this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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How are they defining "foreigner" here, cause non-German citizens accounting for a 1/3 of all crime sounds really high and concerning.
To be honest, having a third of your population be immigrants sounds crazy too. Even in the US it's only about 1/6th the population and half of those are naturalized citizens.
It's about whether they're ethnically German or not, even if you're a German citizen but you're a different kind of white European you'd count as an immigrant there.
Not only that, but we know that immigrants and marginalized people as a whole are overpoliced, so even police statistics are generally racist, which is part of the reason for this kind of statistic. The rest can be explained by marginalized people being generally poorer and lacking the same opportunities and access to jobs, education, housing, etc, so the likelihood of someone being homeless or extremely poor and desperate is much higher for those that are marginalized. So the better comparison isn't with immigrants in the US, but rather black people in the US, who are also overpoliced and whose material conditions have been greatly shaped by systemic racism.
And lastly, most crime isn't violent crime, and most crime committed by marginalized people disproportionately affect other marginalized people from their own community.
I have some doubts about your answer. Statistics that are accounting the origin of people are against the law. You can only report stats on nationality. So what you write is very surprising. This said the point about what is crime exactly and what this graph really considers as a crime is not clear and open to manipulation.
I looked into how Migrationshintergrund is tracked and apparently you're right, officially in Germany it's about whether you or one of your parents were born without a German citizenship (so someone who has a German parent and a non German parent counts, same as their non German parent). I got confused because the term is informally used to also include people who aren't considered ethnically German, so my bad.
Checking a bit more on that . Tracking the ethnicity is forbidden by the GDPR (article 9) so it would be illegal to do in Germany. The source is here https://mediendienst-integration.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Expertisen/Mediendienst_Integration_Expertise_Kriminalitaet_und_Migration_in_deutschen_Medien_Thomas_Hestermann.pdf And it was foreigners. Not people with immigration background.
Oh wow, I didn't realize how crazy race/ethnicity can get in Europe. I figured the term must be overloaded, but how do you even define/track ethnically German?
Your comments on over policing of marginalized people though is definitely a good call-out.
Who is we? And how do all of you know what you claim?
'Marginalized' is a loaded term. What would make them NOT marginalized? Being the majority or having disproportionate representation?
How did you come to this determination?
This relies on your previous statement which I doubt
Well now you're changing your tune from your previous statement. Foreigners will necessarily be less established and struggle more than a native citizen. If these conditions mean that they are more likely to commit crime then doesn't it follow that they would (and should) be policed more often?
This is the same for any group.
Is it possible that they just commit a disproportionate amount of crime? Not is it true but is it possible? If it is possible how would you determine that?
It sounds like you're trying to explain away the fact that subset of the population is responsible for an outsized portion of crime.
That's you. I don't debate people like you.
I stand by what I said. Look at Lemmy.ml. This entire instance hates the west and wants it to fall. How is what I said even controversial at this point?
You never did address the inherent contradiction in your argument but we can end it here if you want.