“Prejudice Crime” as a New Weapon Against Free Speech

German police officer and LGBTQ activist Diana Gläßer recently warned about “prejudice crime” on the official Instagram account of the Rhineland-Palatinate police. Because the video was published through an official police channel, it carried the weight of a formal statement by a public authority.

According to Gläßer, online hatred is intended to intimidate queer people and push them out of public life. Yet the term “prejudice crime” appeared in the statement without any clear definition, creating the impression that it refers to a specific criminal offense. No such offense exists in German law.

Even hatred itself, as an emotional state, is not a criminal category and therefore cannot be prosecuted as such. In criminal law, speech becomes punishable only when it crosses into offenses such as verbal abuse, threats, coercion, incitement of hatred or public incitement to commit crimes. Such offenses can and should be prosecuted.

Prejudice against an entire group of people may well be morally objectionable, and expressing prejudice may reflect a poor upbringing. Neither, however, is automatically a criminal act. This raises the question of what exactly “prejudice crime” is supposed to mean in the way Gläßer uses the term.

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Prejudice as Motive

While the term itself does exist, it is not a criminal offense, but rather a concept from criminology intended to describe the motives behind criminal acts. Despite debates over definitions, the concept is relatively well established.

In 2021, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) published a study, Victims of Prejudice Crime, to clarify the issue. The report defines prejudice crime as an aspect of offenses in which victims are targeted not merely as individuals, but because of their real or perceived membership in a particular social group. The decisive factor is prejudice against that group.

The Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN) addressed the issue in a 2018 study, offering a broad academic definition. The institute made clear that the term refers to crimes motivated by prejudice, not prejudice itself. According to the authors, the concept is useful in criminology, but unsuitable as a standalone criminal offense. It serves only to analyze the motives behind an existing crime.

This alone illustrates how problematic the careless use of such terminology can become when employed by police, politicians or media outlets. Misusing the term creates a misleading impression. According to the KFN, its legitimate application lies in analyzing victims, evaluating motives and determining sentencing. The danger lies in blurring the line between criminal conduct, personal beliefs and politically disfavored opinions.

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The Blurring of Hatred and Prejudice

Further definitions can also be found in sociological and criminological reference works. Lawyer Kati Lang devoted more than 500 pages to the issue in her study An Investigation of Prejudice-Motivated Crimes in Criminal Law and Their Prosecution by Police, Public Prosecutors and Courts.

Lang criticizes German authorities for insufficiently recognizing and recording prejudice-motivated crimes and for failing to take motives sufficiently into account during sentencing. Critics, however, point out that motives may influence sentencing but do not create separate criminal offenses.

Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education (BPB) frequently merges the term with the related concept of “hate crime”. The BPB also publishes statistics, reporting that police-recorded hate crime more than doubled between 2014-2015 and 2024, reaching 21,773 cases in 2024.

Such figures are repeatedly criticized because of weak definitions. Hatred is ultimately an emotion, not a criminal category. At most, these classifications can serve as criminological assessments of motive.

Sentencing, Not Speech Control

German criminal law contains relevant provisions, though only indirectly. Section 46 (2) of the Criminal Code refers to racist, xenophobic, antisemitic, gender-based or other motives evidencing contempt for humanity as factors relevant to sentencing. Such considerations may justify harsher punishment in prejudice-motivated crimes.

Yet these judgments belong to independent courts, not police authorities. Investigators do not possess the authority to determine whether political opinions or attitudes are criminal in themselves.

The constitutional boundary is set by Article 5 of Germany’s Basic Law, which protects freedom of expression, including polemical, offensive and reputation-damaging opinions. Germany’s Constitutional Court has repeatedly emphasized this principle.

In cases involving speech offenses, courts must balance freedom of expression against personal rights and reputation. Furthermore, the German Constitutional Court has ruled that criticism of public authorities lies at the core of free speech protections.

A Constitutional Standard

For this reason, critics argue that the term “prejudice crime” is acceptable only when used strictly as a supplementary category linked to conduct that is already criminal. Problems arise when police or politicians merge the concept rhetorically with ideas such as “hatred”, “radicalization” or “wrong attitudes”.

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At that point, the focus risks shifting away from concrete criminal acts toward moral judgments about opinions themselves. Especially online, this could create a chilling effect, leaving citizens uncertain whether sharp criticism or mockery might already qualify as “prejudice” that the police may swoop upon.

The constitutional standard must therefore remain clear: the state may criticize prejudice, study it sociologically or criminologically and consider it as a motive in real criminal cases. But there can be no punishment for mere beliefs. Criminal liability must rest on unlawful acts, not opinions. Anyone who blurs this distinction ultimately weakens the very freedom they claim to protect: the freedom of open, even confrontational, public debate.

Viewing Officer Gläßer’s video through this lens leaves the uneasy impression that its true aim is to criminalize socially and politically undesirable attitudes and uncomfortable opinions. Yet such views are protected under Germany’s Basic Law and are explicitly not covered by the criminological concept of prejudice crime.

The video also raises the suspicion that authorities are openly tolerating a situation in which an LGBTQ activist serving as a police officer reinterprets dissenting opinions as a form of criminal behavior labeled “prejudice”.