About

Racism on Trial is a project of Justice Collective, a Berlin-based group that engages in activism, organizing, and public education towards a world without punishment, prisons, and police.

Background

We initiated the Racism on Trial campaign starting with the knowledge that while right-wing and populist narratives of so-called “migrant crime” and “rising crime” dominate, the true injustices of punishment and criminalization in Germany lie in the fact that people from racialized and migrantized groups are disproportionately policed, and therefore investigated and sanctioned for criminal offenses.

We also begin from the perspective that criminalization and punishment don‘t address underlying injustices or repair harm or create accountability. As abolitionists, we believe that we should build a world without policing, punishment, and prisons. Punitive tools create more harm, and serve to shape and reinforce societal inequities.

Courtwatching as evidence and solidarity

Activists groups (such as KOP in Berlin) have documented for decades the impacts of racial profiling on migrantized and racialized communities. KOP has also initiated and inspired courtwatching projects to document and resist systemic racism in institutions beyond the police, starting with the judiciary and expanding its analysis to the entire criminal legal system. Yet the narrative that there is no racism in Germany, and certainly no racism or bias in the courts and legal system, persists.

Through our collective courtwatching of so-called “mass offenses”, or the most commonly-charged ones in the system (including theft, riding the train without a ticket, drug offenses, migration-related offenses, fraud, and theft) we paint a detailed picture of the systemic injustices of punishment and criminalization in Germany. As detailed in our findings, we reveal a system that serves to enforce borders, criminalize poverty, and otherwise uphold current inequities.

But courtwatching is not just about gathering evidence: It is about resisting a system. By showing up in courts day-to-day together, we shift the balance in the room, stand in solidarity with criminalized people, and create our own narrative of what punishment looks like. We hope this narrative counters the mainstream one and leads to conrete changes.

Organizing together: The Racism On Trial Campaign

Courtwatching is one tool of resisting the system: we collect evidence and sharpen our analysis; build counter narratives; stand in solidarity with people who are criminalized; organize commmunities; and more. We hope that groups across the country will join in courtwatching in their local communities and organizing towards non-reformist reforms of the criminal legal system, mutual aid for those who are impacted; and more. Read more about why we courtwatch and our demands for change.

The team

The Racism on Trial archive is a project of Justice Collective, including its staff, advisory board, and activists of its courtwatching collective. (Reach out to join us!) Many, many people have put in countless hours to observe and document criminal court cases, exchange with each and build community, create resources for others looking to join this work, support people impacted by these systems, and more.

Justice Collective‘s courtwatching started as a research project in partnership with Nicole Bögelein and Dyana Rezene at the University of Cologne and funded by the BMBF. Aino Korvensyrjä observed criminal court cases with Justice Collective in the first year of this project and many case analysis featured in the archive were developed based on those efforts. We thank Aino for that work.