*preroll music*
Herald: Welcome Jeff with a warm applause on stage. He works for Tactical Tech
*applause*
and will talk about a bias in data and racial profiling
in Germany compared with the UK. It’s your stage!
Jeff: Right. Thank you! Yeah, okay!
My presentation is called “Profiling (In)justice –
– Disaggregating Data by Race and Ethnicity to Monitor
and Evaluate Discriminatory Policing”. In terms of my background:
I’ve done research, doing mostly quantitative research
around the issues of racial discrimination for a long time.
In New York, at the Center for Constitutional Rights I was working on
looking at trends and levels of
use-of-force by police against civilians, and also on stop-and-search
against civilians. And then more recently for the last 18 months or so
I’ve been working as a research consultant at Tactical Tech,
looking at issues of data politics and privacy. So this is kind of like a merger
of these 2 areas. In terms of what this presentation is gonna be about:
there’s gonna be 3 takeaways. First, that
we’re dealing with the issues of privacy and also [freedom from] discrimination.
And both are fundamental human rights. But there’s tension between the two.
And important questions to think about are: “When do privacy concerns exceed
or take precedence over those of discrimination, or vice versa?”
Two: That data is political, both in the collection and aggregation of data;
but also in terms of having the categories of being created.
And then, three: That data ethics are a complex thing, that things aren’t
so black-and-white all of the time. So what is racial profiling?
The term originates from the US.
And it refers to when a police officer suspects, stops, questions, arrests or…
you know, or… at other stages (?) of the communal justice system
because of their perceived race or ethnicity. After 9/11
it also refers to the profiling of Muslims or people perceived to be Middle Eastern.
And in German there is no direct translation, so the term ‘Racial Profiling’ (quotes)
is used a lot in parliamentary hearings and also in court documents.
So the problem that we’re gonna talk about is that because of the lack of data
in Germany there’s no empirical evidence to monitor and evaluate
trends in discrimination. This is creating problems
for both civil society in terms of looking at these levels and trends over time,
but also from an individual perspective it becomes difficult for people
to file complaints. In Germany the only way to file a complaint officially
is to go to the police department, which introduces power dynamics,
you know, challenges and additional barriers. But also if you’re an individual
you have to show that there’s a trend, right? That you are part of another,
a long standing story. And without this data it becomes difficult to prove
that that’s happening. So what we’re needing,
or what some people are calling for, is having this data
at a state and a sort of national level. And this ratio that I’m putting here,
referring to policing, is looking at the rate at which people are stopped
over the census figure of the demographic share of the population.
And you really need both; the first being on the police side and
the second being on the census. So that, you know, if you only have one,
if you only have the rate at which police were stopping people then you actually
can’t see if this is discriminatory or not. And if you only have the census
then you can’t see that, either. So you really need both.
The European Commission, the International Labour Organisation and academics are all
calling for these… the creation of standardized and comparable data sets.
And I’m not gonna read these out, but I can go back to them later
if you’re interested. But what I’m gonna talk about is comparing the UK
to that of Germany. So in Germany,
in 1983 there was a census; or there was an attempt to making a census.
But due to wide-spread resentment and disenfranchisement,
fears of surveillance and lack of trust in state data collection
there was a big boycott. Or people deliberately filled in forms wrong.
In some cases there were even bombings of statistical offices.
Or people spilled coffee over census forms to try to deliberately ruin them.
As a couple of other presentations at the conference have already said
this was found to be an unconstitutional census.
Because of the way that they were framing it.
Comparing the census to household registrations.
And so the census was delayed until 1987,
which was the most recent census until the most recent European one in 2011.
This Supreme Court decision was really important
because it established this right for informational self-determination.
Very important for privacy in terms of Germany.
You know, until today. So what kinds of information is being collected?
In Germany we have pretty standard kind of demographic information things
like gender, age, income, religion. But what I want to talk about in particular
is country origin and country citizenship.
