Status: 05.07.2022 3:27 p.m
In Germany, anyone who cannot or does not want to pay a fine gets a replacement prison sentence. Minister of Justice Buschmann now wants to shorten this. This should make the prisons emptier and save costs.
Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) wants to revise the system of substitute imprisonment. In the future, if a fine is not paid, only one day of imprisonment will be due for every two daily rates imposed – so far the ratio has been one to one. The time behind bars would thus be shorter. A draft from his house was sent to the other departments of the federal government for approval. He suits him too ARD Capital Studio before.
Minor theft or fare evasion
The amount of the respective daily rate depends on the net income of the convicted person. About a third of fines leading to jail for non-payment are for petty theft or fraud. Almost a quarter of the cases involve fare dodgers.
A decision as to whether driving without a valid ticket may soon be downgraded from a criminal offense to an administrative offense is not yet to be made as part of this planned reform. From coalition circles it is still said that this is still being examined.
Avoid bottlenecks, save costs
In order to avoid substitute imprisonment as far as possible, the Federal Minister of Justice wants the enforcement authority to be obliged to inform convicts in good time if they can be permitted to avert substitute custody through community service. In any case, this information should be given in a form that ensures that a person who does not speak German well understands it.
The advantages of the draft would be that bottlenecks in prisons could be avoided and costs could be saved. According to calculations by his ministry in 2019, an occupied place in prison cost around 119 euros per day on average across Germany, if the construction costs for the prison are not included. Buschmann hopes that the countries will follow suit.
Lawyers’ association: “This penalty should be abolished”
The system of substitute imprisonment has long been controversial – critics see poor people in particular as disadvantaged. The German Lawyers’ Association criticizes this punishment as no longer up to date: it “must be reviewed in general and ultimately abolished.” The non-payment of fines is often a case of inability, the association argues. This could be due to financial hardship or psychological problems and/or addiction conflicts. Criminal law should not punish poverty or social exclusion, but only criminality.
Other motivations
However, the Minister of Justice’s draft also contains other planned changes in other areas. Among other things, the catalog of reasons to be taken into account when sentencing is to be supplemented by “gender-specific” and “anti-sexual orientation” motives.
This involves hate crimes against people based on their gender identity or sexual orientation. Severe punishment should also result if a man puts his partner or ex-partner under pressure or does violence to her due to patriarchal patterns of thought. That would be the case – in the sense of the draft bill from the Ministry of Justice – if a man denied his daughter, sister or ex-wife the right to freely choose their life partner.
More leeway for the judges
Judges should also be given more leeway when it comes to instructions that can be issued in the sense of a successful rehabilitation of the perpetrator: for example in the context of a sentence being suspended on probation.
Buschmann, on the other hand, wants to be more strict about the requirements for placement in a rehabilitation center. The aim of the planned changes here is to concentrate the limited capacities on those addicts who actually need treatment in such a facility. In order to achieve this in the future, the addiction, which is a prerequisite for such accommodation, should be defined more clearly than has been the case up to now.
If the draft is approved by the cabinet this fall, the reform could come into force next spring – provided the Bundestag and Bundesrat agree.