority as family-centred and characterised by strong communal solidarity, however also as hot-tempered, with different habits as well as a different culture and behaviour as non-Roma citizens. A lot of interviewed police believe that Roma do not have trust in police. Depending on the location of the field work different types of discriminating attitudes surfaced. While the majority of the police officers in Budapest and Miskolc revealed stereotyped and discriminatory attitudes towards Roma in general, the interviewed police members in Nógrád county had opinions that showed more differentiation. The majority of interviewed police officers express beliefs that the ratio of persons committing crimes for economic gain is high among the Roma. This is seen as a consequence of their low level of education, their high unemployment rate and wide-spread poverty. Furthermore, in the view of police officers the inclination of Roma persons to commit illegal acts for economic gain could also be attributed to different values such as the Roma concept of ’possession’ or ‘property’.
Situations Prone to Police-Minority Conflict: The Roma View
Many Roma respondents consider the police to hold racist attitudes against them. Some of our interviewees pointed out that the police charged unreasonably high fines for insignificant misdemeanours. Roma also were regularly accused of allegedly ‘feigned’ charges after police arrived or left the area. Additionally, Roma complain about unsubstantiated police activities, which for some of them come across as a form of harassment. Moreover, the Roma respondents complain about cases of disrespectful and degrading behaviour on the part of police. In addition, most interviewed minority persons believe that Roma are more likely to become a subject of identity checks than non-Roma. It was also reported that during police measures, non-Roma receive preferential treatment because police appear to trust them more than Roma. The data suggest that too often police tend to communicate with minority members in an offensive manner. In essence, interview data leaves the impression that Hungarian police practice contains racial profiling against minority people. Only a few of our respondents have experienced police misconduct in the form of excessive use of force and said they became victims of police violence. However, several could report respective incidents that had occurred to relatives or friends.
On the occasion of certain outstanding family celebrations, Roma family groups and communities may party in a way which does not agree with the norms of main-stream society. This characteristic and similar cultural differences cause conflicts between Roma and the police which also disrupt cooperation and decrease the Roma’s trust in police.
Situations Prone to Police-Minority Conflict: The Police View
According to the interviewed police officers, the most typical conflict situation is when the police are called to arrest a Roma. These cases are generally brought about by breach of domestic peace or domestic disturbances, crimes against property, burglary, vandalism, drug abuse or the distribution of substances. Some interviewees mentioned that the police are regularly present during the distribution of social welfare payments. Experiences with ID checks, which are also typical in conflict situations, were frequently reported by the interviewees. The interviewed police think that reasons for conflicts might be that they are bothered or even feel intimidated by the presence of large numbers of ’noisy’ Roma while performing their police tasks.
The police respondents believe that the attitude, behaviour, habits and the ‘temperament’ of the Roma also play a role in the easy outbreak of conflict between the Roma and members of the police. According to the police interviewees, the conflicts begin typically because the Roma believe that they get an identity check because of their ethnicity. This generates a ’hostile’ reaction. A significant number of the interviewees think that the Roma do not understand the language that is used by the police which leads to communication problems.
Police Management of Conflicts with Ethnic Minorities in Hungary
Some police interviewees report that Roma individuals filed official complaints after police procedures. However, the interviewees did not specify what accusations were reported and how this was done. Officers mentioned incidents where they effectively managed to resolve conflicts with the assistance of a member of the local minority government as a mediator. In contrast, none of the Roma and police respondents could recall any cases when factual mediators had been involved in the handling of a conflict between the police and Roma. However, from January 2007, victim-offender mediation has also been applicable in criminal procedures for both Roma and police. According to police interview data adequate communication with Roma individuals or groups is effective as a means of preventing and managing conflicts. According to another interviewee, it is only possible to establish normal communication between the police and the Roma if the Roma understand that the police activity is in accordance with the law and that Roma, like all other citizens, are obliged to obey.
The same interviewee also mentioned that it is essential to maintain the hierarchy. In contrast another interviewee believed that the key element of a successful measure is that the police officers should treat the Roma on an equal eye level and as a person and should not intend to create a hierarchical relationship. A few opinions were expressed that if calm communication does not work, they are forced to use a harsher tone which could be a kind of solution to the conflict.
Police Complaint Management Procedures in Hungary
The official complaint can be filed to the Independent Police Complaint Board. After the modification of the Police Act 1994/2007 and the election of the first five members of the Board in 2008 the Independent Police Complaints Board started its activity. Members of the Board are elected with a qualified majority for six years based on the proposal of concerned committees of the Parliament. The Board is independent from the organizational hierarchy of the police, and shall not be instructed or influenced during its work. Number of cases in front of the Board: 174 (2008), 457 (2009,) 528 (2010), 387 (2011), 430 (2012). The numbers do not indicate, how many of these complaints came from Roma persons.
Potential Impact:
In a comprehensive view, COREPOL research has moved from a highly specialized subject of enquiry (RJ) to a more general field of policing problems: accountability and control mechanisms and independent complaints agencies as a tool for improved policing. In regards to the necessity to implement independent complaints procedures between minorities and police, COREPOL can look back on a very intensive and at the same time wide-ranging investigation in which our research has addressed the nature and intensity of conflicts between police and minorities. In that field COREPOL findings suggest the necessity to tackle a much wider realm.
This shift of focus has allowed COREPOL to address wider implications in respect to democratic policing and police accountability in the European Union. These are especially pertinent when we consider the data concerning complaints raised by minority members. Recent reports published by Amnesty International (25 February, 2015) underline the necessity to establish independent police oversight, particularly in regards to the policing of minorities. Internal discussions within more reform-minded police organizations (Germany) have included COREPOL findings into their debates about the improvement of the relationship between police and minority communities.
The degree and severity of incidents reported by minority interviewees differ between the partner countries. The most widespread occurrence of police misconduct including abuse of force appears to be located in Hungary. In that EU country people from the Roma minority suffer from widespread discriminatory practices and negative attitudes, which appear to be partly (because there are exceptions) reflected in the police culture. In the Austrian data police practices of a discriminatory nature were less frequently reported. However, the frequent mentioning of racist slur and other police practices related to ‘otherness’ (i.e. different colour of skin) are entirely intolerable in European democracies. This points at the need for structural reform on the part of police and political leadership.
The nature of COREPOL data does not allow for any speculations about the prevalence of police misconduct. However, recent comparative research with larger samples reveal that in Germany, in comparison to France, younger persons of a migrant family background do not report significantly higher rates of regular discrimination by police patrol officers, as is clearly the case in France with adolescents and young men with a Northern African or other minority background (Oberwittler and Roche 2014). It can be concluded that colour of skin or other marker of ‘otherness’ are not a decisive feature of German policing strategies carried out in the cities. Different from France and the UK, in Germany riots of minority persons have not occurred in comparable dimensions. The reasons for that can be found in structural settings that segregate and discriminate persons with an ethnic minority background. This however would require an analysis with a different research design and a much wider scope than was provided by our project.
COREPOL results have societal implications as they highlight the unambiguous urgency of problems European countries face in their relationship to specific minorities:
Muslim migrants or population with a former migration background from Turkey, Sub-Saharan African persons living in European cities,Roma minority communities across the EU member states.