Which are used to determine a person of migration background. And
this term ‘person of migration background’ generally refers to whether you,
your parents or your grandparents – the first, second or third generation –
come from a migrant background. Right, and
this term is used oftentimes as a proxy for ethnic or for racial diversity in Germany.
And this is problematic because you’re using citizenship as a proxy
for looking at racial and ethnic identity. And it also ignores the experiences
and identities, the self identities of people who don’t fall into
this ‘first, second or third generation’, right? People who may identify
as Black German, let’s say. But of fourth, fifth or sixth generation.
They’re just ignored in this data set. So they fall out.
Also, it’s difficult to measure these at a national level because each state
has different definitions of what constitutes a migrant background.
So we don’t have this at a national level but also within states there’s no way
to compare them. Of course, not having that data doesn’t mean
that there’s no racism, right? And so in 2005 e.g. we see
that neo-Nazi incidents have increased 25%
– the NSU case coming out but still going on in court proceedings.
The xenophobic attacks but also the way in which these crimes were investigated
– at a state and at a federal level – and the way that it was botched,
in addition to showing that racism now in general
is at a higher rate than it has been for the last 30 years. And much more recently
seeing the rise in arson attacks on refugee centers. There’s been
over 200 attacks this year so far. You know, all of these showed
that not collecting this data doesn’t mean that we don’t have a problem.
So, the UK by comparison: In 1981, there was the Brixton riots,
in an area of London. And these arose largely
because of resentment towards the way that police were
carrying out what they called ‘Sus Laws’. Or people being able to be stopped
on suspicion of committing a crime, carrying drugs,
having a weapon etc. and so forth. And so in the aftermath of the riot
they came up with this report called the ‘Scarman report’. And this found
that there is much disproportionality in the way that Police were carrying out
their stop-and-search procedures. So for the first time this required…
or one of the reforms that was instituted was that UK Police started
to have to collect data on race or ethnicity during the stops.
When they stop a person they have to start collecting this data. And then you have
a baseline that’s being established. Around the same time in the UK
we have the 1981 census.
And in society they were having a lot of debates around
whether or not they wanted to have this…
collecting this baseline national level (?) figure, because we need these 2 things
for this ratio in order to monitor and evaluate levels of discrimination.
But, you know, there was a lot of opposition to this.
And many found it to be (quote) “morally and politically objectionable”.
But not for the reason you’d think. People found objections to it
not because of asking these question, but because of the way that the question
was phrased, with the categories that were being used. And they did surveys
between ’75 and about ’95, and found that
among marginalized communities and in minority ethnicity groups
there was actually a lot of support for collecting this kind of data.
They just wanted to have it phrased to be different. And so ’91 they started
to collect the data. They put this ‘race question’ in. And here I have,
in 2011 – the most recent census – some of the kinds of categories
that they wanted to also include. And they’ve changed over time.
So e.g. like ‘White Irish people’ felt that they also were discriminated against.
And they experienced things differently than white British people, e.g.
So having things broken down further would be helpful for them
in terms of highlighting discrimination that each specific demographic faces.
So around that time ’91, ’93 we have the murder of Stephen Lawrence
in an unprovoked racist attack. Nobody was ever convicted of that. But
what’s important is that we have this ‘Macpherson report’ that came out.
And it developed a lot of recommendations, 70, and most of them were adopted.
One: to be collecting this at a national level, and to be comparing these.
In 2011 they stopped mandating that you had to collect this data,
at a national level. So none of the data from then going forward
can actually be trusted. Some forces continued to do it,
but not all of them. So you can’t actually compare them between forces.
In the same year we have these London riots. The Guardian and LSE put out
a report called “Reading the Riots”. Where they did a lot of interviews with people
who participated. And they found that most of the people who participated
had feelings of… that they were mistreated by Police.
Or that there is racial discrimination in terms of the policing practices.
That they weren’t being treated with respect.
So to put some data to that: Before this was removed
there… it was 2 different types of stops in the UK. Those PACE stops,
where you stops with reasonable suspicion.
And among that you have e.g. black people stopped at 7 times the rate of white people.
