Overview

• North Rhine–Westphalia has implemented a directive retroactive to July 1 to record and publish all nationalities of suspects and victims in its police crime statistics.
• An internal review of 2024 cases reported 52,614 suspects with a second nationality, with roughly one in six German suspects holding an additional passport and the most common pairings including German–Turkish and German–Polish.
• The federal ministry called the approach nachvollziehbar und sinnvoll and emphasized that any change to the federal PKS needs consensus, while the BKA will still receive only one nationality per person under current rules.
• Reactions diverged as Greens, SPD, Linke and the police union warned of stigmatization and limited utility, while the Union urged nationwide adoption and some states signaled openness to debate.
• Berlin stated it will not adopt the NRW method for now, and NRW’s Herbert Reul defended the move as improving transparency and offering clues on potential flight risk, a claim opponents dispute given PKS is compiled after investigations.