 Welcome Jeff with the warm applause on stage. He works for tactic attack We'll talk about bias and data and ratio profiling in Germany compared with the UK. It's your stage. All right. Thank you Yeah, okay, so my presentation it's called profiling injustice Disaggregating data by race and ethnicity to monitor and evaluate discriminatory policing In terms of my backgrounds, 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 with tactical tech Looking at issues of data politics and privacy. So this is kind of like a merger of these two areas In terms of what this presentation is going to be about. There's going to be three takeaways first that We're dealing with the issues of privacy and also discrimination and both are fundamental human rights but there's tension between the two and and Important questions to think about are when does privacy? Concerns exceed or take precedence over those of discrimination or vice versa to that data is political Both in the collection and aggregation of data But also in terms of how the categories are being created and then three that data ethics are Complex thing that things aren't so black and white all of the time So what is racial profiling the term originally it's from the US? and refers to when a police officer suspects stops questions arrests or You know or other stages of the criminal 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 going to talk about Is that because of the lack of data in Germany? There's no empirical evidence to monitor and evaluate trends and 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 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 need or what some people are calling for is having this data at a state and also at a national level And this ratio that I'm putting here Referring to policing is looking at the rate at which people are stopped over this 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 are stopping people then you actually can't see if it's discriminatory or not And if you only have the census and you can't see that either so you really need both The European Commission international label organization and academics are all calling for these The creation of standardized and comparable data sets, and I'm not going to read these out But I can go back to them later if you're interested But what I'm going to talk about is comparing the UK to that of Germany So in Germany in 1983 there is a census or there was an attempt to make it a census But due to widespread resentment and disenfranchisement fears of surveillance and lack of trust in state data collection There was a big boycott, right or people deliberately filled in forms wrong In some cases there's even bombings of statistical offices or people spilled coffee over Census forms to try to deliberately ruin them Right 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 these the census to household registrations and so and you know the census was delayed until 1970 or 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 of origin and country of citizenship Which are used to determine a person of a migration background and This term person of migration background generally refers to whether you your parents or your grandparents So first second or third generation come from a migrant background right and This 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 as a proxy For looking at racial and ethnic identity and it also ignores the experiences and identities as 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 our 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 these 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 for instance, we see that neo-nazi incidents have increased 25 percent the NSU case Coming out but still going on in in court proceedings You know the xenophobic attacks but also the way in which these crowns were investigated at a state and at a federal level And the way that it was botched in addition to showing, you know that You know 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 show that not collecting this data Doesn't mean that we don't have a problem Right to 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 or so on 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 was 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 right during during when they stop a person have to start collecting this data And then you have a baseline that's being established Around the same time in the UK, right we have the 1981 census and in society they were having a lot of debates around whether or not they wanted to have this this Collecting this baseline national level figure right because we need these two 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 to think right people found objections to it not because of asking this question but because of the way that the question was phrased or 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 in 91 they started to collect the data They put this this raised 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 for instance like white Irish people felt that they also were discriminated against and they experienced things differently than White British people for instance. 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 right 93 we have the murder of Stephen Lawrence In unprovoked racist attack. Nobody has ever convicted of that But what's important is that we have this McPherson report that came out and it developed a lot of recommendations 17 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 continue to do it, but not all of them. So you can't actually compare them between forces The same year we have these London riots The Guardian the 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 participated had feelings of That they were mistreated by police or that or that there was Racial discrimination in terms of the policing practices that they weren't being treated with respect Right. So to put some data to that Before this was removed They there's two different types of stops in the UK rate. There's pace stops Where your stops with reasonable suspicion and Among that you have for instance black people stopped at seven times a rate of white people Asian people Asian referring to Romney Southeast Asia in the UK at twice the rate and Section 60 stops where you don't have to actually have reasonable suspicion, right? And when you don't need to have that you have much much higher rates, right? 