Punishing Social Workers for Failing to Prevent Child Deaths in Germany

• In Event: Child Abuse Prevalence, Indicators, and Responses

Abstract

The criminalisation of the social worker’s failure to prevent child death in family context is a new phenomenon in Germany. This issue has risen in the past twenty years and has developed to a controversial topic in law, social work, and political science. According to the German approach for failing to prevent child death social workers are usually charged with manslaughter by omission or negligence. England follows a different approach focusing on broader responsibility without enforcing an individual criminal responsibility for the mentioned failures. The German approach to this problem might be one of the consequences of rising concerns over child neglect or a changed attitude towards the role, duty and function of state in family context. On the other hand it is interesting from a criminological and legal point of view how far the criminal punishment of social workers for their failures is a legitimate and justified response to prevent violence against children and to uphold the interests of law. It concludes that the criminal responsibility alone is not able to deal with the mentioned problem and is used by stockholders to escape looking for more comprehensive solutions which include organisational, structural and financial reforms in this area.

Author

• Linn Katharina Doering, Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law