There's a story that came out a couple of days ago via the Berliner Morganpost (their primary newspaper in Berlin) that has been on my mind.
They reported that in the spring of 2018.....just over 50-percent of convicted (note, not suspects but actually convicted) prisoners in the regional jail-system....are foreigners (without a German passport or citizenship). And if you count 'in-custody' (meaning those who have been arrested and being held until their court case or some judge releases them)....then you get up to around 75-percent.
Around the city-state, there are seven prisons, and almost 4,000 total folks are being held.
The odd fator here which caught my attention is that they have more than ninety different nationalities within this prison system. They admit that most (a majority of the group) come from Turkey.
Just on communication issues and being able to have some lawyer handle their work....you've got major issues. All of this has to be taxing the legal profession and challenging judges to ensure the guy understands what is going on.
The question here is....what happened? How did this shift to a mostly migrant/immigrant prison population really occur?
I would suggest three causes:
1. A lot of folks who came in this 2013-to-present 'wave'....were migrant/refugee men (not families or women), and they came without any moral authority or guidance in their lives. So when stupid opportunities arose (drugs, crime, assaults, etc).....they made decisions that you'd typically expect out of young men.
2. A lot of immigrants and asylum-seekers came with plan 'A', and discovered in a short period of time that their plan 'A' really didn't consider all of the problems of re-locating to a new homeland. You toss in language classes, higher cost of living, low wages, stress and a year of their life wasted in compounds (waiting on visas)....and this pay-off simply simply wasn't there. So some went onto plan 'B' and perhaps even plan 'C'.
3. Drugs. If you go to a lot of the countries in northern Africa, and the Middle East....you just didn't have the drug potential that you find in Germany today. You go down to the local drug-district in Frankfurt or Hamburg.....in less than two minutes, you've got your 'hit' for the day. After the 'hit', you go out and do something stupid, or something with consequences tied to your act. I think a fair number of these folks found drugs to be an outlet for their limited circumstances or lack of success in life.
No one says that category of crimes that these foreign individuals have committed, but it would be curious if you broke this down and spoke to the trend. The odds of this continuing? I'd suggest that there is nothing to hinder this trend.
No comments:
Post a Comment