To incarcerate or rehabilitate?
A controversial argument
2nd revised and extended edition
English edition
of the
2nd revised and extended German edition from 2018
Copyright © Nomen Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2019
Cover design: buxdesign, Munich
Author’s photo: © Kristine Maelicke
Printed in Germany
ISBN 978-3-939816-64-5
eISBN 978-3-939816-65-2
www.nomen-verlag.de
Preface to the international edition
Preface to the 2nd German edition
Prologue
I.Of pathways, both straight and winding
Turning Points (1)
Childhood in the transition from war to peace
Flight to the West
Alone in an alien land
My salvation
Becoming a criminal
Evil is all around us, always
Exploring the fascination of evil
Locking people up: the false solution
A story begins
We have no other choice
A perfectly normal procedure
Acquittal or conviction as a daily routine
Re-offending despite probation
The robbery
The main hearing
The spiral of escalation
A confusing lesson
Old walls, new ideas
It began with monastic detention
Poorhouse prison
Order amongst the chaos
Correctional house logic
Pummelled through the gate
From punishment to education to control
Sentence progression
From freedom to captivity
A summons to serve
The waiting game
Time to go, buddy!
The objective of imprisonment: offender rehabilitation
Human dignity and the welfare state principle
Regime principles
Admission
The first night
Initiation rites
In the admissions department
The sentence plan
Serving sentence in the regular enforcement regime
Timo in his new cell
Timo’s apprenticeship
Life without cash
The prison supermarket
Working on the inside
The “hot seat”
Top and bottom of the prison hierarchy
Adjustment and infantilization
Security and order
Punishing the family
Separation instead of sex
Timo and his social worker
Skiing on dry snow
Release and rehabilitation
The final stretch
Release ceremonies
“Au revoir”
Probation worker – or rehabilitation manager?
Timo and the employment agency
Successful reintegration needs debt regulation
Timo’s prospects
II. In search of something better than imprisonment
Turning points (2)
Kurt Eickmeier – from welfare worker to offender rehabilitation networker
Learning from and with prisoners
“Release and rehabilitation” – the empirical study
The alternative draft for the German Prison Act
Helga Einsele: a regime of positive care
The contact point for women offenders
III. Schleswig-Holstein, the model experiment
How a Minister of Justice became a reformer
The Dünkel-study
The ISS-evaluation report
Implementing innovation is a stony path
“Special occurrences”
No murderers and rapists in Schleswig!
“Kaizen” – the continuous and never-ending process of improvement
The worst-case scenario: the escape of the prisoner C. B.
Down with offender rehabilitation!
Twenty-five years later: taking stock
IV. To incarcerate or rehabilitate?
Reality and the truth are not the same
Fellow prisoners as enforcers
No prison is free of drugs
The power of subculture
Sexuality is a part of human dignity
Prison-homosexuality
Conjugal visits at three-hourly intervals
Imprisoning fine defaulters is pointless
Regime relaxations – a patchwork blanket
The revolving prison door
The effects and side-effects of imprisonment
Desistence as the benchmark for successful rehabilitation
High costs – low impact?
Probation support – underrated and undervalued
“Supervision of offenders’ conduct” – an overburdened institution
The non-statutory ex-offender services are underfunded
Neglected victims
V. Perspectives
Who actually belongs in prison?
Social therapy for all?
Misallocations burden the system
Drug addicts cannot be treated effectively in prison
A wealthy man in a sanctioning system with limited means
Probation support for all?
Optimizing custodial and community-based offender rehabilitation
The merits and pitfalls of the federalism reform
The RESI-project in Cologne
A Norwegian island
Restorative Justice – is there something better than criminal law?
My friend Max – an ex-crook surviving in retirement
And what became of Timo?
VI. Offender Rehabilitation Agenda 2025: towards evidence-based and outcome-oriented criminal justice and social policy
Action Plan
Literature
“Rights, Dignity, Safety, and Support” – these are the central themes of the 2019 Conference of the International Corrections & Prison Association in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I have taken this conference as an opportunity to present to you the English version of the 2nd German edition of the book “The Prison Dilemma – to incarcerate or rehabilitate?”.
