Germany’s plans for cannabis legalization will create a two-tiered marijuana policy, with legal access and immunity from prosecution for some, and continued criminalization for people from racialized, migrantized, and other frequently-policed groups.

Along with partners (RE)Claim/MCDS (France), Hungarian Helsinki Committee (Hungary), Justice Collective urges the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing and the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights to demand a Europe-wide stop to the criminalization of poverty, racist police practices, and debtor’s prisons.

Analysis of Germany’s coalition agreement on issues of policing, punishing, and anti-racism.

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

Responses to questions posed to the German political parties ahead of this weekend’s election by Netzwerks Abolitionismus and Hydra suggest a growing understanding by some parties of the harms of punitive social policy. But comprehensive and bold solutions are lacking.

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.