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Subject and people
On November 5, 2011, the federal government presented the “Third Periodic Safety Report”. It follows the 2006 report, so it presents and evaluates the last 15 years. The 232-page report is easy to find on the Internet, which I would like to expressly recommend. Anyone who is interested in questions of security and crime and likes to express one or the other view of the world should take a look at the report. You don't have to read it page by page. In any case, it is important for all wise guys to read pages 15 to 20: "Explanations on the data basis". It says what the statistical data say and what not, whether and how it can be compared and where there are a few stumbling blocks of understanding.
Also interesting: »Filtering out in the area of informal social control« (pp. 21/22). Sounds complicated, but it's exciting: You learn that security and insecurity, good behavior and deviation are not predetermined, technical or scientific categories, but evaluations that are constantly changing dynamically - in general communication, in real life, and mostly only long afterwards in laws. That is the reason why most people in Germany today no longer think that it must be a criminal offense not to go to church on Sundays, to have premarital intercourse or to watch the wrong TV channels. The matter of changing morals definitely has its advantages, friends of the good old discipline and order! If it were up to herMost of you would have little to laugh about yourself these days!
But now to be on the safe side: Since I answer questions about it quite often at this point and mostly read the comments in the forum and some other things, I know that the topic is of the highest importance for many people, about as important as cars or Football or transsexuals' chances of getting married.
And because the real fan of these topics is proud to know what a straight six or a referee's ball is or what the name of Harry's wife by birth name is, I am sure that fans of criminology cannot actually be satisfied with the subject of theirs Hobbies to know nothing but the chatter of a bunch of people who also have no idea, but have a surefire opinion.
Brevity and seasoning
The friends of the short summaries will again be terribly disappointed with this text: I cannot really tell you everything that is significant that the Federal Government has researched about the security and insecurity of all of us in 15 years. To put it from the point of view of the male crime observer: You can explain to well-intentioned people on about three pages of text how an internal combustion engine works. It could hardly be any shorter, which is clearly due to the engine and not the explanation. And you can't explain the same thing in ten lines to someone who is absolutely certain that only the insane can remember the difference between alternator and crankshaft anyway. It's similar with the security situation and crime, with the differencethat both are much more complicated than a twelve-cylinder direct injection engine with a twin turbocharger.
A few figures, of course only very exemplarily: In adult criminal law, 2.8% of convictions end with an acquittal, 84.5% with a conviction. The proportion of those convicted who had previously been in custody rose from 2.9 to 4.0%. The number of convictions fell by 14 percent in the reporting period, as did the number of reported or otherwise registered offenses. There were increases where the control density has increased significantly, where new criminal offenses have been created, i.e. previously unpunished acts were punishable for the first time, and in areas that were particularly affected by social changes, such as migrant crime, Internet crime, data crime, so-called hate crime. The positive and negative changes are very interesting,differentiated in itself and complex in cause and effect.
There are currently around 50,000 prisoners and around 13,000 prisoners on remand in prisons.
In ten federal states (the others did not report any data) there are around 6,000 people in forensic psychiatry and around 4,000 in rehab facilities because of criminal convictions.
Those are high numbers.
As experience in countless countries shows, increasing it further through merciless harshness, ostensibly for the sake of "deterrence", has only very few positive effects in detail, but many serious negative effects as a whole.
German and non-German
"Germans and non-Germans": An endless topic of excitement, outrage, appeasement, hystericalization, belittling - in short: highly interesting. The foreign is always interesting, and the threatening even more. The foreign threatening and the threateningly foreign are therefore almost unbeatable, and if you combine the threats with violence or sex or property, you have reached the peak of attention. Bad luck for the strangers, in this case the non-Germans; But that's pretty much the same everywhere in the world: 130 years ago the proletariat of German origin in the immigration countries was viewed in a very similar way.
One cannot (and should) not deny that those not of “German” origin make up a disproportionate share of the suspects, and unfortunately precisely in those offenses that are particularly sensitive to threats.
To a large extent, however, this only applies to men;
the strange women are consistently better than their honey-blonde sisters.
The matter is of course put into perspective: If you filter the particularly conspicuous group for certain characteristics and then compare a similar group of people of German origin with it, the whole thing comes closer: Language skills, education, occupation, place of residence in a city / country, income, housing situation , Family structure.
Of course, knowing this does not in itself help either against crime or against the fear of it. It shows, however, that the "descent," that is, an alleged "identity" of the so-called ethnic affiliation, of allegedly progressive racists in talk shows, Twitter and leading articles also often called "culture" affiliation, is one of the least important of all the characteristics. And even in the unimportant it goes even further downwards, if one does not support the nonsense theory that being a criminal comes from black hair, the warm sun or too much snow. There are a few million everywhere who believe that anyway, but they also think that they are beautiful, kind-hearted and intelligent themselves, and you can see from this that they are prone to fundamental errors.
Another question is whether it really has to be: Lots of poorly educated, poor people with reduced opportunities in a confined space in anonymous cities without integrating social ties outside of their immigrant group, which is burdened with all kinds of problems. That is the high intelligence question of the fully enlightened xenophobes. It is answered by them with the formula: Where there is no lumpen proletariat there is no lupe proletarian crime, and where there are no "foreigners" and "non-Germans" there are no crimes committed by them. A very clever theory that is undeniably true in some way. However, it is also true for everyone else: where there are no men, there are no rape, and where there are no thugs, there are no fights.
