Man, sometimes I wish I was a fly on the horse stables servants’ quarters walls in the centuries before civil rights broke free in america. When I stop and think about all the wondrous and “interesting” observations to be made back then… woo! I’m giddy!

Also, the phrase “according to the government reports” is itself troubling. The Governor of Wisconsin assigned a commission to study these matters as they relate to our little state, a place with more cows than people until quite recently. The report they wrote was courteously diffuse about certain matters because all stakeholders in the system (except, I suppose, the convicts themselves) were represented. A chief of police has a hard time signing off on the idea that black people in his jurisdiction are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, and prosecuted than white people. That looks like racism and public officials pride themselves on the fact that they do as much as possible to uproot that kind of thing. So the report doesn’t really draw hard conclusion of root causes for data as presented.

Now it is well known that the Poles are a race of horse thieves, so one can see how that would translate to vehicular theft in the modern day. And the Russian race has been remarkable for its violent thuggery since medieval times and before. And we know the Germans as an orderly race of accountants and statisticians, so it is hard for us to question their data. But it would be interesting to see how the data came to be.

fp

You say “According to the government reports, immigrants here are disproportionately more criminal (i.e. jailed) than native Germans.”

I think the original point of the post may have been emphasising that African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans are more apt to be gaoled for the same crimes as their white counterparts, not that they are more criminal or violent, and that economics is a significant part of the equation.

Please correct me if I’m off base here, but you seem to be implying by stating “disproportionately more criminal (i.e. jailed)” that, for instance, a black guy gaoled for a DWI is “more criminal” than the white Bush appointed judge from Boston is when committing the same crime because the drunken judge was not gaoled.

The white Bush appointed judge who was, of course, acquitted and happened to be wearing a little black dress, fishnets, blue eye shadow and carrying a purse when he got into a drunken accident, crossing the N.H. state line, on his way back from a gay bar. Does this make the black guy more criminal? Google it. It’s not in some newspaper I’ve read once and mislaid.

And what, again, are your opinions on the well documented racist attacks on immigrants in Germany?

I’m not even going to say anything about what you say to Frank except: Is that cross getting heavy yet?

@os,
mea culpa “innate” was indeed the wrong adjective.
According to the government reports, immigrants here are disproportionately more criminal (i.e. jailed) than native Germans. Analysing the type of crimes by nationality indicates that e.g. Russians commit violent crimes overproprtionately and e.g Poles do more car-crime (stealing cars or parts thereof).

Am I now ‘persona non grata’ here for offering this information, Frank? Would you prefer not to have known?

@os,
mea culpa “innate” was indeed the wrong adjective.
According to the g

No please, don’t go to the trouble to cite some opinion of some journalist whose opinion you’ve adopted as being a truism.

Innate is defined as:
1. existing in one from birth; inborn; native: innate musical talent.
2. inherent in the essential character of something: an innate defect in the hypothesis.

I just find it difficult to believe that Russians (immigrants or native) are “innately more violent” than say, the Germans or the Turks.

A bit like saying that African Americans are innately more lazy or Scots innately more miserly. And so forth.

It just struck me as an odd word choice. No harm done. And of course, I don’t have the advantages of living in Germany and observing the situation in situ.

Here in London the Somalians are considerably more violent than other immigrant groups, but I don’t think it’s “innate”. I think it’s because they’ve seen so many people hacked to death that they’ve become somewhat numb.

And if I may offer one more observation, perhaps the Turkish immigrants seem less violent to you and German journalists because they are too busy being attacked by the native German population.

Here in the USA, our prison population is a mixed bag of people convicted for violent and for non-violent crimes. I infer from your generalization regarding immigrant Russian violence that the prison population in Germany is largely comprised of people convicted of violent crimes, or at least the Russian portion of that population comprises violent offenders. Is my inference correct?

1) Pfeiffer, Christian: Das Problem der so genannten „Ausländerkriminalität“. Empirische Befunde, Interpretationsangebote und (kriminal-)politische Folgerungen, KFN-Forschungsberichte, Hannover 1995.

2)http://www.pro-koeln-online.de/artikel1/auslaender.htm (Last Paragraph). Given the source, I think they would have been focussing on Turks.

3) http://www.bpb.de/publikationen/HTD7VE,0,Ausl%E4nderkriminalit%E4t.html,
From which I quote
“Eine Tatsache steht freilich fest: Auch in einer bereinigten Kriminalstatistik, die nach Statusgruppen unterscheidet, sind jugendliche Ausländer, insbesondere 14- bis 17-Jährige, im Vergleich zu deutschen Altersgenossen mit mehr Straftaten (Eigentums- und Gewaltdelikten) vertreten. Das hat verschiedene Gründe, zu denen unter anderem wirtschaftliche Probleme, mangelnde Integrationshilfen, unzureichende Sprachkenntnisse und fehlende Chancen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt gehören. Jugendkriminalität ist, bei Ausländern wie bei Deutschen, nicht zuletzt eine Folge der Bildungsmisere.”, which is basically the same point as I was making.

4) Volkmar Weiss : “Ausländer bei schwerer Gewaltkriminalität überrepräsentiert.” I’d have to Google for his publications tho’.

I’ll look more tomorrow, OK?