Every year, when the Federal Criminal Police Office publishes the police crime statistics, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) — a party that is, in part, right-wing extremist — pays particularly close attention. They are looking for crimes committed by refugees, migrants and foreigners living in Germany.

But studies by media scholars show that 95% of the AfD's press releases focus on non-German suspects, while crimes involving German suspects are almost completely ignored.

However, the common narrative of the AfD — that non-Germans are inherently much more violent — is simply not true.

In a new research paper , Susann Prätor, a sociologist, criminologist and professor at the Lower Saxony Police Academy , has taken a very close look at crime data in Germany, together with her colleagues from the University of Zurich and the Lower Saxony Criminological Research Institute.

She looked not only at officially reported crime — that is, all offenses that appeared in police crime statistics — but also at…