Linke on public safety

The Left wants to strictly limit the police's tasks to averting danger and prosecuting crime, and it rejects equipping them with more technology and video surveillance. Wearing face coverings at protests and spontaneous assemblies should no longer be criminal offenses.

The Left wants less power for the police. The police should only prevent danger and pursue crimes. The Left is against cameras in public squares and against Tasers. Covering your face at a protest should no longer be a crime.

According to the program, tougher police laws have expanded the Hamburg police's powers at the expense of fundamental rights. It rejects the use of Tasers, body cameras and drones as well as the expansion of camera surveillance, including the AI-based behavior analysis at Hansaplatz. The police are to be democratized. The party regards the way police handle demonstrations as repressive and wants to secure participants' rights. Police should scale back their presence when escorting soccer fans.

The Left wants to abolish the Verfassungsschutz (domestic intelligence agency) and replace it with an academic institute researching democracy and group-focused hostility. It argues that the agency does not take the threat from the right seriously.

The Verfassungsschutz is a domestic intelligence agency. The Left wants to abolish it. A research institute should take its place. It should study democracy and hatred against groups of people. The Left says the agency does too little against the far right.

The program accuses the agency of putting the protection of its sources above everything else and points to its role in the NSU case (a neo-Nazi terror group). The party wants to uncover entanglements of security agencies. It continues to call for a parliamentary inquiry into the NSU's murder of Süleyman Taşköprü. Victims of right-wing violence should receive a secure right of residence.

In crime policy, the Left relies on social policy, prevention and reintegration and rejects tougher penalties. Rehabilitation should be at the center of the prison system, and prisoners' rights should be upheld.

The Left does not want tougher sentences. It wants to prevent crime through good social policy. Prisoners should be prepared for life after prison. They should get help with housing and work. Their rights should also apply in prison.

In the party's view, crime has to be seen in its social context, which is why it wants to address social, economic and educational disadvantage. The program describes Hamburg's prisons as mere custody, lacking preparation for release and support afterward. It criticizes above all the psychological and psychiatric care and the lack of social assistance. The judiciary is to be democratized and the separation of powers consistently enforced.

The Left wants to restrict police data collection to the bare minimum. Security agencies would be barred from using biometric facial recognition, behavior-pattern analysis, and predictive software based on mass data.

The police should collect less data. They should not be allowed to recognize faces by computer. They should not use programs that predict crimes. People whose data is stored should get more rights.

The platform rejects police databases that target particular groups, citing a file on "left-wing violence" as an example. Predictive policing, meaning forecasting software based on large data sets, is not to be used. People whose data is stored should be notified and be able to demand deletion. The state data protection commissioner is to be given a stronger position.

The Left wants to set up an independent police complaints office with its own investigative powers and strengthen parliamentary oversight. It rejects new police powers and wants to end the use of paid informants (V-Leute) by the domestic intelligence service.

The Left wants an independent office for complaints about the police. This office should be able to investigate on its own. The police should not get new powers. The intelligence service should stop using informants. Informants are insiders who spy on a group.

New police equipment and legal powers are to be evaluated independently and transparently for their usefulness. Racial profiling, meaning checks based on appearance or origin, is to end. Homeless people should no longer be driven away, especially around the central station; the Left wants to abolish the alcohol and weapons ban zones there. For soccer fans, the platform calls for a pilot project on legal pyrotechnics and rejects the police file on "violent sports offenders." Fire services and disaster response are to be better equipped.

The Left wants to step up prevention of Islamism, especially in schools and other educational institutions and in affected neighborhoods. In addition, bans on associations and their activities are to be examined.

The Left wants to do more against Islamism. Schools and youth centers should get money and support for this. Affected neighborhoods should get more information. The city should also check whether to ban certain groups.

Educational institutions are to receive funded teaching modules on religiously motivated Islamism across the board. Islamist content on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram is to be countered. More awareness work is planned in districts and communities where groups such as the Furkan community are active.

The Left wants to stop prosecuting minor offenses such as fare evasion or dumpster diving and to abolish jail time in place of unpaid fines (Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe). In the platform's view, such acts are often committed out of poverty, which should not be punished further. Cannabis would be fully legalized.

Riding without a ticket should no longer be a crime. The same goes for small thefts and dumpster diving. Dumpster diving means taking food from store trash bins. People who cannot pay a fine should not go to jail. Cannabis should be fully legal.

The Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe is the jail term served by someone who does not pay a fine. It would be replaced by more programs to avoid detention, supplemented by outreach social work. The platform justifies decriminalization by saying these acts mostly stem from poverty rather than criminal intent. Hamburg is also to push for a public prosecutor's office that is not subject to political instructions.