Abstract

The purpose of the article is to discuss how ethnic minority recruitment could improve police-citizencontacts in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods in Germany. Therefore, research results concerning ethnic minority recruitment of German police forces as well as outcomes of an ethnographic study in one western German city focusing on police-juvenile relations in deprived neighborhoods are taken into account. The article details how the recruitment strategies of the German police prevent cultural diversity by targeting to the increase of police efficiency in ‘problematic’ neighborhoods using multicultural competences. In consequence, current recruitment strategies seem to result only in ethnic minority police officers that do not have these multicultural competences. The article further considers how socio-economic diversity and local experience could have a bigger positive impact on effective neighborhood policing than ethnic diversity. It concludes that these aspects should be taken into account for police recruitment and personnel strategies.