In the COREPOL data there are of course, country-specific differences, which originate from different traditions of ethnocentrism, racism, and xenophobia on the part of a country’s societal mainstream and politics. When it comes to policing however, COREPOL reveals how the micro-politics of policing can create favourable or less favourable climates of police-minority interaction. It is often how first-contact approaches and gestures by police officers are perceived that determines whether a procedure escalates or runs without altercations between minority members and police. Such findings have consequences for police ‘philosophy’ (ethics) and practical trainings. Use of language, or if available, skills or just a few phrases in the languages of minorities can defuse potentially confrontational situations.
On the part of police practitioners, discriminatory behaviour or language increase stress and aggressiveness, and to eradicate unprofessional patterns of front-line policing, leadership needs to take over responsibility for the policemen and –women on the streets and in minority communities.
For police, without a respected position in the communities, reporting of crime and violence or suspicious activities (like radicalization), information will not be likely to flow into the direction of officers or police stations. In a recent invitation to a convening of specialists it is pointed out that minority communities have a long history of being abused “…with police in a leading role in that mistreatment. ... (T)he felt experience of many such communities remains one of both under- and over-policing; actual illegalities perpetrated by law enforcement; disrespectful treatment; and violence and other abuse. Alienated communities frequently respond by disengaging from police and the criminal justice system, protecting even the truly violent amongst them, elevating criminal self-help over the rule of law, and shifting all responsibility for public safety problems onto the police and other outsiders. The result is broken relationships between those who most need the protection of the law and those dedicated to providing that protection; high levels of crime, violence, and incarceration; and persistently high levels of mistrust, anger, and fear.” (Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation 2015).
Without Community Policing as a principal means of modern police strategy, a process of reconciliation cannot be initiated. In the COREPOL findings this seems to apply to all countries but particularly to the Hungarian situation.
A Need for Improvement
In comparison to many overseas law enforcement organisations, policing in Europe can claim high rates of professional police standards, established educational and training standards, and a comparatively low level of police interventions with fatal consequences, i.e. police shootings and police scandals related to corruption or police crime involvement. In continental Europe, the lack of independent police oversight taints this overall favourable image, and accordingly, the establishment of independent oversight authorities in the EU member states ought to be addressed by politicians, police unions, the police leadership, NGOs and the interested public. Minority experience must play a decisive role in such endeavours.
In summary, for the future of European police and minority relations COREPOL research has opened a much wider vision of the problems at hand which clearly balances the deficiencies in respect to the objective to RJ practices (which were not to be found). Recent (post final-conference) dissemination activities by COREPOL research team members highlight the impact of the overall results and suggestions derived from the analysis of the data.
In Germany, the coordinator has been invited by the President of the Berlin Police to present the findings and to discuss potential approaches to improve minority-police contacts through the establishment of oversight agencies. COREPOL findings were mentioned in German TV, radio, and press interviews. There is pending invitation to a convening of international specialists at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (City University of New York) to improve minority police relations. By this COREPOL research finds international recognition which has previously been the case when the coordinator was asked to present the research findings to the first and second International Conference on Law Enforcement and Public Health.
For the EU context COREPOL researchers have been and will continue to be active in CEPOL activities, predominantly the CEPOL Research and Science Conference held at DHPOL in September 2013.
The Austrian team has presented the research findings concerning police oversight with a high-ranking representative of the Ombudsman Board. Additionally, core results concerning "charge dismissal dialogue" as an alternative to adversarial conflict solving will be distributed to policy makers and senior police officers via suitable media. The main results of the COREPOL field studies together with practical recommendations for improving the relations between the Austrian police and people of African origin were sent to the Austrian parliament in February 2015. An internal press release about the main outcomes of the COREPOL final conference was published in the .SIAK intranet.
The Hungarian team has organized a workshop about COREPOL findings at the National University Faculty of Police Science and its members participated in a seminar on Restorative Justice implementation in Budapest and a at a conference organized by the European University Institute, Florence in early February. Also in February at an ALTERNATIVE (FP7) regional workshop in Oslo COREPOL project research findings were presented to a wider audience of academics and practitioners.
Publications in peer-reviewed journals are either under review or in print. A publisher for M3 has been found and the edited book will be available in early summer.
A further means of dissemination and of keeping the COREPOL content alive will be provided by the HORIZON 2020 participation of Prof Kersten and Ms Kunz, PhD cand. as partners of the INSPEC2T project starting in 2015.
List of Websites:
http://www.corepol.eu
Recent European Social Survey datasets comprising of 21 European countries and minority group members from 66 countries of origin, revealed that individuals who feel that they belong to a discriminated group have less trust in the police than individuals who do not perceive group discrimination. Such macro data analysis is in line with COREPOL research findings. COREPOL research has a European dimension which points at the necessity to establish more accountability regarding police work in EU member states.
Across modern societies research findings leave no doubt that minority populations are at a higher risk of being exposed to problems with the police. Additionally, they have less trust in law enforcement. Although police are not solely responsible for failed integration processes, they are a central player in what could be called the micro-politics of integration. Police can add to the ‘otherness’ of minorities and even reinforce it, or they can act as a human rights agency and serve and protect minority communities and their vulnerable members, mostly women and children. Even more, they can also help the communities to understand the work and the tasks of police and citizens in civil society. Most important, they can help to strengthen the norms and the fabric in civilized cultures, even among people who live in segregated circumstances.
After incidents of spectacular crime and violence committed by persons of a migrant or minority origin, parts of the general public, of politics and the media tend to reinforce the notion of ‘otherness’ of all minority persons and new citizens. Measures to control migration (‘send them home’) are set high on the agenda of public concerns. Occasionally, this may foster expectations that law enforcement should proceed with more strictness, or somehow take care of crime and disorder associated to minority neighbourhoods. Police work in some minority quarters is often difficult and can be frustrating due to the fact that it is a ‘mixed bag’. The enforcement of the norms of civil society, the prevention of violence and victimization, the maintenance of public order, and the solving of crimes, taken together this can create real challenges to the forces of order. However, police are not the main culprit when it comes to the failures of European integration politics. Police need more support to professionally carry out what is needed and has to be done with regard to minority problems. To carry out community policing in problematical areas and circumstances is a task that asks for a shift of paradigm: The often somewhat fictitious image of police as the ‘crime-fighting’ force has to make space for an understanding of police as a service and central actor for the protection of Human Rights.
Project Context and Objectives:
The original description of work made strong reference to restorative justice (RJ) theory as a potential approach to improve conflict resolution between police (LEAs) and minorities and underscored the scope of non-adversarial methods like conferencing. Through the review of research literature and expert interviews the COREPOL team members made themselves familiar with RJ approaches abroad and in the partner countries. In particular, the first high profile workshop in Vienna (January 2012) included RJ researchers from the partner countries, European networks and overseas research institutions (among them the Foresee Research group, University of Melbourne Criminology Research on Aboriginal Justice, E. Weitekamp, O. Hagemann, C. Pelikan and others).