Asian people – Asian referring to (?)(?)(?)(?) Southeast Asian in the UK –
at twice the rate. And ‘Section 60 stops’: where you don’t have to actually have
reasonable suspicion. And when you don’t need to have that you have much, much
higher rates. 26.6 times the rate of white people black people are being stopped at.
But the State Department even coming out and they’re saying: “There’s
no relationship between criminality and race… criminality and ethnicity”.
In fact it’s like: If people are being stopped at these rates it’s…
it’s in the wrong direction. You have white males in particular who are
fending at higher rates. Who are using drugs at a higher rate. Who are
possessing weapons at a higher rate. But that’s not who’s being stopped.
There is a connection though between race and ethnicity and poverty.
So you can see here, they call it like BAME groups, or ‘Black, Asian and
Minority Ethnicity’. And you can see that among like wealth and assets:
it’s much, much lower for non-white households. Unemployment rates
are much higher as well. Income is much lower.
So I like making maps. And I think maps are really cool. ’Cause you can
tell stories when you overlay a lot of data with it. So on the left
I put by different borough in London where people are actually being stopped.
Per 1,000 people in 2012. And on the right I put
where the crime is actually occurring. And this is coming from UK Police.
And so you can see that where people are being stopped isn’t exactly
where the crime is actually happening. And if you’re seeing this stop-and-search
as a crime preventing tactic then we have to question why this isn’t lining up.
Going back to this ratio:
earlier I mentioned like – having the rate at which one group is being stopped
over that share of the total population.
And we can take it a step further and we can compare that to…
between different demographic groups.
And when using census figures combined with police figures,
we can do things like looking on the left. I mean this disproportionality ratio,
so the rate at which black groups as a share are stopped
versus the total population, compared to white groups are stopped.
And you can see the darker areas is where you have a higher rate.
So when we’re talking about those ‘7 times, or 26 times more likely’
these are those areas that we’re talking about. And so the darker areas:
you can see that when compared to poverty,
people are stopped… there’s greater disproportionality ratios
in wealthier areas than there are in poorer areas. And this is kind of
a way, you could say, almost of perceiving people of colour
as others who shouldn’t belong in these areas. It’s also… you can…
when combined with other census information you can see that you have
more discrimination, you have more disparities in areas that are more white
and also less racially diverse.
So this is kind of all on the same kind of a message.
But if it works fine? – It doesn’t. UK Police is saying that
at most they have a 6% arrest rate of all stops.
And arrests are not conviction rates.
Looking for weapons we have like less than 1% of a positive search rate.
And the European Human Rights Commission e.g. has called for reform
of these practices. The UN has called for reform of these practices.
And they instituted like a reform that called for
having a 20% arrest quota. And so that could either go positively or negatively.
Making a higher quota means that you could be just arresting more people
that you’re stopping. More likely, or hopefully it means that you have
a higher justification or grounds for stopping a person.
So these are the kinds of things you can do in the UK, with these kinds of data.
In Germany, you can’t. But I wanna highlight there’s this one case
in Koblenz in 2010. There was a student of…
unnamed, black student who is stopped travelling on train,
and who was asked to show his ID. And he refused. And he said: “No,
I’m not gonna do that. This is reminiscent of Nazi era tactics”.
And so he was charged with slander. And he was brought into court.
And the police officer, when it was in court, said, (quote):
“I approach people that look like foreigners, this is based on skin colour.”
And so this is for the first time the police have admitted that
their grounds for doing immigration related stops are based on
perceived race or ethnicity. The judge sided with the police.
That this was good justification, like it was good grounds.
But a higher court ruled that that wasn’t the case.
They said: “Yeah, this is unconstitutional,
you can’t actually do it, it violates the constitution.”
No person shall be favoured or disfavoured because of sex, parentage, race,
language, homeland, origin, faith, religious… etc.
Just as a side note there’s been a large movement to remove this term ‘race’
from that part of the constitution since it’s been put in.