This theoretical approach, which moves on the intellectual level of a chimpanzee group, is impressive in evolutionary terms, but not easy to reconcile with humanoid civilization. That is to say: You would have to go back to the early so-called Middle Ages to make it a reality. And the Chinese and the Indians and the Nigerians and the few remaining billion non-Germans are simply not going along with that, I'm afraid.
Even with the most brutal will to fight crime, one must therefore come up with the idea that the cheapest and safest solution for the country and its people would be to reduce the number of construction sites where the above-mentioned features - German or non-German - tend to crowd.
So to force an integration that deserves the name.
Unfortunately, the identity of the allegedly orderly dull faction is just as badly off as it is with the identities of the allegedly libertarian faction.
Shout and echo
A Periodic Safety Report is a quarry of knowledge and a minefield of potential misunderstandings. That's the way it is with science! But who am I telling this? You know, dear readers, that even a result as clear as a 1-0 in football is just the beginning of the science of football. If you don't believe it, read "Life in 90 Minutes" by Gunter Gebauer! Or think of your arguments at work, in your relationship, with your family: All of the very simple questions with endless entanglements and possibilities for the scientist in you to work through!
In addition, such a "safety report" is of course a call to society: Look here, you can see, measure, count, understand and interpret it!
If you apply the rules that apply today for measuring, counting, systematising and interpreting.
Of course you can also describe crime differently.
You can also measure and explain coronary heart disease or colon cancer or the trajectory of the ISS differently than usual.
For example, one could question a wise old woman, or look at the bowels of sacrificial animals.
Some people do that. The majority have decided otherwise.
If necessary, one can vote on common truth, but not on reality.
more on the subject
Crime in the media: Better to think firstA column by Thomas Fischer
Media criticism: The pure truthA column by Thomas Fischer
No call without an echo, no action without effect, no thought without association. That is the fate of the sound wave and the people. The echo of the safety report can first of all be recognized by its reception in the media. One can only say: A weak picture! Juicy and feeble summaries of short press releases, one or two ministerial quotes, one from the Interior Minister and one from the Justice Minister, which the press officers tinkered with for at least ten minutes: Everything is pretty good, but Minister is worried and Madam Minister too soon.
Well: that's the job! A minister of the interior is paid (mediocre) in this country for claiming a few times a week that he looks with concern at something that is on his speech slip. In addition, so that the people know that he knows what is going on, he has to "show himself concerned" once a day or, for example, let it be said that he said that he did not like violent crimes at all. Of course, in reality a minister has to do very different, much more interesting things. But that is of little interest to the postmodern electorate with a 60 percent high school graduation rate. The main thing is that his hair is nice and that he is worried.
The press, the media, journalists' divisions have other and more extensive echo throwing tasks.
If you have the time, you should perhaps at least read the summary of the report and then be able to tell the dear customers out there what they think for themselves or, if it comes up, even what people can, may or should think.
If it is not enough yourself, you can actually leave it alone and emulate the professionals from Facebook and Twitter.
Good and bad
I remember the habit of followers of Maoist student organizations in the 1970s to ape linguistically the stupid translations of the articles from the "Peking Review". For a while they said to each quark: "... And that is good and not bad," because that is supposedly what the Great Chairman M. had said. A special art of the Maoist-Heidelberg dialectic was to find one good and not bad in January and the exact opposite in March. This art form still exists today, of course, even in a more refined form. I will only mention the keyword here as an example: fighting pandemics. The internet wasn't any more confused than on the pages of the national high press.
But I think the closely related art - or shall we say: the endeavor - of simply emancipating the judgment of good and bad from the facts is also impressive. That is the art of opinion holders. It seems that it is the ultimate goal of all courses of study and training leading to the professional title of »journalist«. If you have an opinion, you no longer need to read a safety report, a textbook, a Bundestag printed matter or an expert opinion. The Twitter poster with the specialist editor (who, if in doubt, spends five hours a day on his accounts anyway) becomes blurred. Tragic!
In the newspaper for Germany I read (November 6th, page 8) that the Third Periodic Safety Report, according to the results of which Germany is "one of the safest countries in the world" and the threat of crime is on the whole steadily decreasing, is actually completely has to interpret it differently: The most important message of the report is that »2015 cannot repeat itself«.
This is how you can do it: The number of violent crimes has decreased because it "apparently" has moved into the dark. If the number of child pornography proceedings increases, it is not because of the increased surveillance activity, but because the "networks" of the dysfunctional pornographers are becoming more and more gigantic. If there are fewer homicides detected, it is because the homicides and murders are becoming more and more secretive. If more sexual assault reports are made, it is not a sign of successful prosecution, but evidence of the "steady rise" in the number of crimes. And when more and more "representatives" from more and more "victim" groups complain about the disregard for the suffering of their protégés, this is not a sign of increasing social affection, opening and healing,but evidence of "worse and worse" decay.
It is sometimes difficult to endure the whining, dramatizing and scandalizing without understanding.
If at least it would be of any use!
But people do not feel better in the long run, but plunge into a new depression after a short triumphant kick of horror, which is then taken as evidence of the general decline.
That is bad and not good.
Practical tip
My advice: read the Third Periodic Safety Report for two hours next weekend!
Enjoy everything that got better!
That's good against fear of corona, at least as exciting as standing around in crowded pubs, and besides: It in no way harms security or the crime victims if you are happy about something other than the latest doomsday opinion.