Although we were not able to find any explicit RJ models run by police or minority organizations to address conflict resolution, we imported questions concerning RJ methodology (conferencing) into our research design and asked minority members and police practitioners from all ranks whether they were aware of RJ practices in their communities/agencies. While conferencing, victim-offender mediation or other methods based on a wider scope of RJ could be identified in the judicial and corrections system, particularly in prisons and custodial institutions, it became obvious that the same is simply not the case when it comes to policing. Minority interviewees did not know about their legal rights or had no information about their possibilities to complain about police actions or the behaviour of individual officers or groups of policemen or –women. At the same time, practically all interviewed police practitioners had never heard of RJ or had never contemplated the use of RJ approaches in dealing with police-citizens’ conflict.
At this stage, the very philosophy of RJ appears to be unfamiliar among continental European police circles. In that respect, expert, practitioner, and minority interviews in the partner countries showed similar results in that RJ is not used as a practical tool in conflict resolution.
RJ operates both as a normative theory in that it posits an idealised set of responses to the deficiencies of traditional adversarial justice, and as a set of practical tools – largely through conferencing - for conflict management. With regard to its normative status, it is by no means without its critics. With regard to the latter, COREPOL findings show a virtually unanimous indifference to or ignorance of its programmatic features. As we have pointed out elsewhere, these are born of the Anglosphere existence of law enforcement discretion which has no analogue in the German, Austrian, and Hungarian Eurosphere.
In short, COREPOL research has explored the relevance of RJ to the field of minorities and policing, and it came up short. That is what COREPOL set out to test.
The following text contains also an abridged and edited version of the text provided for the final conference in Brussels (the brochure).
Aiming at an improvement of European police-minority relations, COREPOL has focussed on three countries, their populations of ‘visible others’ police and their mutual relationship and experiences:
- In Germany: Persons from Turkey who came to Europe to work and then brought their family members to their host country;
- In Austria: Africans who decades ago, came to the country for study purposes or more recently because they had to flee or because they wanted a better life for themselves and their children;
- In Hungary: The resident discriminated minority of Roma in cities and the countryside.
COREPOL findings serve as a steppingstone towards the reflection of the structural problems in minority-police interaction and conflict, and the development of better communication strategies in minority-police relations. Furthermore, findings contribute to enhanced knowledge about policing in European democracies amongst minority populations and their representatives, and also - the advancement of police education and training to achieve these aims. In that respect, COREPOL findings address the needs of European stakeholders, politicians, NGOs, security experts, police management and academics in the area of migration, integration strategies for minorities, refugees and asylum seekers, community policing, order maintenance and crime prevention.
Being nation states based on an ideological tradition of ethnic homogeneity, the immigration and living conditions of persons/families from other countries and continents, or in the case of Hungary the living conditions of a resident rural and urban minority, have been seen and declared as ‘a problem’ of the minorities and not as a failure of the societal, political, and cultural main stream. Reforms, many of them of a hesitant nature, have not yet led to a dynamic of successful integration of ethnic minorities, neither have they fundamentally changed the set-up of state services, nor foremost the organizational culture of police.
Historically, by being civil (Roman) law cultures Germany, Austria and Hungary have no deep-rooted tradition of critical police review on the part of civil society. In a normative view police is assumed to always act in accordance with the law and the country’s constitution. In many European countries the institutionalized organizational answer to the question: ‘Who guards the guards?’ does not allow for a comparison to the civilian (or hybrid) oversight agencies that can be found in the majority of English-speaking countries.
The concept of police oversight originates from the English-speaking common law countries, many of them with a more or less explicit self-definition as multi-cultural and/or immigration societies. There, the structural friction between police and minorities and related riots and police scandals have led to a long-lasting political, often research based-reflection of police practices regarding citizens with a minority status. The results of such studies have implications for the European situation, even if a one-to-one adaption of oversight approaches practiced elsewhere is not feasible.
In the last decade ethnic minority riots have become a feature of conflict in some European countries. Nearly all of them broke out after police was accused of killing minority adolescents or minority males, e.g. in the UK, France and Sweden. The question of improved police-minority relations, among them police oversight concerning minority communities, is of utmost significance for the future of professional and democratic policing in Europe.
Police have an extraordinary amount of power as they are able to observe, stop, arrest, and detain citizens. Organizational studies of police have described features of a ‘police culture’ and a ‘police code or blue wall of silence’. These norms occasionally resemble the codes of tightly woven family clans. Likewise the occupational police culture tends to deal with incidents of violence in a non-transparent and clandestine manner. While in family clans this may pertain to acts of violence against members of their own or other families, acts of police abuse of force are being handed out by officers against civilians.
Accordingly, ‘peer accountability’ or ‘whistle blowing’ is not a regular feature in many police organizations. Similar codes and norms may be observed in other professional cultures but rarely is the ‘blue wall of silence’ as thick and as high as in many front-line police organizations. Admitting mistakes or handing out gestures of apology or regret about wrongdoings on the part of officers has no established tradition in most European police cultures, even in cases of blatant scandals.
Project Results:
Because of the legal and constitutional cultures in which policing is embedded RJ had little to no significance for conflict solving between police and minorities in the partner countries. It is one of the results of COREPOL empirical research, that RJ as a philosophical movement has some impact on the practical carrying out of conflict resolution in other fields (correctional institution, victim-offender medition). However, it has not yet become known as an alternative to bureaucratic and adversarial approaches in the area of complaints against police. Accordingly, COREPOL could only rely on what could be found out about existing processes of successful (or less successful) conflict solving.
COREPOL was always defined as an explorative research, and as a result of the research carried out in 2012, and partly also 2013, there was little doubt that in comparison to identified issues regarding the lack of police accountability, in particular when it came to minority policing, RJ seems a rather academic philosophy of little demonstrable practical use for police organizations and community projects dealing with conflict solving in the context of the present research findings.
With these results in mind the COREPOL team undertook a gradual shift of emphasis. From the micro level of RJ encounters between minority members and police practitioners the empirical and theoretical perspective moved to a much more relevant area of concern for democratic policing: police accountability. The data left no doubt that minority communities and individuals had substantiated reservations against police practices. Too a considerable extent this was based on experience and incidents, and not simply stereotypical notions against officers or other negative attitudes.
According to persons interviewed during COREPOL field research, lack of respectful behaviour of officers towards persons or groups with a minority background or even cases of excessive use of force have been witnessed personally or incidents of such gravity have been brought to their attention by friends, family members or people from their neighbourhoods. Recent research findings by Skogan/Craen and COREPOL show that minority citizens lose confidence in law enforcement and their host state when they hear that profiling is being practiced. This pertains even to those who have no personal experience of being profiled. They still tend not to cooperate with the police in the future.
Perceived fairness of police acts determines trust in police (and the state)
Research on police accountability affirms: Across EU member states marginalized populations tend to get on a sliding curve of immersion in criminal activities which raises the suspicion of law enforcement officers. Due to this generalized suspicion, minority people feel that they are overly exposed to police controls. As a consequence police and minorities are stuck in a system of antagonistic and confrontational interactions.
Police oversight may prove effective in providing an empirically more substantiated answer to the accusation of ‘racial/ethnic profiling’.
Minority people see the police as agents of the state. Misconduct in the context of law enforcement is perceived as unjustifiable and racist, even more so if it is perceived as unfair or as excessive use of force. For that reason, members of minority populations more frequently distrust police and voice disappointment in regard to police behaviour.