And also the court dismissed the slander charge. They said: “No, this student…”
like he’s actually able to critique the police, you know, in this way.
But after we have the response by the police union,
the head of the police union at the time, who said (quote):
“The courts deal with the law in an aesthetical pleasing way, but
they don’t make sure their judgments match practical requirements”.
And so what this means is: we see that according to the police union
– this isn’t official response, but this is from the Police Union itself –
they say that we need to profile. We need to do this.
Or else we aren’t able to do immigration related stops.
That’s crazy. They also… I mean, at the same time
when they were doing these parliamentary hearings they institute these mandatory
inter cultural trainings for police officers. And these are kind of
like a one-day training where you go and learn all about
how to deal with people from different cultures. But in some of the interviews
that I was doing they said: “Okay, well, this isn’t an inter cultural issue.
This is a racism issue”.
People aren’t just coming from other places. These are Germans,
these are people who grew up here. These are people who live here. Who know
how to speak the language. Who were born and raised…
And we need to be dealing with this in a different way.
However, in this time, we see that racial profiling has become part of
the national conversation. And so this is the sticker that somebody put up
in Berlin, in a U-Bahn. It says: “Attention…,
we practice RACIAL PROFILING while checking the validity of your ticket”.
It’s not real, but it looks… I think it’s kind of cool.
When they were doing this in these Bundestag hearings…
they released data for Federal Police for 2013. This is the first time
that we have any data that’s released. No data has ever been released
based on State Police stops. They say that they’re not actually
collecting the information, so they don’t have anything to show. Of course
the figures that are released from the Federal Police are not disaggregated
by race and ethnicity. But what does this actually show?
So, most of the stops, over 85% are border stops.
Border being within ca. 30 km of the German border.
So this is actually taking into account most of the German population.
But if we’re doing these immigration related stops then… if we break it down
by offense – in the last two, these are the immigration related offenses
that people are committing – and we have less than, at most,
maybe 1% of people who are found to be a positive,
meaning that they’re found to be violating some kind of offense. It’s – again,
it’s not a conviction, right? And people can challenge this.
E.g. like you don’t have to have your ID on you in all times. You can
present it later, and the charge can go away.
But if we have such low rates of positive searches
then like why is this happening? Why do we feel that with such good data,
and knowing, as good researchers, why are we continuing this as a practice?
On one of the other interviews that I was doing they found that okay well:
You know, we know this is ineffective. But this has the effect of criminalizing
our communities. And whether or not this is true
is an argument for why we should maybe have this kind of data to show that
this is or is not actually occurring. Of course, European Commission
against racism and intolerance and the UN have said: “Well, even among this at most
1% positive rates these are not being distributed evenly, and
you have people of certain groups that are being stopped at rates higher than others,
particularly black and other minority ethnicity groups.”
Okay, so, going back, why… into the initial question…
If we have both freedom from discrimination and the right to privacy
as these human rights how do we address this tension?
And how do we make sure that we’re making the right decision in terms of
which takes precedence? And so I came… or I’ve thought of 3 different reasons
why this isn’t happening. The first being a series of legal challenges.
Things that are preventing us from implementing this
from a legal basis. And the first… you know there’s 3 exceptions
that would allow for this data to be collected.
(1) The first being if there’s a provision in EU directive that calls for collecting
this kind of a data. And within that (2) if you have the consent of the person
the data is subject, let’s say. Consent is kind of a difficult thing
and we could have a whole conversation just about that on its own.
If you’re being stopped by police officer to what extent can you actually consent
to the data that’s being collected? But this is put in place
as one of the mandatory legal requirements.
Or (3) if there’s an exception in the hopefully soon to be finalized
EU Data Protection law that allows for collecting data
if it’s in the public interest. So you could argue that we need to be collecting
this data because monitoring and evaluating discrimination
is a problem that we need to solve as a society, right?
Two: As a lot of people here at the conference are talking about:
there’s a lot of distrust in terms of collecting data by the state.