The book offers an account of nearly sixty years of reform in the German system of custodial and non-custodial offender rehabilitation. The standard that has been achieved is widely regarded as exemplary, not only in Europe. At the same time, the system still needs further refinement for it to master the new challenges it faces, in particular those related to globalization and disruption.
The current edition has been amended with an “Offender Rehabilitation Agenda 2025” that outlines the key touchstones and cornerstones for evidence-based and outcome-oriented justice policy and social policy – not only for Germany and Europe, but for the rest of the world as well. The agenda, like this international edition, also aspires to promote and support political and societal resonance in the never-ending process of continuous improvement.
Special thanks are due to Joachim Schäfer, the chief publisher of nomen Verlag in Frankfurt am Main, and to the empathetic and highly competent translator and fellow criminologist Dr. Philip Horsfield, Greifswald.
I wish you an inspiring read that will hopefully offer some argumentative support for a rational and humane approach to criminal justice that promotes and protects “Rights, Dignity, Safety, and Support”.
Hamburg, September of 2019
Bernd Maelicke
The 1st edition of this book was published in the spring of 2015. It received an extremely pleasing media response: the reviews and write-ups recognized what makes this “reading book” so unique – it is neither a detached scientific treatise, nor a journalistic report in the classical sense. Rather, the book constitutes a personally touching and politically reasoned account by a stakeholder and contemporary witness, spanning nearly seven decades, with biographical approaches to relevant players in the different phases and occupational fields of offender rehabilitation (in Germany, the term ‘resocialization’ is used). The result is a colourful and stimulating mosaic of data, events, and personal experiences that clearly carves out the processes and structures of the “jungle of offenders’ every-day lives” and in the “confusing system of the legal and social state”, and makes them comprehensible to the reader.
Two young authors, Florian Glässing and Thomas Mahler, supported me in writing this book. Many hours and days were spent speaking into a tape recorder for them, reflecting on and presenting all exemplarily important experiences and situations that we then jointly compressed down, particularly in the Timo-story. A comprehensive visit to “Märkelheim” correctional facility and intensive conversations with prisoners and specialists from different organisations active in the field of offender rehabilitation yielded further contemporary information on the life situations of offenders and victims as well as pertinent societal conditions and frameworks.
For the author, the roughly 50 readings, presentations, and expert discussions held since 2015 at adult education centres and universities, for associations of voluntary ex-offender and victim support services, and at conferences and conventions in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland were an unexpected encore. Not only the critical analyses, but also the suggestions for desperately needed innovation received (and continue to receive) strong support at least among experts in this field.
The numerous discussions and exchanges with prisoners in correctional facilities were particularly impressive. Most of them could relate to and confirm the exemplary case study of the offender Timo and his social and legal biography, with its recurring typical and critical life situations. The same applies to the calls for fundamental improvements to the system of offender rehabilitation as a whole.
This 2nd edition updates the most important data and facts. Otherwise, there have been only a few remarkable or noteworthy analytical or progressive developments. At the same time, this is a further point of criticism on the deficiency of the action plans that parties and politicians have presented for this important social issue. In this regard, the aim of the 1st edition of this “disputative discussion” – promoting discourse, and clarifying through controversy – could be achieved only to a very limited degree.
One substantial reason for this is that at the federal level, leadership in the justice department has been (and remains) subject to constant change. The same predicament applies to the ministries of justice in the 16 federal states. Since the publication of the 1st edition in April of 2015, this change has been incessant – both in terms of personnel and party affiliations. Issues relating to criminal justice policy have lost relevance to a tremendous degree. They are not matters that ambitious politicians can embellish their careers with. Media coverage is largely critical and focusses on sensationalism and emotions. The respective working-groups within the political parties also need new qualified members to rise up the ranks.
In order to counterbalance these deficits, this 2nd edition has been supplemented with the “Offender Rehabilitation Agenda 2025: towards evidence-based and outcome-oriented criminal justice and social policy”. It contains the key cornerstones and touchstones, with the prevailing hope for political and social responses in the never-ending process of continuous improvement, towards rational justice and social policy.
“For where danger looms, salvation also grows”.