COREPOL data contains reference to instances of police misconduct that are serious and not in concordance with legal and procedural norms concerning police performance. A careful analysis of the reported incidents in the partner countries’ interview data calls for structural reform of police accountability and democratic transparency.
Abuse of police power appears to be the exception and rather not the rule.
Minority populations are particularly vulnerable with regard to excessive force, or in milder forms, inappropriate and unprofessional policing, impoliteness or the use of hateful language. They are also less likely to bring such incidents to the attention of the authorities, i.e. to file official complaints or criminal charges after being mistreated by police.
Police Perceived by Ethnic Minorities
Negative attitudes between minority members and police result in a mutual lack of trust and confidence – this reduces the chance that members of the minorities reflect on police activities as legitimate, and therefore do not volunteer to cooperate with police and report crime. Nearly all the men and women interviewed by COREPOL field researchers however saw police as an indispensable authority in dealing with violence, crime, and accidents or dangerous situations, and most said that they would call them for help. However, they usually would do this only in cases of serious crime and violence.
In the case of hate speeches, domestic violence and minor episodes of hate crime, members of the minorities tend not to ask for the help of police. Particularly, in relation to the protection of vulnerable victims (women, chidren) and to violence prevention, police have to be more pro-active in their information and prevention policies.
It is necessary, to discuss ‘accountability mechanisms’ in the form of external and independent oversight of policing. Police accountability in democratic and civilized societies may require a combination of external and internal control authorities. At present, in none of the COREPOL partner countries can one find established and efficient mechanisms or systematic approaches to independent police oversight.
Accusations of routine racial/ethnic bias and ethnic profiling can only be proven without substance if police are willing to accept oversight agencies to establish facts about such claims. On the part of police leadership and police unions independent oversight is associated with all kinds of fears and suspicions. Police work would be hampered or made more difficult and accusations would be directed against innocent officers. An increased amount of complaints does not necessarily imply an increase in misconduct. It could indicate a rise in citizens’ confidence in the oversight authority and its legitimacy.
The minority persons or groups and police meet during neighbourhood conflicts or in matters regarding complaints about behaviour, often later at night. Occasionally, clan- or ethnicity-based disputes between people from different ethnic background cause conflicts, some of them with violent outcomes in the neighbourhood.
Like Roma and Sub-Saharan Africans, Turkish and Arab people marshal similar conflict-solving mechanisms. While disputes or even violent quarrels are going on, people try to avoid involvement of police. Instead they try to involve formal or informal leaders in the extended family or seek help from trusted elders. In case of conflicts within the community, these persons act as a sort of mediator, since the community members give credit to their advice. In some instances in Germany as in Hungary, respected people of the community take care of disputes and conflict.
There are Risks of Informal Conflict Resolution
However, such conflict management is not carried out according to the rules of mediation. Often, the mediators are not impartial. The conflicting parties do not work out the terms of the agreement. In some cases victims and offenders do not even meet each other in person. Here police have a role as a catalyst and initiator of transparent and accountable conflict solving mechanisms. This is a genuine challenge for community policing practices. Community policing is a term with roots and a history, mostly in the context of Anglo-American policing concepts.
The Aim: Police Work with a Neighbourhood Focus
It carries with it a multitude of conceptual meanings and facets. COREPOL data give examples of good police work with a neighbourhood orientation. This increases trust in police and in the state, in general. It gives community members and citizens confidence that police take their concerns, fears and safety problems seriously. Such a rise in confidence on the part of police ‘customers’ has been reported to increase not only in cooperation with officers, but also to result in higher rates of the reporting of crime. A safer society has to rely on good police-citizen cooperation and the willingness of community members to report crimes, disorder and risks to police.
Community Policing is a city or county program requiring a network of volunteers, community organizations and city service outfits/ agencies to cope with citizens’ concerns. Community Policing differs from strict crime-control/ law and order approaches by directing police activities towards the provision of services and the maintenance of order and peace. Accordingly it can serve as a test case for democratic policing and trust-raising, in particular with regards to the relationship between police and minority communities.
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICANS AND POLICE IN AUSTRIA
The Austrian police are divided into nine regional police directorates consisting of 83 district police commands and 27 city police commands. Police-citizens ratio is at 300:1 with a proportion of 14 per cent females in the service. The Austrian police education is divided into basic police training (24 months), mid-level management education (bachelor program: 3 years) and the Master Program (3 years).
During encounters between people of African origin and police officers specific police units are more often involved, in particular the Street Crime Task Force and the Tactical Units (riot police). Additionally, among others the Police Detention Centres, the so-called Aliens’ Police (Fremdenpolizei), the Border and Immigration Police Department, and the Unit for Minority Contacts have more frequent contacts with persons of African origin who live in Austria.
Sub-Saharan Africans in Austria
In the post-war decades larger numbers of Africans came to Austria to study at the country’s universities, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. This has changed in the last decades as fewer students of African origin arrive in Austria for study purposes. At present, the reasons behind immigration or seeking asylum in Austria are predominantly political persecution, natural disasters, war and civil war and related conflicts. At the beginning of 2001, more than 40,000 people, about one third being women, predominantly from Nigeria, Ghana and South-Africa have taken residence in Austria, and about half of them in Vienna. Residence and legal status play an important role as far as the risk of being deported and access to employment are concerned. This however, also affects their ability to participate actively in civil society. As a consequence of difficult access to the Austrian labour market, Africans with an academic qualification are frequently not able to pursue their profession. They therefore have to seek work in menial jobs for which they are, by far, overqualified.
The term ‘African’ is quite often associated with drug-related crimes. African people are often confronted with discrimination, prejudice, and racism and they are frequently exposed to harassment and violence. The stigmatization of people from Africa due to their language, clothes and colour of skin is closely related to the image of ‘the black drug dealer’. This stereotype is consolidated through public, right-wing political, and tabloid media debates. Such a bad reputation of Africans often leads to repercussions when it comes to contact with public service facilities, but especially with police officers and criminal proceedings.
Conflicts between African Minority Persons and Police
Based on the data of the field studies in Vienna and Graz five main areas of conflict between the police and persons of African origin have been identified. The results indicate remarkable differences along the two spatial settings and with regard to the gender dimension.
Language problems and communication difficulties:
The results show that there are difficulties of mutual comprehension with regard to official acts. This is particularly relevant when more complex communication is needed that may have consequences for legal proceedings. Furthermore, communication difficulties sometimes accrue from cultural differences. These differences increase the likelihood of conflicts and escalation during an official act. Language differences may also be exploited to avoid communication. Such strategies seem to be used by persons of African origin in a critical situation, and also by some police officers, in which case it contributes to a misuse of power.
Disrespectful behaviour and racist slur:
Though generally, official acts take place in a respectful way, occurrences were repeatedly referred to where police officers made use of pejorative slur towards persons of African minority background. Additionally, some interviewees reported offensive and degrading actions and incidents of being ill-treated by the police. Conversely, police officers outlined disrespectful behaviour of some persons of African origin towards them. Such behaviour increases the risk of an escalation of the respective official act. In some cases, culture-based differences may be experienced as offensive behaviour. Nonetheless, many negative incidents can be attributed first and foremost to a lack of respect and friendly language, gestures, and attitude towards the vis-à-vis. They cannot simply be traced to cultural differences.
