Justice Collective is Hiring!

Justice Collective is launching a new research project to understand racism in courts and in the criminal legal system, starting in April with court-watching in Berlin.

Justice Collective is Hiring!

On November 26, 2021 from 19:00 – 20:30, Justice Collective will present an overview of policing and punishment in Germany.

Interviews with judges and prosecutors in Germany suggest the urgent need to rethink the punishment of low-level cases in Germany. About 500,000 low-level cases are fined in Germany per year. Courts prioritize efficiency in calculating fines, with the result that fines are often too high for people to pay. The system punishes a high volume of cases connected to poverty or other social issues that could be solved with non-punitive sanctions. Taken together, the system generates significant harm and alternative social policies must be considered.

In Lacatus v. Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights held that a Swiss law punishing begging with high fines and prison violated a person’s right to dignity because it criminalized poverty. In this briefing, we find that the punishment of poverty detailed in Lacatus is not an anomaly: Switzerland’s courts disparately sentence people with lower incomes, racialized people, and migrants. People charged face serious consequences, including prison.

Analyzing existing research, Justice Collective provides a snapshot of harmful punishment practices across Europe. Our report counters assumptions that states in Europe do not punish very much and that they are free from structural racism in their courts.