It’s not Christmas yet, but the Christmas season is already beginning in prisons all over the country. Prisoners pack their things and prepare for their so-called Christmas amnesty. It’s a tradition, and just like gingerbread, speculoos or cinnamon stars are on the supermarket shelves earlier and earlier, this tradition also starts earlier in autumn. These days the first little doors are already opening, sorry, doors. Christmas amnesty, that means: offenders who would not have had much time to serve anyway are allowed to come out, there are about 800 every year.
The capital is the earliest. In Berlin, prisoners have been gradually being released early since October 20. There, offenders whose imprisonment is calculated to end around the turn of the year can get the last 76 days of the year for free. This is the most generous regulation in Germany. How much grace there is at the end of the year depends heavily on the state in which the prisoners are sitting. According to research by the transparency platform “Ask the State” and the SZ, there are sometimes huge differences.
In Rhineland-Palatinate, offenders can be released on the second most day. There it goes on November 8th to freedom. In North Rhine-Westphalia it won’t be until November 17th. In Saxony too. Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are waiting a week longer, until November 25th. The idea behind early release is always: It relieves prison officials who have to work between years. And it avoids that those who have been laid off are left on the street between the years – when hardly anyone can be reached in social welfare offices or advice centers. Formally, it is not an amnesty, but a “mercy” because each case is examined individually.
But of course there is also a certain arbitrariness behind it. If your sentence expires shortly after Christmas, you’re in luck. Whose sentence expires at Easter is unlucky. Grace at Christmas is nowhere in the law. Nor does any sentence contain the sentence: “You will be sentenced to nine months in prison, but if you’re lucky and your imprisonment ends by chance at the end of December or the beginning of January, then congratulations.” The federal state of Lower Saxony, whose Minister of Justice has been appointed by the CDU for the past five years, is therefore skeptical. Prisoners can only have a maximum of 32 days released there. Before December 1st, the prison system in Lower Saxony will not release anyone into the year-end rest period.
The least inclined to Christmas grace is, every year, Bavaria. “As in previous years, there will be no ‘Christmas amnesty’ for prisoners in Bavaria in 2022,” said the State Ministry of Justice in Munich. After all, the length of imprisonment was determined by an independent court. Changing a legally binding punishment by way of clemency must be “reserved for absolutely exceptional cases and must not depend on coincidences in the calendar”. Only on December 22nd does Bavaria let out those perpetrators who would be between the years. That means waiting until the end.