Identity checks & stops and searches:
ID checks appear to be the most significant area of conflict and represent the fundamental experience of discrimination in the everyday life of Africans in Austria. The data reveal how visible ‘otherness’, socio-economic markers, and stereotypes (‘criminal’) merge towards specific ethnic minorities and affect the control activities of certain police officers. The selectivity of the control practice partly results from practical experiences which are not adequately reflected and thus coagulate to a ‘second code’. More frequent checks of persons of African origin feed into a kind of general suspicion against the minority.
Preferred treatment of (fair-skinned) Austrians during official acts:
In official acts where the police were called to intervene in conflicts between persons of African origin and fair-skinned Austrians, occasionally police treat ‘Austrian natives’ in a preferential manner while establishing the evidence and the relevant facts. Subsequently, a systematic disadvantage for persons of African origin may arise in the case of a subsequent legal proceeding.
Physical violence:
The interviews leave the impression that many police tend to experience the African minority as particularly dangerous. Negative expectations towards persons of African origin obviously have an effect on the professional day-to-day interactions of the police with them. They put particular emphasis on self-protection in official acts with persons of African origin. This makes the accu- sations of the latter against the police plausible, namely that police officers often and rapidly use direct physical force against persons of African origin and often call for reinforcement. This demonstrates that there is a vital necessity to thoroughly examine within the police, how experienced or imagined threats show up in practice. The resulting implications and effects on persons with an African migration background need systematic monitoring and analysis.
Complaints against the Austrian Police
In Austria, the Security Police Act forms an important legal basis for complaints against the police: sections regulate complaints with regard to the infringement of subjective rights and cover complaints due to violations of the guideline ordinance. The latter includes the possibility to stimulate a dialogue between the complainant and the respective officer. A complaint against police officers can be filed at every police station, at specific complaint departments within the Police Headquarters, at the Independent Administrative Tribunal or at Court or at NGOs concerned with anti-discrimination and anti-racism. Another address for complaints is the Austrian Ombudsman Board. The unit in charge of complaints within the Federal Ministry of Interior is the Federal Bureau of Anti-Corruption. This unit is responsible for investigations in the case of criminal acts (e.g. misconduct) of the police and other employees of the national public sectors. Within the Federal Police, the Bureau for Quality and Knowledge Management, and the Bureau for Controlling are there to ensure the efficiency and the professionalism of police work. Most of the forwarded cases relate to accusations of excessive use of force by police officers. The Citizen Information Service is responsible for the first processing of the official complaint. The case can then be forwarded to the Commissioner of Human Rights (CHR) for example, who contacts the accused officer.
The CHR has the responsibility to ensure compliance with human rights in general in all departments. Depending on the case, CHR can moderate an exchange between the victim and the officer in question. In 2010 the Unit for Minority Contact was established. This department of the Austrian police has its roots in the association Fair & Sensibel. This association was founded after the case of Marcus Omofuma became public. Omofuma was an asylum seeker who died due to maltreatment during his deportation flight. The aim of Fair & Sensibel is to sensitize police officers towards people of African origin and their culture. With the establishment of the Unit for Minority Contacts the activities of Fair & Sensibel have been institutionalised. Here dialogues are offered to settle conflicts between citizen and police officers.
Non-adversarial Approaches of Conflict Resolution
Beside the possibility of the Unit Minority Contact a second institutionalised form of informal conflict resolution is a ‘charge dismissal dialogue’, an approach that is legally fixed just in the case of a complaint in accordance with the Security Police Act. In such a meeting the involved official and the complainant discuss the incident, with the aim of the complaint to be settled and no charges being brought. In the best case the procedure is closed with a written declaration by the complainant that the complaint is withdrawn.
The interviews showed that in those very few cases (less than 10 p.a.) where such conflict resolution meetings took place experiences were mainly positive. However, there are limiting factors for the application of this dialogue-oriented possibility of conflict resolution. The complainant has to refer explicitly to the specific section of the law, so complainants have to know about this option. Additionally, sufficient support from the superiors is of crucial importance for promoting this alternative instrument in dealing with conflicts. Furthermore, it is important to raise awareness among police that the affected officers should directly take part in these meetings. It should be considered that for senior police officers who act as facilitators in conflict resolution meetings role conflicts can be a consequence.
Police Oversight by External Bodies in Austria
In July 2012 the Austrian Ombudsman Board (AOB) took over the tasks of the former Human Rights Adviso- ry Council (HRAC). The HRAC examined the situation of persons who had been detained with respect to humane treatment and investigated police actions regarding any aspect of human rights violations. Today six commissions monitor and control all institutions and facilities where people with or without disabilities are in danger of abuse, inhuman treatment and measures that may deprive them of their liberty. The AOB gives recommendations to pre- vent human rights violations.
Apart from the above mentioned, NGOs are relevant concerning the control of police actions. These comprise of non-university research institutes that are usually po- sitioned between science and practice with a strong application orientation (e.g. Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights). At the moment there is no independent complaint office in Austria. Most of the existing possibilities are closely connected to the police, high-threshold, and not anonymous. Furthermore they carry a risk of costs and have limited possibilities for the success of a complaint.
MUSLIM MINORITIES AND GERMAN POLICE
Germany is a federal state and therefore each of the sixteen states in Germany has its own police and its own police law. In addition there is also the Federal Police, which is responsible for border control and the safety of railways, the German Federal Criminal Police Office and the Police of the German Parliament. Since all ministries of the states work together closely, the police laws of the federal states are at least similar and comparable and are all based on common principles of the German constitution. The main task of the police is addressing safety and security needs, to do criminal prosecution and to deal with conflict situations. In 2012, 243.982 police officers were employed by the police and about 20% of the police officers were female.
The police operate in fields of uniformed beat policing, traffic police, criminal investigation, task force/riot police or the water police. Nowadays the police continue efforts to employ people with migration background, since minorities are still underrepresented in the organization even though this part of the German population is steadily growing.
Labour Migration from Turkey to Germany
Muslims began to migrate to German cities in the early 1960s when the building of The Wall between East and West Germany stopped the inflow of East Germans coming into the West German labour market. ‘Guest workers’ from Southern European countries were no longer available, and so the migration of Muslim contract workers from Turkey commenced. To a large extent Turks did not return to their homeland but remained in the cities of West Germany. After 1973 contract worker recruitment came to an end. Migration from Turkey to Germany continued however as family reunion. The size of the migration from Turkey to Germany has made it the 5th largest migration movement in the world. The largest Turkish community outside of Turkey live in Berlin.
German-Turks: Moving between two Worlds
First-, second-, third-, and fourth-generation people with a Turkish background reside in Germany. Many of them keep tight bonds with their relatives in Turkey and still have Turkish citizenship and passports. A large part of this minority lives an everyday-life according to Turkish traditions, gets their groceries from Turkish shops, and watches TV stations from their home country. As a result, many German-Turks have hyphenated identities and ‘move between two worlds’. This is not always easy and can cause misunderstandings and conflicts, particularly in contacts with the police. Although many Turks are residents of districts in German cities, they and their families do not fully take part in German main stream social activities. Furthermore, in comparison to average Germans, a majority of Turkish-Germans still live in disadvantaged conditions, in particular when it comes to housing. In general terms, these city districts are termed ‘communities’.