(Friedrich Hölderlin, 1803)
Hamburg, spring of 2019
Bernd Maelicke
I dedicate this 2nd edition to our four grandchildren. For Hannelore and I and our lives “over the hill”, they are an enrichment of unexpected magnitude. Their socialization in childhood and ours into retirement share many joyful commonalities.
This book is about rational and irrational approaches to crime.
The fear of becoming a victim of crime is widespread, and rightly so. The German police statistics register nearly one million victims of crime each year. This corresponds to more than one percent of the population. These people are victims of assaults, burglaries, robberies, sexual offences, murder, and manslaughter. Then there is the dark figure of crime, encompassing such criminal acts that do not come to the attention of the police, those that occur behind middle-class façades or in parallel societies, social hot spots, or migrant quarters.
Policy and politicians respond with catchphrases. Recurring examples to this end include “each victim is one victim too many”, or “lock them up and throw away the key!”. Slogans of this sort, and the people’s fear of crime to which they cater, can help win elections – one needs only to think of Roland Koch in Hesse, or Ole von Beust and Roland Schill in Hamburg.
Ever since the legislative competency for matters pertaining to the enforcement of prison sentences was transferred from the federal legislator to the legislators of the 16 individual federal states in 2006, the outcomes of federal state elections have more and more often determined whether the number of imprisoned offenders increases, whether more or fewer prisoners are transferred to less severe enforcement regimes (open regimes), or how many correctional staff and probation officers are deployed. It is in the hands of the state parliaments how many budgetary resources are allocated to the prison system or to non-custodial measures.
The experts all agree that these factors have an impact on re-offending rates among released ex-prisoners, and thus on the safety and security of the citizens as potential victims. In criminal justice policy, however, politicians’ decisions are largely motivated by political opportunity, rather than systematic quality and cost control criteria. Sustainable concepts based on scientific results from criminology and criminal justice sciences are widely lacking, as are sustainable and outcome-oriented action plans for offender rehabilitation policy at the federal state and regional levels. This has been different in Schleswig-Holstein since 1988, a subject that this book also addresses.
The term (re)socialization already illustrates that the purpose is to subsequently correct undesirable developments in offenders’ biographies. The socialization of offenders has often already taken turns during childhood and adolescence that have not allowed offending behaviour to be prevented. We are thus speaking about efforts to subsequently socialize people at more advanced ages – as youths, young adults, and adults. Negative experiences and behaviours have already manifested themselves, and a person’s social surroundings and environment has also proven to be an aggravating factor. Rehabilitation is, therefore, an extremely complex process that takes a highly individualized and different course for each offender. Many obstacles need to be overcome, many detours and deviations need to be navigated. Successful rehabilitation requires reciprocity – the offenders and the society to which they belong both have to do their part.
Having devoted more than fifty years to this issue in the voluntary, professional, scientific, and political sectors, my main realizations and central reproach are that we in Germany, despite knowing better (and that is what appals me the most), are not doing all that we can to employ the tried and tested current state of knowledge in this field to prevent crime and protect victims. Society, politics, and the media are fixated on the supposed silver bullet of locking offenders behind bars. In doing so, the fact that 96 percent of them will someday be released again (more than 40 percent after no more than one year), and that, despite all reform efforts to the contrary, re-offending rates have remained largely stable over the last 40 years, is completely overlooked. Furthermore, imprisonment generates costs that are roughly 20 times higher than, for example, the probation support mechanisms that are at our disposal, which in many cases boast significantly more favourable success rates when applied to comparable clientele.
This book is about victims and offenders. It is also about judges and prosecutors, probation workers and social workers from non-political organizations, institutional staff across all functional divisions of the prison and justice system, ministry officials, volunteers, and many others who are active in the field of offender rehabilitation.
