Summaries

An Editorial Comment
by Otto Diederichs
Now that the CILIP editorial staff has dealt in detail with specific aspects of domestic security in the Federal Republic of Germany over the past three years, the general question of ‚domestic security‘ policies once again comes under review – last but not least in as much as this is an important national election year and ‚domestic security‘ has or will play an important role in the elections to the European parliament and local and state elections throughout the country. Due to the fact that the performance records of each of the parties contending for election is to come under scrutiny, CILIP has made a conscious effort to engage the services of authors as distant as possible from party affiliations.

The ‚Domestic Security System‘
by Wolf-Dieter Narr
Since the initial differentiation between the state institutions of the police and the military in the course of the creation of the state monopoly on violence in the nineteenth century the police as an institution have been continuously developed. Despite numerous organizational changes and changing patterns of legitimation there is an amazing degree of continuity and linearity in the development of the police – particularly in the concomitant legislation. The author, a professor of political science at the Free University of Berlin, provides a critical review of the ‚domestic security system‘ as it was initially named by the federal conference of Germany’s Secretaries of the Interior in 1972.

Fighting Crime in a State Governed by Law
by Eggert Schwan
Police responsibilities in resolving crimes and protecting against dangers to public law and order are the task of the state’s attorneys offices and the po-lice forces in accordance with currently existing laws. These activities are (still) subject to strict legal control mechanisms. On the other hand the increasing willingness of Germany’s domestic security policy-makers to grant secret police and intelligence powers and authority to the police or to even integrate the intelligence services into such crime-fighting activities threaten to increasingly undermine these barriers.  The author, a professor of law at Ber-lin’s College of Public Administration and Law Enforcement, traces the history of police law enforcement development in Prussia from its inception to the present (albeit interrupted by National Socialism). At the same time he points to the dangers to the state governed by law through deviation from this path.

The Electoral Parties on ‚Domestic Security‘
by Norbert Pütter
„Security instead of fear“ was the promise made by one of the major popular parties during the EU election campaign. One of the other major parties prai-sed itself as the guarantor against violence and terror. Domestic security has become an exceedingly popular issue in this year of multiple elections. While the election posters reflect the slogans chosen by the election psychologists, the programs and platforms of the various parties tend more to reflect the in-ternal states of the respective parties themselves. The author’s critical study of their programs causes him to draw the conclusion that they are little more than a potpourri which reflect either the specific desires of the security forces or are simply tailored to meet the expectancies of their respective voting clientele.

Legislative Inflationism and Party Cartelism
by Heiner Busch
It is well known that the permanent printing of bank notes leads to the deva-luation of currencies. Similar inflationary symptoms are caused by a machinery that for more than 20 years has constantly produced new security bills and laws providing police and secret services with far-reaching rights and competences. Immediately after their publication in the Federal Law Gazette new debates are raised about the usefulness and qualification of the new le-gislation just passed. In the presence of such an haphazard approach a further wave of new bills can expected for the next legislative period.

Refugee Asylum and Alien Citizens‘ Policies and their Party Political Significance in Gaining Popularity
by Britta Grell
Newroz, the Kurdish festival of the new Year which takes place in the middle of March began in the FRG in the midst of numerous state prohibition orders on public ceremonies and massive police demonstrations of state power and also involving two voluntary sacrificial self-cremations, hundreds of injured demonstrators and more than 500 arrests. Immediately after Newroz a new campaign swept through the political parties and the    newsprint media. Kur-dish protests were branded as a „new dimension of terror“ and immediately incorporated into on-going election campaign strategies. Principles once arri-ved at on a consensus basis by the leading parties such as not to extradite refugees not having been granted recognition station into the persecuting countries were sacrificed in the struggle for the popular vote currently being waged by the CDU/CSU and the SPD.

Final Risk Reserve Elements in Germany’s Security System
by Jürgen Gottschlich
One of the dubious services performed by Germany’s CDU whip, Wolfgang Schäuble, in the Bundestag was his causing numerous concerned citizens to consult Germany’s Basic Law, particularly the Emergency Acts passed during the 60’s. Out of an ostensibly blue sky, he ferreted deep into the basement chests of the old German authoritarian state and presented proposals for using the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) in times of domestic emergency – as a sort of police reserve force. The ensuing debate could ultimately result in the further expansion of the police and the Federal Border Guard. Possibly, this was what Schäuble intended from the very beginning.

On the Political Treatment of the Right-Wing
by Eberhard Seidel-Pielen
It took an exceedingly long time until initial serious measures were underta-ken to deal with the increasing escalation of right-wing violence concomitant with the unification of the country in the past five years. This lack of decisiveness is not in small part due to the current topical discussion in the media as to the causes of this phenomenon. Even to this date this discussion assumes the appearance of a desperate attempt to describe right-wing radicalism as a phenomenon which suddenly swooped down over the FRG from outside. The author proves conclusively that the reverse is true.

The Security Debate in the Context of the GDR Experience
by Volkmar Schöneburg
The key topic currently being discussed in the national debate on domestic security is the promise that by stiffening police activities, using intelligence services in the war on crime, passing tougher laws and placing restrictions on civil liberties in favor of enhancing state powers the supposed loss of security can be regained. Our author, a criminologist with ‚GDR experience‘ analyzes the national debate on domestic security and the implicit concept of the state and law through the eyes of a former citizen of the GDR and in doing so suddenly discovers a number of similarities to the former other German state.

Political Instrumentalization of Security Statistics
by Werner Lehne
Police Crime Statistics (PCS) annually published by the state crime bureaus of the individual German states as local state statistics and by the federal crime bureau as national statistics are Germany’s sole source of on-going and continuous information on the current state and development of crime in the country. PCS figures and trends thus form the basis for all political discus-sion of crime and domestic security in general. And it is here that the PCS become instrumentalized, over-interpreted and misinterpreted. The difficulties involved in arriving at interpretable figures and other sources of error, well-known to the police and in many cases explicitly mentioned in the statics provided are simply ignored in the political debate.

The New Vigilantes
by Ronald Hitzler
Wherever the protection of life and property or even merely a feeling of se-curity appears to or actually is (no longer) be guaranteed by those responsible for the maintenance of public safety, new coalitions and associations attempting to fill this gap arise. Yet such determination of ordinary citizens to take the law into one’s own hands beneath the threshold or adjacent to – or even under questionable circumstances in competition to – the promise of official public safety, comes into conflict with the concept of the state monopoly of violence in principle. Attempts to integrate the activities of such groups into policing concepts must be viewed as an attempt to discipline the phenomenon into a sort of „common effort“ in the interest of the community.

A Century of Switzerland as a Security Haven
by Catherine Weber
In June of 1889 Switzerland gave in to the German Imperial chancellor’s calls and established a standing state’s attorneys bureau, thus creating a political police force. The executive, the Federal Council, took immediate advantage of the situation and used it to conduct surveillance on its own citizens. Today, a century later it is once again to a high degree external pressures which are being brought to bear on and appear to be welcomed by the Swiss government to expand and strengthen their surveillance structures: In a Europe comprised of signatories to the Schengen Accords, nobody wants Switzerland to become a ’security haven‘.