26.6 times the rate of white people black people are being stopped at Right, but the State Department even coming out and they're saying well, there's no relationship between Criminality and race or criminality and ethnicity, right? In fact, 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 offending at higher rates We're 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 Right, 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 and So I like making maps and I think maps are really cool because you can tell stories when you overlay a lot of data with it and so on the left I put By different borough in London where people are actually being stopped right per thousand people in 2012 And on the right I put where the crime is actually occurring right and this is coming from 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 prevention tactic, then we have to question why this isn't lining up Right going back to this ratio You know Earlier I mentioned like you know having having the rate at which one group is being stopped over that share of the total population But we can take it a step further and we can compare that to between different demographic groups Right and when using census figures combined with police figures, but we can do things like looking on the left I made this disproportionality ratio So the rate at which black groups as a share stopped versus the total population Compared to white groups right are stopped and you can see the darker areas, right is where you have a higher rate So so when we're talking about those those seven times or 26 times more likely Wait, these are those areas that we're talking about and so so the darker areas you can see that when compared to poverty, right People are stopped. There's greater disproportionality ratios in wealthier areas than there are in poorer areas right and this is kind of a way you could say almost of perceiving people of color as as Others who shouldn't belong in these in these areas Wait, 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, right? So this is kind of along the same same kind of a message But if it works fine It doesn't right UK police is saying that at most they have a six percent arrest rate of all stops and arrests are not conviction rates Looking for for weapons we have like, you know, less than one percent of a positive search rate and the European Human Rights Commission for instance is called for reform of these practices the UN has called for reform of these practices and I instituted Like a reform that called for having a 20 percent arrest Quota right and so that could either go positively or negatively, right? Making a higher quota means that you could be just arresting more people that you're stopping More likely or or or hopefully right? It means that you have a higher justification or grounds for for stopping a person Right. So these are the kinds of things you can do in the UK when with with these kinds of data in Germany You can't But I want to highlight. There's this one case in Koblen's in 2010 There was a student of unnamed and black student who stopped Traveling on the train and he was asked to show his ID and he refused and he said no, I'm not going to do that. This is You know reminiscent of Nazi-era tactics, right? and so he was charged with slander, right and He was brought it to court And the police officer When it was in court said quote I approach people that look like foreigners. This is based on skin color All right, 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 Right the judge side with the police that this was good justification that 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 at violation Constitution You know no person shall be favored or disfavored because of sex, parentage, race language, homeland, origin, faith, Religious and so on 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 the student like he's actually able to critique the police, you know in this way Right, but after we have the response by the police union the head of the police unit at the time Who said quote the the courts deal with the law in an aesthetically pleasing way But they don't make sure their judgments match practical requirements, right? And so what this means is we see that according to the police union, right? This isn't official response, but this is from the police union itself, right? 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 that's crazy, right? They also I mean at the same time, you know when they're doing this Parliamentary hearings They instituted these mandatory intercultural trainings for for police officers and these are kind of like a like a one-day training where you go and you Learn all about how to deal with people from different cultures, right? But in some of the interviews that I was doing they said okay, well, this isn't an intercultural issue, right? This is a racism issue, right? You know people aren't just coming from other places. These are Germans these people who grew up here These are people who live here who know how to speak the language who were born and raised You know and we need to be dealing with this in a different way However, right in in this time, right? We see that racial profiling has become part of the national conversation All right, and so this is the sticker that somebody put up In in Berlin and the on the U-Bahn as as you know attention we practice racial profiling while checking validity of your ticket It's not real, but it but it looks I think it's kind of cool Right so when they were doing this in these bundesack hearings, right? They released data for federal police for 2013 That's 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 any to show Of course the figures that are released from the federal police are not disaggregated by race or ethnicity But what is it? It's actually show. Okay, so Most of the stops right over 85% are our border stops, right? Border being within about 30 kilometers of the German border So this is actually taking into account most of the German population But if we're if we're doing these immigration related stops then if we break it down by offense Right