I have experienced and witnessed all of them, was myself one of them. During my legal studies in Freiburg, I volunteered in a correctional institution. My doctoral thesis was on the topic “Release and Rehabilitation” (German: Entlassung und Resozialisierung). For four years, from 1974 to 1978, as head of the Academy for Youth Work and Social Work (German: Akademie für Jugendarbeit und Sozialarbeit) in Frankfurt am Main, I was active in the education and training of social workers. As director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Work and Social Education (German: Frankfurter Institut für Sozialarbeit und Sozialpädagogik, ISS) from 1978 to 1990, I accompanied and supported pilot schemes in the field of criminal justice policy, for instance the “contact point for women offenders” (German: Anlaufstelle für straffällig gewordene Frauen), or reform endeavours in the context of women’s and juvenile imprisonment, probation support services, and voluntary ex-offender services in several federal states. As head of section in the Ministry of Justice of Schleswig-Holstein from 1990 to 2005, I was responsible for improving the system of community and custodial rehabilitation. I have been able to further evaluate and pass on my experiences as Honorary Professor at the University of Luneburg since 2004, as well as in my position as chief editor for the scientific journal Forum Strafvollzug from 2007 to 2013.
Over the past decades, I have witnessed first-hand the activities performed and effort invested by all stakeholders involved, who work untiringly to rehabilitate offenders and protect victims through their organizations. Their commitment cannot be appreciated and valued highly enough.
However, words of praise will not be enough if the aim is to improve the offender rehabilitation system that is currently in place in Germany. Strategies, concepts, as well as legal and organizational frameworks require fundamental and desperate reform. By failing to meet this demand, we run the risk that more and more of the people who are actively involved in the social reintegration of offenders will give up or be forced to defend themselves against impending cuts. The frustration they experience every day is growing; their willingness to innovate is declining.
What we really need is a merciless and self-critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of our offender rehabilitation system and – building on that – a new awakening towards less re-offending, better victim protection, and more efficient use of the means at our disposal. In this book, I map out pathways out of the “incarcerate or rehabilitate?” dilemma – pathways that have already proven to be successful and practicable in numerous German and international projects, but which still remain largely the exception (and have not become the rule in any case) in the federal states of Germany.
In Schleswig-Holstein, over the past 25 years we have successfully demonstrated how innovative ideas in offender rehabilitation policy can become a reality: a scientifically founded concept, a communications strategy geared towards sustainability, resilient and viable political decisions, and a professionally steered implementation with accompanying success monitoring – this, too, shall also be addressed in this book.
All statements and observations contained in this book are based on my direct personal experiences gathered over several decades of personal involvement and dedicated participation. I have published enough scientific and specialist books on the matter. Now, specific persons and situations are at the centre of attention of this personal interim assessment. All actors, stakeholders, and selected events are exemplary for the reality of the issue, which is both diverse and complex. Some information and data have been changed in order to protect and observe the personal rights of the people in question.
We use the case study of the offender Timo S. to map out a typical social, legal, and criminal career over roughly ten years. We shall see how Timo S. became a criminal and which factors prevented his successful and proper socialization. What we will also see are attempts to rehabilitate Timo through imprisonment, probation, and other support agencies and organizations, as well as their very limited effectiveness. Timo’s life story is representative of the vast majority of persons currently incarcerated in German prisons.
In the second part I describe my search for something better than imprisonment – the focus here is on research studies, pilot projects, and impressive key persons who have also endeavoured to improve the offender rehabilitation system.
From 1990 to 2005, serving as responsible head of section in the Ministry of Justice of Schleswig-Holstein, I had the unique opportunity, together with other colleagues and fellow campaigners, to consolidate these experiences and findings into an overall general concept, and to implement them step by step. This is what the third part of this book is devoted to.
The fourth part presents a critical interim evaluation, while part five draws up alternative and continuative perspectives that are quickly and effectively implementable, rather than utopian. In part six, an “Offender Rehabilitation Agenda 2025” compiles the key proposals for an evidence-based and outcome-oriented approach to justice policy and social policy. At the same time, it serves as a checklist for desperately needed innovations.
While working on this book, close friends encouraged me to also share my own biographical development, as during the post-war period I was also exposed to criminal and criminogenic circumstances and hazards myself. These personal experiences are another motivating factor for my unending commitment to improving the system of offender rehabilitation in a sustainable manner.
