Police in the German capital of Berlin will no longer be reporting the migration background of criminal suspects under the age of 21 after the Berlin Senate scrapped the policy, claiming it had no relevance.
The Senate Administration confirmed that the police will no longer be recording and publishing the migrant background of criminals under 21 after the policy had been in place for over a decade, since 2011.
“The registration of the migration background of suspects under the age of 21 for crimes such as murder, manslaughter, rape, sexual assault or brutality, which was introduced in 2011, has been discontinued,” the Senate Administration said in a statement and noted that the policy had been discontinued on August 3rd, RBB24 reports.
According to the Senate Administration, the ability to record the migration background of young suspects was done in order to provide data to shape future policy but stated, “In police practice, however, this unique criterion has not developed any relevance for Berlin.”
RBB24 also notes that Berlin has a significant population of young people from migrant backgrounds and that recording their backgrounds simply may no longer be useful due to the large number of people the category represents.
The ending of the policy comes after years of reports of the disproportionate level of crime perpetrated by people of migrant backgrounds in the city, with a 2017 report claiming that as many as half of the crimes committed were done by people who did not hold a German passport.
Germany’s migrant-background population overall represents around a quarter of the entire population of the country and is especially high among younger generations in certain areas.
In the region of North-Rhine Westphalia, migrant-background pupils are the majority in nearly 1,000 of the region’s 2,787 primary schools, with 54 of the schools having between 90 to 100 per cent of their students from migrant backgrounds.
“Anyone who still speaks of ‘integration’ as a solution to mass immigration wants to deceive,” populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP Carlo Clemens stated and added, “If the current demographic developments continue, it will be the children without a migration background who will have to integrate.”