Correction institute

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Correctional institutions , including reformatory institutions (from Latin corrigere = "straighten out, correct") were public or private institutions up to the second half of the 20th century that were intended to accept correctors (Latin = the offspring to be reformed). In contrast to a prison , their main purpose was not the execution of sentences , but education and moral improvement .

Children and young people

According to Sections 55, 56 of the Reich Criminal Code , accused between the ages of 12 and 18, who were acquitted despite having committed a crime for lack of mental maturity, could be referred to an educational institution by judicial judgment for as long as the administrative authority in charge of the institution required but not over the age of 20. For children under 12 years of age, if a criminal offense was committed, it was only possible to identify such care education (forced upbringing).

If the best interests of the child were at risk , the guardianship court could order that a child or a ward be placed in an educational institution or reformatory for the purpose of education (Sections 1666, 1838 BGB). Prussia had already passed a special law on February 13, 1878, concerning the placement of neglected children. This was followed by the law on welfare education for minors of July 2, 1900.

By far the greatest importance was played by the Magdalenenstifte , which were founded mainly by private individuals or associations, for “ fallen girls ” and the correctional institutions for young “criminals” and neglected children.

When the Reich Law for Youth Welfare (RJWG) of July 9, 1922 established uniform law for all German federal states , the last Prussian institutions for compulsory education, which were subject to the penal authorities until the end, were dissolved.

Adults

Correctional institutions were institutions that accepted vagabonds , "drunkards" , "work-shy", "dissolute" prostitutes , but also released convicts who were encouraged to work in them and were to be accustomed to an orderly lifestyle. These reformatory institutions were based on the so-called reform theory , according to which it is the task of the state not only to ensure the execution of sentences, but also to improve the criminal and to “protect him from complete moral ruin”.

The general land law for the Prussian states of 1794 provided for penal corrective detention in the workhouse at the suggestion of Carl Gottlieb Svarez . According to the Reich Criminal Code of 1871, persons who had been convicted under Section 361 (mainly begging, vagrancy and prostitution) could then be transferred to a workhouse for corrective detention for up to two years under Section 362. Around 1880 there were around fifty workhouses in Germany with a capacity of around 22,000 correctors. The workhouses were supposed to be a deterrent, the idea of ​​improvement was essentially of no importance. During National Socialism in 1934, the possibility of permanent work house induction with Section 42 f of the Criminal Code was created, but from 1938 delinquents who were apprehended were rarely handed over to justice, but instead deported to concentration camps as preventive prisoners . In the Federal Republic of Germany there were still work house admissions until it was abolished in 1969.

English and French legislation also knew similar provisions. Germany had a model institution with the Rauhen Haus near Hamburg , which had been founded by Johann Hinrich Wichern in the spirit of the internal mission , France an institution in Mettray, which was run according to different principles. The most widespread and institutionalized were the English reform schools, supported and supervised by the state, among which a distinction was made between industrial schools (work schools in the narrower sense) and reformatory schools .

Anglo-American legal family

In the United States, prisons are called Correction (al) Centers ; B. the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, in Great Britain as the Detention Center .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Besserungsanstalten Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, Volume 2. Leipzig 1905, p. 759. zeno.org, accessed on August 12, 2020.
  2. ^ Welfare education Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, Volume 7. Leipzig 1907, pp. 217-218. zeno.org, accessed on August 12, 2020.
  3. Civil Code of August 18, 1896. RGBl. 1896, p. 195.
  4. Max Schultzenstein, Paul Köhne: The German Guardianship Law and the Prussian Law on the Welfare Education of Minors of July 2, 1900. In addition to the associated Prussian subsidiary laws and general provisions. Guttentagsche Collection of German Imperial Laws, Vol. 47.De Gruyter, 1901.
  5. RGBl. I 1922 p. 633
  6. Hans Scherpner: The forced education: Public youth welfare in the nineteenth century. In: History of Childcare. Göttingen 1966, p. 160 ff.
  7. Wolfgang Ayaß: The "corrective Nachhaft". On the history of workhouse accommodation under criminal law in Germany , p. 7 ff.
  8. Wolfgang Ayaß: The "corrective Nachhaft". On the history of workhouse accommodation under criminal law in Germany , p. 16 ff.
  9. detention center dict.cc, German-English dictionary, accessed on August 12, 2020.
  10. ^ Digitized version : correctional institution and country poor house. A sociological contribution to the criminality and psychopathology of women.