A German-Turkish ‘Community’?
At a closer look the expression ‘community’ appears somewhat misleading because it implies a coherence which more often than not, does not exist. For example, the Muslim neighbourhoods of Berlin consist of people of very diverse ethnic origin, religious affiliation and cultural roots: Turks (mostly from Anatolia), Kurdish people from different regions, Palestinians, Lebanese, and most recently people from Syria. They do not form a homogeneous but rather a complex and instable situation with numerous internal conflicts between individuals, family clans, and their neighbouring Germans.
Inequality originates from the eduaction system
Problematical attitudes towards education and in particular, the educational status of parents/mothers are seen as contributing factors to ongoing processes of discrimination in the German education system. These problems lead to minimal educational achievement, and accordingly, restrict the access of younger people with a migration background, in particular young males, to the labour market.
Higher unemployment rates of parents, higher rates of physical abuse in families against children and against partners, together with a higher visibility of adolescent offenders with a Turkish/Arab family background are seen as consequences of failed integration. On the part of the German majority this can add to feelings of resentment and prejudice. Recently, the perceived radicalization of segments of the Turkish/Arab population in relation to Jihadist and IS involvement has added to the estrangement between a growing number of Germans and ‘the Muslims’.
Conflicts between minority members and the Police
In the restricted sample that has contributed to our data and in consideration of our observations, Islamism or even Jihadist fanaticism found no mentioning at all. In the neighbourhood interviews and mostly among younger males we have occasionally encountered disaffection with police and German society. This is a group where police ‘micro-politics’ can achieve a lot by practicing fair policing. However police officers may use hostile or overly harsh approaches and by doing so may contribute to disaffected or alienated attitudes. This may steer young men to pursue avenues of masculine identity which starts with them joining gyms and becoming part of neighbourhood cliques, and finds them ending up on the battlefields of Syria or elsewhere.
Over- and Underpolicing of Minority Neighbourhoods
Similar to research findings in other Western societies, COREPOL data points at features of underpolicing and overpolicing in minority neighbourhoods. Residents, particularly interviewed females ask for more police presence, faster police responses to emergency calls and better protection, while others (more often younger males) complain about police stops and frequent ID checks. For more than a decade now, in our field research sites, police organizations have been actively trying to improve police-community relations. At the outset, the contacts were concentrated on local Mosque associations. At a later stage, cooperation with other community groups and activists was initiated.
Feeling Safe on German Streets
Field research data from minority neighbourhoods revealed surprisingly strong segments of minority men and women who said they felt safe from crime. However, the data pointed at gender specific differences in trust in police and the willingness to call police and report crimes. In general, the willingness to report hate crimes and racist crime was low. In many instances the community itself maintains and exercises practices of social control. Still, for some a sense of safety comes from police presence in Germany.
According to the interview data, the image of the police within the Turkish minority is mixed. In Germany, a sizeable proportion of them hold a general opinion of police being fair, friendly, helpful, and of ‘solving problems’. At the same time, others have reported encounters with officers who were hostile and unsupportive, or in individual cases they said that the officers had been seen by them as prejudiced towards minorities – mainly towards young males.
German Police Perception of Minority Persons
Among the interviewed German police officers through the ranks, most individuals and families from an ethnic minority background are seen as ‘normal’ people with ‘normal’ problems, and of no special threat to safety, disorder, or criminal issues. Apart from this general opinion there are some groups of young males and adolescents who are seen to frequently act in a rude manner and who tend to insult police officers. Similarly, demonstrations of misled masculinity and misogynist behaviour abound in some strict Muslim households. These norms lead to conflicts within families, groups and frequently appear as a source of conflict with police.
The Need to Know Ones‘s Rights
On the part of the German-Turks, the demand to empower this minority to be self-confident in situations of contact with the police needs to be strengthened. German-Turks should learn which rights they have as people living in Germany. Furthermore, they also need to develop a correct understanding of the legal framework of policing and its roots and role in a democratic society. Many older migrants and also some male adolescents are brought up according to the rules of patriarchy and its hierarchy. To them the typical German non-hierarchical structure appears strange and hard to understand.
Schools, for example, must become places where children with Turkish and Arab backgrounds can learn about democracy, democratic values, about the role as well as the authority of the police, and about their own rights and obligations within German society. An improved understanding of the police’s role in society will be enhanced if German-Turks and Arabs are in direct and positive contact with the police.
German Police and Human Rights
According to Amnesty International, the police can be viewed in terms of a human rights organization. However, the public image of police relies still quite often on a crime-fighting paradigm. Although research findings across countries clearly prove that crime-fighting is NOT the bread-and-butter business of modern police, this image is also partly reinforced by police management. Thus, the awareness of police as a human rights service needs to be strengthened and will be a vital part of successful police reform. However, as police work is very often about solving problems within the context of unpleasant or even violent circumstances, the vision and knowledge of the purpose of good policing needs to be called into consciousness on a more routine basis.
Intercultural Competence
Although police officers normally attend basic and advanced intercultural training courses, COREPOL results leave no doubt that police officers are still irritated or uninformed about Muslim minorities and their behaviour. Therefore police officers need further empowerment to be self-confident when dealing with migrants. Language problems often contribute to misunderstandings between German-Turks and the police. Especially in stressful situations (e.g. accidents, violent offences) migrants who are involved, often are not able to express themselves well in the German language (although they might speak it in daily life). To reduce the tension, to detangle confusion, and to build trust, it is a simple but crucial recommendation that police officers working with German-Turks learn at least some helpful Turkish phrases.
Towards Constructive Conflict Management
Some police stations in Germany already do a lot to come into contact and to maintain contact with German-Turks.These activities can be understood in terms of prevention and pre-conflict management. However, when conflicts occur, police need to be additionally empowered to provide long-term conflict resolution. Existing conflict resolution strategies should be publicized to other city or federal state polices. This should include practical training courses with stakehol- ders of Turkish-German conflicts (e.g. housing managers, social workers). This could also reveal important resources for effective conflict resolution. Minority members need to participate more strongly in democratic activities.
Complaining, including criticism of police practices, is part of a living democracy and transparency of the state.
Police stations already offer email addresses, where praise and critique can be communicated. However, the following proceedings often remain incomprehensible or obscure. Therefore, easy-access complaint systems (e.g. special offices) should be established.
POLICE IN HUNGARY AND THE ROMA POPULATION
The Hungarian Police are the largest of all law enforcement organisations in Hungary after the 2008 merger of the Hungarian Police and the Border Guard. The police organization is divided into county police headquarters; these are then partitioned into urban police stations. In Hungary there is only one uniformed police service. According to the Hungarian Police Yearbook of 2011 the number of total staff is more than 46,000 (460 police officer per 100,000 inhabitants). The average age of the Hungarian police members is between 34 and 35 years. The average years of service is 14 (2011). The sex ratio has remained similar over the previous years: one third is female, two thirds are male.
