A major change is coming to crime reporting in Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, with the interior minister ordering those who commit crimes with multiple nationalities be accurately included in the crime statistics.
Across Germany, dual citizens are only reported as Germans, and their other nationality is not disclosed. However, this widely distorts the crime reporting statistics.
Now, Interior Minister Herbert Reul, of the Christian Democrats (CDU), is the first interior minister to reverse course and include these nationalities in the statistics.
“If we don’t capture all nationalities, we’re in the dark. If you want to see reality, you have to measure it,” said Reul.
“This is the only way we can call a spade a spade and enable our police to identify dangers at an early stage and combat crimes effectively. Security only comes with clarity. When we record multiple nationalities, we create transparency – thus strengthening our police force in the fight against crime,” he added.
The inclusion of foreign nationals, who also happen to have a German passport, is set to provide a more realistic and detailed picture of who is committing crimes.
In 2023, 35.6 percent of all suspects were non-Germans, with this share of the population standing at 16.1 percent.
However, one in six suspects with German citizenship was also recorded with another citizenship, totaling 49,825 crimes.
The new data shows the common dual nationalities are German-Turkish (10,307), German/Polish (6,652), German/Russian (3,484), German/Moroccan (3,125), and German/Syrian (2,185).
The ministry justifies the decision by indicating that multiple nationalities present a risk of absconding from police. In addition, some suspects with multiple identities have presented issues for police in their data collection and identification.
However, the data may also give a clearer picture of how certain groups are integrating. Clearly, the data shows certain foreign nationals are vastly overrepresented in the crime statistics.
The Greens protest
The pro-migration Green Party has protested the decision. Domestic policy spokeswoman Julia Höller said, “Interior Minister Herbert Reul’s decree does not provide any insight into the work of the police and pays into the account of the ethnically minded AfD. The passport says absolutely nothing about why someone is committing a crime or whether they have contacts abroad. This type of portrayal is populism and has a dangerous side effect: people with a double pass are downgraded to second-class Germans.“
Police unionist Rainer Wendt, the federal chairman of the German Police Union (DPolG), backed Reul’s move.
He told Bild newspaper: “In a democratic constitutional state, it is an important achievement that government work is as transparent as possible. This also applies to law enforcement authorities. If we don’t want there to be false interpretations, we always need a clear picture of what’s going on in crime.”
Could more states follow suit?
One of the big fears of the Greens and other left-wing parties is that this decision could spread to other German states. In turn, it could help further reveal the extent of foreign criminals in the crime statistics.
It is important to note that Reul’s new law will not change how crime statistics are reported federally. Due to federal rules, North Rhine-Westphalia will only transmit the data on one nationality for dual citizen suspects, the German one, when a crime is committed by a dual German citizen.
Therefore, North Rhine-Westphalia can only release its own data with both nationalities, but it will not influence the federal data.
If all German states were to begin reporting on the crimes of dual citizens, it could potentially reveal hundreds of thousands of crimes committed by dual citizens across the country, and would dramatically change how the national statistics are viewed. Foreigners already account for nearly six in ten violent and serious crimes in Germany, which means the number is actually far higher if dual citizens were included.
However, one aspect of crimes currently not recorded anywhere is the migration background of suspects. There are many German citizens with a foreign migration background through their parents and grandparents, but which have no dual citizenship.
When police crime data is revealed using first names, it is quickly revealed that many German offenders have foreign names, as gang rape data from North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, show.
