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.

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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.

Visit here for links to sources and resources featured in Justice Collective’s Instagram educational series, “Why We Need Abolition: Policing, Punishment, and Prisons in Germany”, based on its report with the Komitee für Grundrechte und Demokratie.

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.

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.