Roma Migration to Hungary
Historical sources of the 13th and 14th century mention the presence of groups of Roma in Hungary. An exact date however of the Roma arrival in Hungary, when they started to arrive from the Balkans following the Turkish advance, cannot be determined. These days Roma who were born and raised in Hungary are Hungarian citizens who mostly speak the Hungarian language.
Socio-Demographic Data of Roma in Hungary
Data on the number of Roma who live in Hungary differ considerably. According to a recent survey, about 8% of the Hungarian population, i.e. 800,000 citizens out of a total of 10 million belong to Roma and are the largest minority in Hungary. The latest national census of 2011 put the number of Roma at 315,000 meaning those who defined themselves as Roma as a self-assigned ethnic identity. Roma organisations in Hungary consider this number to be much higher. The highest rate of Hungarian Roma population can be found in the north-east of Hungary, roughly a third of the Hungarian Roma live in this area. Current demographic changes in Hungary show an aging and all in all decreasing population while the Roma population is on the rise. The age distribution reveals that Roma are much younger than the overall Hungarian population. In contrast to the increase in the Hungarian population of Roma, their life expectancy is considerably lower than that of the general population. In general and in comparison to the majority of Hungarian citizens, the housing situation of Roma is miserable, and their educational achievement levels are low. Accordingly, Roma persons have difficulties in their access to the labour market. This affects the average income and the unemployment rate of minority persons in Hungary.
Images of ‘Criminal Roma’
In present-day Hungary, ‘gypsy crime’ has become a widespread stereotype attached to the Roma, as it appears mainly in the media and in the radical right-wing Jobbik party rhetoric. Jobbik was voted for by 20% of the electorate. The New York Times described Jobbik’s para- military arm and its ‘openly anti-Semitic and anti-Roma views’. Apparently, the prevailing vulgarity in relation to Roma has become an acceptable feature in present-day Hungarian main stream discourse. As a result, hate speech and hate crime incidents have become more numerous.
Roma: Images and Acceptance of Police
A smaller section within the group of COREPOL interview partners expressed positive attitudes towards the work of the police. These Roma had not encountered police misconduct like abuse of force. They were satisfied with public safety, i.e. they felt safe and appreciated the work of the police. In contrast, the majority of the Roma claimed that police officers have strong prejudice to- wards Roma. Officers would tend to look down on Roma and they would feel contempt for the members of this minority. According to COREPOL interview data, police members in the capital are trusted more than those out- side the cities. Interviewed Roma deemed police in the countryside to be more of the ‘tough’ or ‘redneck’ type because more often members of the minority are treated in a harsh manner.
Police: Image and Acceptance of the Roma
Most of the police interviewed during COREPOL field work described members of the Roma minority as family-centred and characterised by strong communal solidarity, however also as hot-tempered, with different habits as well as a different culture and behaviour as non-Roma citizens. A lot of interviewed police believe that Roma do not have trust in police. Depending on the location of the field work different types of discriminating attitudes surfaced. While the majority of the police officers in Budapest and Miskolc revealed stereotyped and discriminatory attitudes towards Roma in general, the interviewed police members in Nógrád county had opinions that showed more differentiation. The majority of interviewed police officers express beliefs that the ratio of persons committing crimes for economic gain is high among the Roma. This is seen as a consequence of their low level of education, their high unemployment rate and wide-spread poverty. Furthermore, in the view of police officers the inclination of Roma persons to commit illegal acts for economic gain could also be attributed to different values such as the Roma concept of ’possession’ or ‘property’.
Situations Prone to Police-Minority Conflict: The Roma View
Many Roma respondents consider the police to hold racist attitudes against them. Some of our interviewees pointed out that the police charged unreasonably high fines for insignificant misdemeanours. Roma also were regularly accused of allegedly ‘feigned’ charges after police arrived or left the area. Additionally, Roma complain about unsubstantiated police activities, which for some of them come across as a form of harassment. Moreover, the Roma respondents complain about cases of disrespectful and degrading behaviour on the part of police. In addition, most interviewed minority persons believe that Roma are more likely to become a subject of identity checks than non-Roma. It was also reported that during police measures, non-Roma receive preferential treatment because police appear to trust them more than Roma. The data suggest that too often police tend to communicate with minority members in an offensive manner. In essence, interview data leaves the impression that Hungarian police practice contains racial profiling against minority people. Only a few of our respondents have experienced police misconduct in the form of excessive use of force and said they became victims of police violence. However, several could report respective incidents that had occurred to relatives or friends.
On the occasion of certain outstanding family celebrations, Roma family groups and communities may party in a way which does not agree with the norms of main-stream society. This characteristic and similar cultural differences cause conflicts between Roma and the police which also disrupt cooperation and decrease the Roma’s trust in police.
Situations Prone to Police-Minority Conflict: The Police View
According to the interviewed police officers, the most typical conflict situation is when the police are called to arrest a Roma. These cases are generally brought about by breach of domestic peace or domestic disturbances, crimes against property, burglary, vandalism, drug abuse or the distribution of substances. Some interviewees mentioned that the police are regularly present during the distribution of social welfare payments. Experiences with ID checks, which are also typical in conflict situations, were frequently reported by the interviewees. The interviewed police think that reasons for conflicts might be that they are bothered or even feel intimidated by the presence of large numbers of ’noisy’ Roma while performing their police tasks.
The police respondents believe that the attitude, behaviour, habits and the ‘temperament’ of the Roma also play a role in the easy outbreak of conflict between the Roma and members of the police. According to the police interviewees, the conflicts begin typically because the Roma believe that they get an identity check because of their ethnicity. This generates a ’hostile’ reaction. A significant number of the interviewees think that the Roma do not understand the language that is used by the police which leads to communication problems.
Police Management of Conflicts with Ethnic Minorities in Hungary
Some police interviewees report that Roma individuals filed official complaints after police procedures. However, the interviewees did not specify what accusations were reported and how this was done. Officers mentioned incidents where they effectively managed to resolve conflicts with the assistance of a member of the local minority government as a mediator. In contrast, none of the Roma and police respondents could recall any cases when factual mediators had been involved in the handling of a conflict between the police and Roma. However, from January 2007, victim-offender mediation has also been applicable in criminal procedures for both Roma and police. According to police interview data adequate communication with Roma individuals or groups is effective as a means of preventing and managing conflicts. According to another interviewee, it is only possible to establish normal communication between the police and the Roma if the Roma understand that the police activity is in accordance with the law and that Roma, like all other citizens, are obliged to obey.
The same interviewee also mentioned that it is essential to maintain the hierarchy. In contrast another interviewee believed that the key element of a successful measure is that the police officers should treat the Roma on an equal eye level and as a person and should not intend to create a hierarchical relationship. A few opinions were expressed that if calm communication does not work, they are forced to use a harsher tone which could be a kind of solution to the conflict.