Particularly sensitive data. But I mean as many of us are already aware
this data is already being collected. And this doesn’t mean that we should maybe
collect more just for the sake of collecting data.
But in terms of sensitive data –
we’re collecting things also like medical data. And medical data sometimes
is interesting for looking at trends in terms of the illnesses,
and where illnesses spread. And you can look at this as also possibly a way of
using sensitive data for highlighting and monitoring public problems.
And, (3), we have these challenges in determining
which kind of categories we should put in place.
But, like the UK, if something were implemented in Germany
I feel as though this would change over time as other groups also want their data
to be collected… or not!
So that’s kind of where I’m at. I think that
there are no easy answers in terms of whether we should or should not do this.
But I think that at the very least we should be starting to have
these conversations. And I think that it’s important to start having these
conversations with communities themselves who are being targeted,
or feel they’re being profiled. So, thank you!
*applause*
Herald: It was an awesome talk. I think there might be 5 minutes for questions.
There are mics over there and over there. And whoever has a question,
like in the front rows, I can come walk to you.
Question: Thank you very much. I’m just wondering in terms of…
are you sort of creating this…
Jeff: I’m sorry, I can’t hear you…
Question: Sorry, of course… I’m sort of curious in terms of how you’re
creating the disproportionate demographics where there will be birth, including
other kinds of information, such as sex, age, time of day they’re stopped.
Because there’s possibly unemployment bias as well…
Jeff: I’m sorry, I still can’t actually hear you.
Question: Sorry… whether it’d be worth including, say, other details
about people, such as their sex, their age, maybe the time of day that
these stops are happening. As there may be a bias towards the unemployed.
If that’s possible, do you think, with the UK census data?
Jeff: So you’re asking: Do I feel as though we should also be including
other kinds of demographic data? Yeah. I mean I do, but I think that
I shouldn’t be the one who’s deciding how to implement these programs. And I think
that we should be speaking with the communities themselves
and having them give their opinion. So if this is something that those communities
who feel that they’re being targeted or being discriminated against
want to include then I think that they should be taken into account. But
I don’t know that I should be the one who’s deciding that.
Herald: Okay, next question over there, please.
Question: To this ratio you’ve been talking about: So you compare
census data to – as you said in the definition
in the first slide – perceived ethnicity or race.
So it is an attribution of the persons themselves in a census
compared to attribution per police officers. And those
won’t necessarily match, I’m not sure. So I was just wondering
whether you could comment on that a bit. And this is related
to the second question when it comes about: We don’t get this data
maybe from the police, because it’s difficult for the state to collect it.
But maybe we could get the data from those which suffer from discrimination
in the first place. So do you see any possibility for public platforms…
So I was reminded of this idea from Egypt, HarassMap (?)
which is about sexual harassment of women. That just made visible,
with maps, similar to what you do, actually where this happened,
when this happened, and how this happened. But it’s been the people themselves
speaking out and making this heard. And I was wondering
whether that may be another source of the data you would be needing for your work.
Jeff: So the first question was talking about whether we should be using
‘self-identified’ vs. ‘perceived’, right?
Yeah, I mean they may not line up, right?
People can be perceived in a way different than they identify.
Some groups in Germany are calling for both.
They’re calling for kind of like a two-ticket mechanism
where you have people who put how they self-identify
and also how the Police are identifying them. If we’re looking for patterns
of discrimination then it may actually be more interesting if we’re looking at
how people are perceived. Then, how people self-identify.
But I think it’s important to take both into account. And for the second question,
I’m sorry, I kind of forgot what that was.
Question: Like asking the people themselves for data
when they suffer from discrimination or [are] being stopped more.
Jeff: Yeah, no, I mean I think that’s a great idea. And there was a survey
that was actually just done, that was doing just that!
The findings haven’t been released, but it just finishes up. And it’s looking
at different types of experiences of discrimination that people are having.
There’s also organisations like social worker organisations
that have been collecting this data for a long time.
Having hundreds and hundreds of cases. Yeah, thanks!
*postroll music*
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