EU-MIDIS Data in Focus Report 4: Police Stops and Minorities

Key Findings

EU minorities´experiences of policing

EU-MIDIS, the first EU-wide survey to ask immigrant and ethnic minority groups about their experiences of discrimination and criminal victimisation in everyday life shows that:

• Minorities were stopped by the police more often than the majority groups living in the same neighbourhoods in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France and Hungary. This was not the case in the Slovak Republic, Bulgaria, Italy or Romania.  Some minority groups are particularly heavily policed – for example Roma respondents in Greece who were stopped by the police experienced on average nearly 6 stops in a 12 month period.
• Majority respondents tend to think that the police are respectful towards them, whereas more minority respondents indicate that the police are disrespectful. For example, in Belgium, 85% of majority population respondents considered that the police were respectful towards them during their last police stop, compared to 42% of North African respondents and 55% of Turkish respondents.
• Minority groups who perceive they were stopped by the police on the basis of their ethnic or immigrant background have a lower level of trust in the police than minorities who were stopped and considered it to be unrelated to their minority background. Every second minority victim of assault, threat or serious harassment said they did not report these incidents to the police because they were not confident the police would do anything about them.