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Policing and Racism in Germany: Empirical Insights and Critical Reflections

Fri, September 5, 3:30 to 4:45pm, Communications Building (CN), CN 2105

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

In recent years, racism has been the subject of extensive public debate in Germany, particularly in the aftermath of racist and antisemitic attacks, as well as the global Black Lives Matter protests, which also resonated nationally. This has resulted in heightened political and academic attention to racism, including within the field of criminology, where research on racism and discrimination in policing has gained pertinence. However, this academic engagement remains tenuous. As restrictive migration, asylum, and security policies continue to dominate public discourse, the broader debate on racism is losing political traction.
This panel takes stock of the current debate on police racism in Germany by bringing together diverse criminological approaches. Utilising data from recent collaborative research projects, it examines different dimensions and levels of racism in policing, from attitudinal and interpersonal dynamics to structural and discursive perspectives. It considers racialised physical violence as well as more subtle forms of exclusion and neglect in everyday police encounters. Moreover, the panel investigates the gap between police self-perception and the experiences of racialised communities and analyses how political and media narratives influence the framing of police racism. We thus focus on the epistemic struggles that shape public and institutional understandings of racism.
By bringing together these different criminological perspectives, the panel engages with key methodological and theoretical questions: How can we empirically capture and conceptualise racism in policing? What are the challenges of bridging attitudinal, structural, and discursive approaches? And how do political and institutional conditions shape the possibilities and constraints of researching police racism in Germany? Addressing these questions, the panel not only reflects on the state of the field but also highlights the broader socio-political dynamics that influence both policing and its critical study.

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