https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13711/germany-immigrants-prisons
North Rhine-Westphalia once had 114 prison imams, but now has only 25. The drop occurred after German authorities carried out security checks on prison imams and discovered that 97 imams were Turkish civil servants whose salaries were paid for by the Turkish government. Turkey refused to allow the imams to be interviewed by German officials.
In an article entitled, “German Becomes a Foreign Language in Many Prisons,” the Berliner Morgenpost reported on the growing number of conflicts between German prison officers and foreign inmates because of communication barriers
German authorities are also reporting an increase in inmate attacks on prison staff. In North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, since 2016, the number of assaults on prison staff have more than doubled.
The proportion of foreign-born inmates in German prisons is now at a record high, according to a new survey of the justice ministries in Germany’s 16 federal states. In Berlin and Hamburg, for example, more than 50% of inmates are now from abroad, according to the report, which also revealed a spike in the number of Islamists in the German prison system.
The data, compiled by the newspaper Rheinische Post, shows that the surge of foreign-born inmates began in 2015, when Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed into Germany more than a million mostly unvetted migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
All of Germany’s federal states reported a “very strong increase” of foreign and stateless prisoners in the last three to five years, according to the paper, although a definitive nationwide total is difficult to calculate because of differences in the way federal states compile statistics.
Since 2016, for example, in the western federal states the proportion of foreign inmates increased to 61% from 55% in Hamburg; to 51% from 43% in Berlin; to 48% from 44% in Baden-Württemberg; to 41% from 35% in Bremen; to 36% from 33% in North Rhine-Westphalia; to 34% from 28% in Schleswig-Holstein; to 33% from 29% in Lower Saxony; to 30% from 26% in Rhineland-Palatinate; to 27% from 24% in Saarland. In Hesse, the proportion increased to 44.6%, up slightly from 44.1% three years ago. In Bavaria, the proportion rose to 45% from 31% since 2012.