Avoiding Short-Term Imprisonment in Germany

• In Event: The Effects of Incarceration on Children, Women, and Communities

Abstract

In Germany imprisonment is not only the most expensive criminal sanction, it also causes most harm, not only for the offender but also for his family or his relatives. Therefore especially short-term imprisonment (less than 2 years) seems to be hardly reasonable: the prisoner might lose his job, his family might suffer from financial and/or social deprivation, the state has to spend a lot of money for the incarceration and the time spent in prison is too short for an effective treatment.
For many years now, German legislation and jurisdiction has taken considerable efforts in order to avoid or at least to reduce short-term imprisonment. The paper will present some of these efforts and will answer the question to what extent the targeted reduction could have been reached.

Author

• Joachim Obergfell-Fuchs, Academy for Prison Officers Baden-Wuerttemberg