Back then, they called me Baldy – lice infestation had cost me my hair. There were five of us. The other boy was alone. His lanky figure was easily discernible in the darkness. He was coming from the direction of the church of St. Nikolai – the venue for the afternoon market – and took the short-cut through the park. That was his mistake. He was wearing sandals, swinging his fabric bag back and forth as he walked, and looked rather cheerful. Then he stopped, noticed our menacing group, and considered running for it. But the boys were already upon him and he went to the ground. He covered his face with his elbows, tried gaspingly to call for help, his bottom lip was split open. He whimpered, loudly at first, then more quietly and increasingly fearfully. I was stood to the side, staring into the darkness, and felt – nothing. What we took from him was hardly worth talking about: just a few coins. For that, we rewarded him with a few extra kicks. He remained on the ground whimpering as we ran off.
That was in Göttingen in 1953. At the time it had not been clear to me that my life could not go on like that. It wasn’t the only mugging I was involved in. I was merely 12 years old, an emotionally neglected and desolate child in search of attention and appreciation.
Today, memories of my childhood during the wartime years remain tranquil and idyllic, even though we were bombed out in Berlin three times. My father was an ardent national socialist and economist who pursued a successful career in the propaganda ministry (one of his colleagues in the ministry, and a family friend, was the later Federal Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger). As late as March 1945, my father volunteered to serve on the Eastern front. My mother was later informed that he had run into the Russians’ hail of bullets. Like many children of my generation, I grew up without a father.
After the war, my mother lived with my brother and me in Berlin in a small flat in the Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood. The house had been badly damaged by the bombing runs, many window panes were missing, and at night I could see the stars and the moon from my bed. Firewood and briquettes were always in short supply, and I was always hungry. On the streets, wood was traded for potato peels, and I pilfered briquettes and coals from moving handcarts.
We often sought refuge at my grandmother’s house on a manor near Buckow in the Märkische Schweiz region, roughly fifty kilometres east of Berlin. Green fields, gentle hills – it was a beautiful and peaceful world. Back then, I did not understand why all women, young and old, were brought into barns and cellars during the nights to hide them from the Russians. By day, the Russian soldiers were my friends – we roared across the fields and meadows in their T-34 tanks.
In 1948, my mother decided that something had to change. My grandfather was living with his second wife in Göttingen – a cosy and intact world compared to Berlin: barely any war damage, stable supply conditions, and a more gracious and merciful occupation force. My grandfather told my mother that he would take one of her boys in.
In March 1948, my mother brought me to the zonal border in Thuringia, where I was handed over to paid escape helpers. “Be a brave boy, you’ll be fine!”, she said. Then she was gone.
Late in the evening, the freezing cold westward march through the Harz began. I was carrying but a small backpack containing the essentials, and a man said: “This way, always keep up!”. Our column of maybe twenty people marched through seemingly endless hilly forests. The ground was mushy. I was frozen solid; my fingers were stiff from the cold. I had no idea where Göttingen was, nor where the Soviet zone ended. All I could see was the person in front of me with his small leather suitcase. “Just keep up with him, don’t lose him, then you’ll get there eventually”, I reassured myself.
Dogs were barking behind us, we heard shots being fired somewhere. I could barely see my hand in front of my face and started to panic whenever I lost sight of that small suitcase. I can’t remember how long we marched. Eventually it became light again.
My grandfather and step-grandmother, I referred to her as Aunt Gustchen, gave me a warm welcome at our agreed meeting place on the border. We drove into the historical city centre of Göttingen, Nikolaistraße 21. Intact houses everywhere, no bombing damage to be seen. The flat was heated, I got my own room, and there was more than enough to eat.
However, that first impression was deceiving. Aunt Gustchen was strict and dismissive of me. My grandfather always seemed to be sad – likely a consequence of the war – and allowed his wife to incessantly boss him around. Their relationship was cold and marked by lovelessness. I soon felt that, to them, my presence was more burdensome than enriching.
I was alone, trapped in a life with old people who were foreign to me. Still I never reproached my mother for giving me away. A war widow in post-war East Berlin with two adolescent boys, she was constantly overburdened and acted out of existential necessity.
My relationship with my grandfather and his wife continuously deteriorated. I was rebellious, unable to accept him as a person of authority. At the same time, again and again I felt that Aunt Gustchen treated me unfairly.
