German Police Force: Risk of Discrimination based on Origin

Study shows higher recruitment hurdles for ethnic minority applicants

The police force considers diversity an important aspect when recruiting new talent and—in principle—welcomes applications from ethnic minority applicants. Nevertheless, these applicants do risk discrimination. These and further findings by sociologist Sabrina Ellebrecht, established as part of the research project “ZuRecht—Die Polizei in der offenen Gesellschaft” (The Police in an Open Society), have now been published in an anthology.

Police recruitment efforts in Germany do take diversity into account. In general, the police force welcomes applications from ethnic minority applicants. But do these applications stand the same chances?

Sabrina Ellebrecht, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, has compared the success rates and test results of ethnic minority applicants and and those from a German background. Her research, first taken up while working for the University of Freiburg’s Centre for Security and Society (CSS), analyzed HR assessment processes and identified steps and assessment elements that act as “filters” and have the potential to exclude certain applicants.

The result: Applicants to the German police force do risk discrimination. “Interestingly, these risks can already be witnessed in pre-selection steps and cognitive ability tests in which applicants are still anonymous—so tasks specifically designed to avoid discrimination,” Ellebrecht reports.

Risk of discrimination due to cultural load

And what are these risks? First of all, they are not down to applicants being less educated or qualified. That said, even ethnic minority applicants with the highest German school leaving qualification failed more often during the selection process due to language-focused assessment tasks. Another main element that saw these applicants fail were questions that prompted them to describe how they would act as a police officer in typical or critical everyday police work situations, for example when notifying someone of a death. Ellebrecht’s research comes to the conclusion that the cultural load associated with a question like this can risk discrimination given that applicants have been socialized differently.

“There are many steps in the application process where unequal treatment is a risk and contradictions in connection with diversity and a plural society become apparent”, she sums up. In Ellebrecht’s opinion, the police force has a duty to look into whether unintentional distortion in tests might disadvantage some groups of applicants. She sees it as important to become aware of this discrimination risk to be able to actively account for it.

The researcher criticizes that while the police has been promoting diversity, few changes have followed, whether it be “regarding recruitment selection criteria or training contents”. Yet a diverse police force is of great importance. “Diversity is not just about social skills; it is also an issue of domestic security. This is particularly apparent when it comes to, for example, hate crime or racially motivated crime.”

This investigation forms part of the interdisciplinary “ZuRecht – Die Polizei in der offenen Gesellschaft” project (2019–2024). Consisting of seven sub-projects, the project was led by Sabrina Ellebrecht and Stefan Kaufmann (at the time Centre for Security and Society at the University Freiburg), Stefan Jarolimek of the German Police University in Münster, and Ralf Poscher of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. It was funded by Stiftung Mercator.

The recently published anthology (in German) covers all sub-projects: