Berlin: Arabs almost half of serial-offenders
The typical serial offender is male, of Arab origin, and remains a criminal as an adult, this according to an interim report on the status of the implementation of the Berlin serial offenders concept, as reported by the Senator for Justice Gisela von der Aue (SPD) in parliament on Wednesday. The serial offender policy, with which Berlin set up a separate department in the prosecution, ends this month, and the senator decided to renew it April 1st.
A key point is that the same offender always meets the same police officer and prosecutor, all authorities are networked so they can quickly identify disastrous trends and take countermeasures. In addition to the police and prosecution, this includes the youth social-service and juvenile courts.
According to von der Aue, at the beginning of the year, there were 548 serial offenders registered, none of them children. These included 83 were juveniles, 211 adolescents and 254 adults, ten of which were female. The former juveniles have reached adulthood and continued being criminals. They're expecting a continued low-level increase. 79% of the serial offenders are of immigrant background, 47% are of Arab origin. More than 2300 court cases have been started since the creation of the department, with more than 2,700 court decisions (there were multiple defendants in some cases). According to von der Aue the number of probation failures - cases of re-offending during the probation period - was also high at 60%. In 2007, Berlin applied its concept to the beginner-criminal policy, where the offender would be intercepted before he begins his serial offender career. 172 people were registered in that.
Legal issues spokesperson for the Greens, Dirk Behrendt, complained that the punishment process was taking too long. The senator did not contradict him, and said they would work to speed up the process.
Source: Der Tagesspiegel (German), h/t NRP
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