To this day, I still vividly recall an occasion one April 26th, the day on which both my grandfather and I shared our birthdays. It was early in the morning, the old man was sat in his armchair, and Aunt Gustchen said: “Bernie, congratulate your grandfather right now!”. I replied: “No, I won’t! It’s my birthday today! My birthday!”. What has also stuck in my mind to this day is the martinet – a wooden handle with seven long leather lashes – that Aunt Gustchen used to whip my naked backside over and over again whenever I disobeyed her.
The attention and appreciation that I was denied at home I sought and found on the streets. At age eleven I joined a gang of youths whose fathers had not returned home from the war. The oldest were sixteen or seventeen years old, I was the youngest by far. I was full of admiration for the gang leader, a tall, authoritarian lad who spoke a clear language and who stopped at nothing. He made me feel like I was his friend.
Years later, I read in the newspaper that in the 1950s in Göttingen, the first rockers had assaulted harmless pensioners in the park armed with chains and brass knuckles, and realized that we had been the precursors of these rockers.
At the time, we saw ourselves as a clique that wandered the historical city centre of Göttingen. The criminal energy that developed in our group little by little was not a consequence of material deprivation. After all, all of the boys came from middle class backgrounds. It was rather an expression of fatherlessness and the general crisis of authority after the war. At first, we shoplifted in stores or on the market, later we robbed and burgled. Being the youngest, I usually stood on the street and kept lookout while the others burgled homes and subsequently split the loot among themselves.
I had no say in anything and never got a share of the swag. However, I was one of them and was allowed to be there whenever the boys carried out their deeds. And that was all that really mattered to me anyway. I found a sense of belonging, felt solidarity, could put myself to the test, received praise, appreciation, and also criticism. In order to impress my peers, I started stealing from my grandparents and splitting the loot with the others on the streets. I would sometimes borrow large illustrated books and pictorials from the city library and cut the pictures and photos out. Of course, I knew that I would get into trouble for it – but it was a form of protest and revolt that was obviously important to me.
In hindsight, one might be able to say: so what? Life was haywire anyway. Back then, most people will probably have experienced lovelessness or are likely to have stolen something. During wartimes and in the years that follow them, almost all people commit terrible crimes. And besides, in the end, I actually made something of myself.
While all of this might be true, I know now that my fate had not been in my hands. I just got lucky. I was inches away from sliding further and further off the rails. Back then, I had no-one in my life who could have had a positive and reassuring influence on me.
At school, I slipped further and further into the role of the outsider. I skipped school, got bad grades, and felt like a failure. Soon, the teachers, too, viewed me as a difficult pupil who could not be reached.
A social worker from the youth welfare services visited our home several times, and eventually she wanted to shuffle me off to a care home for difficult youngsters. “It cannot go on like this”, she said, “someone needs to teach this boy some boundaries!”. I was standing right next to her, my grandfather said nothing, Aunt Gustchen nodded. I thought about the martinet, and just wanted to get away.
Nowadays, the things that transpired in such institutions are common knowledge. Discipline, order, beatings, and sexual abuse were the order of the day. Children were to be broken. I cannot imagine the impact that such injurious experiences would have had on my personality and on my life. Later on, I met many people who had to endure such educational or corrective measures. Their emotional wounds were often still far from healed, and at the very least they bore painful scars for the rest of their lives.
And then, something like a miracle occurred. It was July of 1953, the last day of school before summer break. I was seated in the very back row of the classroom, indifferent as ever. Suddenly the door to the classroom opened. A beautiful young blonde woman entered. “Is Bernd Maelicke here?”, she asked the teacher, her gaze wandering the rows of young faces.
Before she even noticed me, I jumped up, ran to the front, and fell into my mother’s arms. She wanted me back! Words cannot describe how happy I was.
Everything changed from that moment onwards. In the meantime, my mother had remarried and moved to Lake Constance with my brother. We drove there on the very same day. Despite my catastrophic report cards, she had somehow managed to enrol me in the 5th grade of Singen grammar school. This marked the beginning of a new era for me. I could reinvent myself. I was two years older than my classmates, knew the “big wide world”, and spoke perfect High German. My scholastic performance promptly improved, I was soon appointed class spokesperson, and had real friends without criminal interests.