Police Complaint Management Procedures in Hungary
The official complaint can be filed to the Independent Police Complaint Board. After the modification of the Police Act 1994/2007 and the election of the first five members of the Board in 2008 the Independent Police Complaints Board started its activity. Members of the Board are elected with a qualified majority for six years based on the proposal of concerned committees of the Parliament. The Board is independent from the organizational hierarchy of the police, and shall not be instructed or influenced during its work. Number of cases in front of the Board: 174 (2008), 457 (2009,) 528 (2010), 387 (2011), 430 (2012). The numbers do not indicate, how many of these complaints came from Roma persons.
Potential Impact:
In a comprehensive view, COREPOL research has moved from a highly specialized subject of enquiry (RJ) to a more general field of policing problems: accountability and control mechanisms and independent complaints agencies as a tool for improved policing. In regards to the necessity to implement independent complaints procedures between minorities and police, COREPOL can look back on a very intensive and at the same time wide-ranging investigation in which our research has addressed the nature and intensity of conflicts between police and minorities. In that field COREPOL findings suggest the necessity to tackle a much wider realm.
This shift of focus has allowed COREPOL to address wider implications in respect to democratic policing and police accountability in the European Union. These are especially pertinent when we consider the data concerning complaints raised by minority members. Recent reports published by Amnesty International (25 February, 2015) underline the necessity to establish independent police oversight, particularly in regards to the policing of minorities. Internal discussions within more reform-minded police organizations (Germany) have included COREPOL findings into their debates about the improvement of the relationship between police and minority communities.
The degree and severity of incidents reported by minority interviewees differ between the partner countries. The most widespread occurrence of police misconduct including abuse of force appears to be located in Hungary. In that EU country people from the Roma minority suffer from widespread discriminatory practices and negative attitudes, which appear to be partly (because there are exceptions) reflected in the police culture. In the Austrian data police practices of a discriminatory nature were less frequently reported. However, the frequent mentioning of racist slur and other police practices related to ‘otherness’ (i.e. different colour of skin) are entirely intolerable in European democracies. This points at the need for structural reform on the part of police and political leadership.
The nature of COREPOL data does not allow for any speculations about the prevalence of police misconduct. However, recent comparative research with larger samples reveal that in Germany, in comparison to France, younger persons of a migrant family background do not report significantly higher rates of regular discrimination by police patrol officers, as is clearly the case in France with adolescents and young men with a Northern African or other minority background (Oberwittler and Roche 2014). It can be concluded that colour of skin or other marker of ‘otherness’ are not a decisive feature of German policing strategies carried out in the cities. Different from France and the UK, in Germany riots of minority persons have not occurred in comparable dimensions. The reasons for that can be found in structural settings that segregate and discriminate persons with an ethnic minority background. This however would require an analysis with a different research design and a much wider scope than was provided by our project.
COREPOL results have societal implications as they highlight the unambiguous urgency of problems European countries face in their relationship to specific minorities:
Muslim migrants or population with a former migration background from Turkey, Sub-Saharan African persons living in European cities,Roma minority communities across the EU member states.
In the COREPOL data there are of course, country-specific differences, which originate from different traditions of ethnocentrism, racism, and xenophobia on the part of a country’s societal mainstream and politics. When it comes to policing however, COREPOL reveals how the micro-politics of policing can create favourable or less favourable climates of police-minority interaction. It is often how first-contact approaches and gestures by police officers are perceived that determines whether a procedure escalates or runs without altercations between minority members and police. Such findings have consequences for police ‘philosophy’ (ethics) and practical trainings. Use of language, or if available, skills or just a few phrases in the languages of minorities can defuse potentially confrontational situations.
On the part of police practitioners, discriminatory behaviour or language increase stress and aggressiveness, and to eradicate unprofessional patterns of front-line policing, leadership needs to take over responsibility for the policemen and –women on the streets and in minority communities.
For police, without a respected position in the communities, reporting of crime and violence or suspicious activities (like radicalization), information will not be likely to flow into the direction of officers or police stations. In a recent invitation to a convening of specialists it is pointed out that minority communities have a long history of being abused “…with police in a leading role in that mistreatment. ... (T)he felt experience of many such communities remains one of both under- and over-policing; actual illegalities perpetrated by law enforcement; disrespectful treatment; and violence and other abuse. Alienated communities frequently respond by disengaging from police and the criminal justice system, protecting even the truly violent amongst them, elevating criminal self-help over the rule of law, and shifting all responsibility for public safety problems onto the police and other outsiders. The result is broken relationships between those who most need the protection of the law and those dedicated to providing that protection; high levels of crime, violence, and incarceration; and persistently high levels of mistrust, anger, and fear.” (Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation 2015).
Without Community Policing as a principal means of modern police strategy, a process of reconciliation cannot be initiated. In the COREPOL findings this seems to apply to all countries but particularly to the Hungarian situation.
A Need for Improvement
In comparison to many overseas law enforcement organisations, policing in Europe can claim high rates of professional police standards, established educational and training standards, and a comparatively low level of police interventions with fatal consequences, i.e. police shootings and police scandals related to corruption or police crime involvement. In continental Europe, the lack of independent police oversight taints this overall favourable image, and accordingly, the establishment of independent oversight authorities in the EU member states ought to be addressed by politicians, police unions, the police leadership, NGOs and the interested public. Minority experience must play a decisive role in such endeavours.
In summary, for the future of European police and minority relations COREPOL research has opened a much wider vision of the problems at hand which clearly balances the deficiencies in respect to the objective to RJ practices (which were not to be found). Recent (post final-conference) dissemination activities by COREPOL research team members highlight the impact of the overall results and suggestions derived from the analysis of the data.
In Germany, the coordinator has been invited by the President of the Berlin Police to present the findings and to discuss potential approaches to improve minority-police contacts through the establishment of oversight agencies. COREPOL findings were mentioned in German TV, radio, and press interviews. There is pending invitation to a convening of international specialists at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (City University of New York) to improve minority police relations. By this COREPOL research finds international recognition which has previously been the case when the coordinator was asked to present the research findings to the first and second International Conference on Law Enforcement and Public Health.
For the EU context COREPOL researchers have been and will continue to be active in CEPOL activities, predominantly the CEPOL Research and Science Conference held at DHPOL in September 2013.
The Austrian team has presented the research findings concerning police oversight with a high-ranking representative of the Ombudsman Board. Additionally, core results concerning "charge dismissal dialogue" as an alternative to adversarial conflict solving will be distributed to policy makers and senior police officers via suitable media. The main results of the COREPOL field studies together with practical recommendations for improving the relations between the Austrian police and people of African origin were sent to the Austrian parliament in February 2015. An internal press release about the main outcomes of the COREPOL final conference was published in the .SIAK intranet.
The Hungarian team has organized a workshop about COREPOL findings at the National University Faculty of Police Science and its members participated in a seminar on Restorative Justice implementation in Budapest and a at a conference organized by the European University Institute, Florence in early February. Also in February at an ALTERNATIVE (FP7) regional workshop in Oslo COREPOL project research findings were presented to a wider audience of academics and practitioners.
Publications in peer-reviewed journals are either under review or in print. A publisher for M3 has been found and the edited book will be available in early summer.
A further means of dissemination and of keeping the COREPOL content alive will be provided by the HORIZON 2020 participation of Prof Kersten and Ms Kunz, PhD cand. as partners of the INSPEC2T project starting in 2015.
List of Websites:
http://www.corepol.eu
