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3.4 Summary/Conclusions
Compared to other states, particularly those with a longer tradition of hate crime policies and legislation such as Canada, the United States or the UK, both Germany and Poland have limited monitoring systems in place. In both countries, the authorities provide limited or restricted information on the characteristics of the victims affected by bias-motivated violence (religion, language, gender, sexual orientation, nationality and ethnic origin) or other circumstances of the attacks (places of victimization etc.).
In Poland the number of convictions with regard to hate crimes is very low (35 convictions in 2006), and many legal procedures are discontinued. The German jurisdiction seems to be inconsistent from state to state, strongly influenced by the public prosecutors’ stances and knowledge of right-wing activities. In Germany there are no up-to-date statistics available on convictions with regard to right-wing hate crimes, and minimal research has been carried out on the question of how public prosecutors and jurisdiction in general deal with suspected hate crime in criminal proceedings.
For Germany, the police system of registering and collecting data has been strengthened since 2001 as a result of a combination of internal and external pressures. Criticism raised by legal experts, journalists and a number of civil rights and victim support organizations played a part in this development because of their concern about the low quantity and quality of police data on hate crimes. With the new police registration and classification system in 2001 came the most important improvement: the category »politically motivated right-wing offenses« with its sub-categories xenophobic and anti-Semitic crimes. Before, the previous registration rules stated that ideologically motivated crimes needed only to be recorded by the police as such if the »perpetrator showed intentions of disturbing fundamental democratic principles of the state.«
While in Germany the system of data collection has been improved over the years and government agencies regularly report on current figures and trends, there has been no broader discussion in Poland about the police registration and official monitoring system of hate crimes. Authorities provide only inconsistent and insufficient information on right-wing violence and related offenses, often only upon request by supranational bodies, the media or other institutions. Furthermore, the data seems to be collected unsystematically. More comprehensive information on hate crimes in Poland still comes from the media and specialized non-governmental organizations, not from official sources such as police or public prosecutors.
The lack of reliable and up-to-date statistics on hate crimes is a major obstacle not only for research, but also for a general public acknowledgement and awareness of the problem of bias-motivated violence and hate speech in Poland. The fact that the numbers of reported cases are still very low may also be related to many victim groups’ general lack of faith in the law enforcement agencies’ effectiveness in carrying out justice and addressing their grievances.
Similar mistrust can be still observed in Germany among victim groups. Although the treatment of hate crimes victims by police and legal authorities seems to have improved in some states and the definition of the category »politically motivated crime« has become more comprehensive, hate crimes in Germany are still very much discussed and viewed through the prism of right-wing extremism. Even though the new police system considered much of NGO criticism from before 2001, some experts have noted a persistent reluctance by the law enforcement officers to take bias motives—not to be confused with far-right and openly extremist ones—seriously and to invest more time and energy in the proper registration and investigation of reported cases and alleged perpetrators. Others suspect that officials generally neglect »everyday« bias-motivated harassment and attacks committed by offenders who may not be directly linked to an extremist organization or to specific social environments such as the right-wing skinhead or hooligan scene.
In both countries, victims underreport hate crimes for various reasons. This poses a serious challenge not only for the main groups affected, but also for the legal and justice system and democratic society as a whole. Until law enforcement agencies improve and intensify their efforts to raise awareness within the administrative and law enforcement structures through outreach activities to victim groups and other confidence-building measures, NGOs that represent minority groups or that monitor and support activities remain a crucial actor (sometimes the only actor) in strengthening the position of victims in both countries’ democracies.
(OPP)