Returning to my mother was the pivotal turning point in my life. In criminological recidivism and desistence research, “turning points” are life-changing experiences that can completely change a person’s orientation, direction, and trajectory.
Today I am certain that returning to my mother, and the new life that came with it, saved me from prison. Without this fortunate twist, my chances of leading a fulfilled and crime-free life would have been minimal. For that, I remain thankful to her to this day.
I have met many people in the course of my life who have not been as fortunate as I was back then. People who have not experienced such turning points, people who no-one saved. People who saw no alternative for themselves other than deviant behaviour.
Does their misfortune excuse their crimes? Of course not. But at the same time, punishing and thus marginalizing people is always the easy route. Doing so contributes nothing to their rehabilitation. Showing them a more promising route and actually helping them navigate it might be more arduous, but it is well worth it – for victims whose victimization is avoidable, for potential offenders, and for society as a whole.
Let’s assume a violent offender breaks out of prison. Lots of time went into planning his perfectly organized escape. He is now on the run.
Public reactions to such a scenario are always the same: the papers print alarming articles; television broadcasters report live from the scene. Mugshots are distributed along with a notice that the offender could be dangerous and is possibly armed. The gutter press asks the typical questions: how could this happen? Why can’t the justice system guarantee our safety? First calls for the state minister of justice to resign are voiced. Concerned citizens ask themselves whether the escapee might already be in their street, even in their front yard. They compare the mugshots with the faces of the people queuing behind them at the supermarket check-out. They double-check whether their front door is locked before they go to bed at night. They demand more walls, more barbed wire, and stricter controls and monitoring by correctional officers.
While such reactions are understandable, they are even more irrational, because the heights to which the security standards in prisons are escalated are essentially irrelevant – 96 per cent of all prisoners will someday be released from prison, either after having served their sentence in full, or after being granted early release.
There are currently around 63,000 prisoners in the 180 prisons in Germany. Roughly 48,000 are convicted offenders serving sentence, while the remainder are in secure pre-trial detention. There are only around 3,600 women prisoners, which is why this book largely focuses on the prison system for males. Women who offend require a gender-specific approach, one that was, for example, presented in 1995 by Hannelore Maelicke titled “Is the imprisonment of women a man’s business?” (German: Ist Frauenstrafvollzug Männersache?).
Roughly 4,000 persons are being held in youth detention centres, around 2,100 are in socio-therapeutic institutions or wards, and about 500 are in preventive detention (German: Sicherungsverwahrung). About 40 per cent are serving sentences of up to one year (half of them shorter than six months), while almost 7 per cent are imprisoned as a substitute penalty for failing to pay a financial penalty (German: Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe). About 83 per cent of prisoners are in closed enforcement settings, while 17 per cent are serving sentence in “open”, i. e. less severe, more “relaxed” enforcement regimes. This latter figure shows a great deal of variation between the different federal states, ranging from 5 to more than 30 per cent. Only a very small minority of prisoners, currently about 2,500, is serving life sentences.
About 50,000 people are released from German prisons each year, which corresponds to the population of a city like Passau. There are currently around 800,000 released prisoners living right among us. These releasees become neighbours, workmates, club colleagues, and customers in shopping centres, but also homeless people and rough sleepers. Their biography of imprisonment is not apparent at first glance. Usually, even more than a second glance is needed.
I just can’t seem to help myself: whether it’s Venice, Barcelona, the south of France, Mallorca, or Scandinavia – wherever I travel, I know a prison when I see one. Regardless of how secluded the location, whether they are hidden behind normal façades, in industrial estates, rail triangles, or out in nature in hilly terrain.
Aside from Alcatraz, Robben Island, and old GDR-correctional institutions, prisons are not tourist attractions. Many people drive past them without recognizing them for what they are. From their perspective, prison is a place for the potentially “abnormal”, a place where all the things happen that are not allowed to happen in a “normal” society – the law-abiding, the “good” on the one side of the walls, the law-breaking, the “evil” on the other.