then the last two these are the immigration related offenses that that people are committing, right? And we have less than at most maybe 1% of people who are who are found to be a positive Rain meaning that they're found to be violating some kind of offense Again, it's not a conviction rate and people can Challenge this for instance like you don't have to have your idea on you in all times you can present it later And you know the charge could go away right, but if if we have such low rates of Positive searches then like why is this happening? Why do we? Feel that with with such good data and knowing you know as good researchers You know why why are we continuing this as a practice? And one of the other interviews that I was doing they found that okay, well, you know, we know this isn't effective, right? But this has the effect of criminalizing our communities, right 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, you know European Commission Against racism and intolerance and the UN have said well, you know even even among this at most 1% positive rates These are not being distributed evenly and you have people of certain groups that are being stops at rates higher than others particularly black and other and other minority ethnicity groups Okay, so going back right why enter 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, right? And how do we ensure that we're making the right decision in terms of which takes precedence? And so I came or I've thought of three different reasons why this isn't happening The first being a series of legal challenges, right things that are preventing us from Implementing this from a legal basis And the first you know There's three exceptions that would allow for this data to be collected The first being if there's a provision in EU directive that calls for collecting this kind of a data And within that if you have the consent of the person The data subject, let's say right Consent is kind of a difficult thing and we could have a whole conversation just about that on its own You know if you're being stopped by police officer to what extent can you actually consent to the data that is being collected, right? But you know, this is is put in place as one of the mandatory legal requirements Or 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 you know, we need to be collecting this data because in monitoring and evaluating discrimination is Is a problem that we need to solve as a society, right? Right to You know 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 Right, but I mean as many of us already aware this data is already being collected, right? And this doesn't mean that we should maybe Collect more just because you know just for the sake of collecting data But in terms of sensitive data, you know We're collecting things also like medical data, right and medical data sometimes is interesting For looking at trends in terms of illnesses and where illness spreads, right? And you can look at this is also possibly, you know a way of using sensitive data for highlighting and monitoring public problems right and three We have, you know, these challenges determining which kind of categories we should put in place Right, 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 or or not and Yeah, so so so that's kind of where I'm at I think that You know, 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 that they're being profiled Yeah, so thank you It was an awesome talk. I think there might be five 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 Thank you very much. I'm just wondering in terms of how you're sort of creating this I'm sorry. Sorry. Yeah, of course I'm I'm sort of curious in terms of how you're creating the Disproportionate demographics whether it would be worth including other kinds of information such as sex age time of day They stop because there's possibly an employment bias as well Sorry, whether it 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 they may be in a bias towards the unemployed In your if that's possible you think with the UK census data when it So do so you're asking do I feel as though we should also be including other kinds of demographic data? Yeah, no, I mean I do but I think that I shouldn't be the one who's deciding how to implement these programs, right? And I think that You know, we should be speaking with 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 you know, I don't know that I should be the one who's deciding that Okay, next question over there, please 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 as necessity or race So it is an attribution of the persons themselves in the census compared to attribution per police officers and those Vote necessarily a 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 harassment, which is about a sexual harassment of women that just made visible with maps Similar to what you do actually where this happens when this happens how this happens But it's been the the people Themselves speaking out and making this making this hurt and I was wondering whether that maybe is another source of the data You would be needing for for your work So the first question was talking about whether we should be using self-identified versus perceived, right? Yeah 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 right they're calling for kind of like a two-ticket Mechanism right where you have People who put how they self-identify and also how the police are identifying them, right? If we're looking for patterns of discrimination Then then it may actually be more interesting to be looking at how people are perceived Right then 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 like asking asking the people themselves for for data When they suffer from discrimination or being stopped tomorrow? Yeah, yeah, no I mean, I think that's a great idea and and there was a survey that was actually just done that was doing just that The findings haven't been released, but it just finished up. That's looking at different types of experiences Of discrimination that people are having. There's also organizations Like social worker organizations that have been collecting this data for a long time You know having hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cases Yeah Thanks