According to the state parliament’s wishes, police officers from Bavaria who investigate cases of child sexual abuse may be given additional special leave. However, there will be no monthly allowance of 300 euros, at least until further notice. The CSU and Free Voters rejected such a payment in the state parliament’s Interior Committee on Wednesday.
The state government should now first examine a change to the relevant vacation regulations to determine whether “additional vacation can be granted for investigative activities to combat and prosecute child and youth pornography.” This emerges from a proposal from the CSU and Free Voters, which representatives of all factions in the Interior Committee agreed to, with only one vote against.
In addition, sufficient psychosocial support for officials should be ensured. The CSU state parliament member Alfred Grob rejected the demand for a monthly allowance, as demanded by the Greens, on behalf of his parliamentary group. The pain of the civil servants must be alleviated in another way, something good must be done for them in other ways, he said – namely with mental relief in the form of special vacation days. The state government must now answer whether and in what time frame this can be implemented.
The Greens also justified their demand for a monthly allowance by saying that Bavaria places its investigators worse off than other federal states: Since January 2021, investigators in North Rhine-Westphalia have received an allowance of 300 euros per month. At that time, all parliamentary groups in the Düsseldorf state parliament voted for the introduction.
From the Greens’ perspective, Bavarian officials should receive the same recognition because they did just as difficult and valuable work. “Anyone who is confronted every day with recordings that go far beyond the limits of what is bearable deserves noticeable recognition,” said Florian Siekmann (Greens). The SPD and AfD also voted for the Greens’ proposal and thus the allowance in the Interior Committee.
Grob and his CSU colleague Holger Dremel, on the other hand, expressed concern that an allowance could also become a problem: if civil servants actually no longer wanted to do the job because of the high level of work involved, but then stuck with it because of the money. Roland Weigert (Free Voters) also said that they did not want to support “self-ruining processes”. However, he added – although this was his personal opinion – that in a second step an allowance could possibly be discussed at some point.
According to crime statistics, the workload for the police to prosecute child abuse is increasing significantly. While in 2019 there were 1,735 cases involving the acquisition and possession of child pornography content, the number had climbed to 6,392 by 2023. In view of this, the Greens warned that the police were in danger of losing urgently needed skilled workers. It was not initially possible to say how many police officers in Bavaria are involved in child abuse investigations.