The prisoners are “the others”. There is no other real explanation why people who have never even set foot inside a prison get an uneasy feeling when they approach or come near one. Add a small group of prisoners walking towards them, visibly sporting martial tattoos and being escorted by correctional officers to outdoor work activities, and many will feel the spontaneous urge to run away and seek safety. Among acquaintances of mine who work in other professions and who I tell about my many visits to prisons, somewhat surprisingly a common recurring question is whether I am actually ever scared when I go there, and whether I am armed for the case of an emergency.
Because it seemingly has no place in everyday life (at least not visibly), the things that society deems “abnormal” and “evil” come with enormous fascination. The public media appear to be almost addicted to presentations and representations of crime and violence. Crime thrillers and detective stories are aired on television day in and day out, more than 100 murders are televised on an average day. Horrific acts of violence are displayed in great depth and detail. Numerous talk shows scare their viewership by debating the allegedly rising degree of brutality shown by young offenders, and even the danger posed by gangs of senior citizens.
Contrarily, crime in Germany has been decreasing, largely as a result of changing age distribution structures in German society: the proportion of older people – an age group that commits significantly fewer crimes – is continuously increasing. Severe violent offences like murder, manslaughter, sexual offences, robbery, and extortion are declining in large German cities and urban centres as well.
The number of less severe crimes like criminal damage, theft, and common assault/bodily harm have shown increases. However, this has very little to do with actual increases in offending burden. Rather, the root of this trend lies in more intense investigative work on behalf of the police and law enforcement agencies and a greater willingness among the public to report offences.
Yet, this does little to diminish the persisting fascination for the bad and the evil. On the contrary, this fascination is easily upheld with each isolated instance of severe crime that is exploited and broadly elaborated in the media. Regardless of what reality looks like, people picture “evil” as something “threatening”, “menacing”, “morbid”, and “psychopathic”, and are oddly prone and amenable to allow themselves to be bothered by it. At the same time, expectations of the “security state” are cultivated: offenders are safely and securely put away behind prison walls and thus no longer pose a threat to anyone. All that matters is that they are caught and locked away.
One gets the impression that the public ascribes almost magical powers to prisons: prisons make criminals disappear like a magic hat. The belief, or perceived universal remedy, appears to be that once offenders have been caught and subjected to the long arm of the law, no-one needs to fear them anymore.
Moreover, publicly calling for criminals to be “locked away” creates the impression of being tough on crime and adopting a vigorous and intrepid approach to dealing with violent offenders, rather than being a “softy”, “do-gooder”, or “wimp”, especially in political circles.
There is some truth in this: people who have offended cannot commit more offences on the outside for as long as they are in prison. This notion would bear fruit if it were possible to lock away each and every offender for the rest of his life. Life imprisonment precludes that an offender can be a threat to the public again. Right now, we are talking about roughly 800,000 people who have been released from prison and who live in freedom. Housing all of them would require two thousand new prisons – an absurd and nightmarish thought. And this does not take into consideration that new offenders shall continue to appear, and millions of crimes will continue to be reported or remain undetected behind the dark figure.
I shall not waste any time or effort on debating the death penalty here. Let it suffice to say that crime rates are no better in countries where capital punishment is still practised.
“Lock them up” is a call that is frequently repeated, and it sounds so simple. However, as we will see, it is a poor solution in the short term, and usually no solution in the long term.
Most crime dramas end with the offender being identified, apprehended and sentenced. The tension and excitement are over once he has been caught. Evil has been defeated, good has prevailed, and we can turn off the television and go to bed reassured.
The dramaturgy of an average crime drama has a stronger influence and characterizing impact on the public’s perception of crime than we should ever be comfortable with. The committed murder is presented as the problem, and the subsequent arrest and imprisonment of the perpetrator is shown as the solution to the case and the resolution of the conflict. This gives rise to the impression that an offender’s biography ends at the moment of apprehension. This impression is, however, fatally flawed since it is not seldom the case that apprehension and incarceration in fact mark the true beginning of a criminal career. Before, during, and after their imprisonment, young offenders in particular go through what can justifiably be termed a “school of crime”, or an “education in crime”.