Denis Pécic

Denis Pécic 2011

Denis Pécic (born October 8, 1928 - October 2015 , original name Jean-Denis Forvin ) was a stateless long-time prisoner and prison critic . He spent 35 years in German prisons . Shortly after his 87th birthday, he died in October 2015.

prehistory

According to his own information and research, Pécic was born in France, where his parents were killed in a bomb attack in 1940. He grew up with foster parents and in homes. His nationality is still unclear today. With the Foreign Legion he took part in the Indochina War , but withdrew from the troops in 1949 and was therefore sentenced to death in absentia in France . Wanted in France, he went to Germany and was sent to a refugee camp for Yugoslavs near Nuremberg. There he got to know other refugees and the criminal subculture.

Offenses and the execution of sentences

In 1950 there was a first conviction for burglary of four months (served in the JVA Freiburg). After the attack on a jewelry store in March 1951, Pécic was arrested and sentenced by the Higher Regional Court of Nuremberg to twelve years' imprisonment (not counting pre-trial detention). He served this sentence in full in Straubing JVA (Bavaria), where he was released in April 1964. But in the same year Pécic was arrested on suspicion of being involved in another crime. On December 30, 1964, as part of a bank robbery in Reinbek near Hamburg, there was an exchange of fire, in which both the victim and one of the perpetrators were shot. Pécic, who was found near the scene of the crime, denied having anything to do with the crime, but was sentenced to 15 years in prison and life imprisonment in 1969 in a circumstantial trial. The sentence was served from 1971 in the JVA Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel (Santa Fu) . As a protest against forced labor without adequate wages and social security, Pécic refused to cooperate and was isolated in the detention cell . In 1972 he took part in the Hamburg prisoners' uprising, which led to the replacement of the head of the institution and to the end of the prison sentence in Hamburg. The new director, Dr. Heinz-Dietrich Stark won him over to work in 1973 by offering him the management of the prison library (“This is social work for the prisoners and not slave labor for the state”). In addition, Pécic was editor of the prisoner's magazine and inmate representative. He spent two years as an outdoor prisoner at the University of Bremen, where he helped set up the prison archive. His release from prison did not take place immediately afterwards, however, because an expert opinion had certified him as having a “narcissistic personality” and the court obliged him to work for another year under “normal” conditions as an outdoor prisoner in Hamburg.

Dealing with the prison system

Denis Pécic has dealt with the penal system in a variety of ways, both in a practical and journalistic way.

Alternative design

Just one year after the government draft of a penal law , published in 1972 , he submitted a well-founded counter-draft, which was initially published as a special edition in the Hamburger Gefangenenzeitung (1973) and a year later as a book. In the preface to this book, Rudolf Wassermann quotes his motivation as follows: Only teachers of criminal law, criminal theorists and criminal practitioners created the government draft. Nobody asked us, the victims, who have been at the mercy of inhumane prison conditions for months and years behind bars. That's why I wrote my own bill . In terms of content, Pécic was primarily concerned with the observance of human rights in the prison system, with the approximation of life in prison to the "general, humane living conditions", not least the remuneration of prisoners according to the "applicable wage or salary tariff" and the inclusion of the Prisoners in the social security, as well as the "duty to re-socialization". As before, in view of the federalization of the penal system, which occurred in 2006, Pécic's call for a federal commissioner for penal enforcement to "achieve legal unity within the scope of the penal code" is still relevant.

Alternate comment

After the Penal Enforcement Act came into force in 1977, Pécic was asked to take part in the commentary on this law in the context of the alternative commentary on the Penal Enforcement Act (AK StVollzG). For a self-taught legal practitioner , this was an unusual assignment that, while still in a closed prison, he devoted himself to his work in the library. In general, he saw his task in incorporating the improvement in prison conditions achieved in Hamburg through the prisoner revolt into the explanation of the law, such as the extensive internal opening of the institution, the possibility for prisoners to lock their cells ("double locking devices") Establishment of tea kitchens on all floors, the annual family sports festival, etc. He was especially responsible for commenting on the provisions on work, training (§§ 37-52 StVollzG). Although he was only directly involved in the first two editions of the commentary (1980, 1982), his influence can still be demonstrated in the previous edition of the commentary (2006).

Penitentiary Archives

From 1983 to 1985 Pécic worked as an outdoor prisoner at the University of Bremen , where he played a key role in the development of the prison archive. The archive initially served primarily to collect material for future editions of the prison commentary. Due to Pécic's high level of awareness among prisoners, however, correspondence with prisoners soon developed, which was primarily about clarifying legal questions (see the website of the prison archive www.strafvollzugarchiv.de). In addition, he succeeded in establishing contact with the numerous prison newspapers in Germany .

Legal policy

Together with Birgitta Wolf , Pécic drafted a motion to the General Assembly of the United Nations in which a number of demands that are still current today are made, e.g. B .: Abolition of life imprisonment; full wages and social security for all detainees; Abolition of the arrest sentence and other measures that are mentally and physically harmful to health; Prohibition of deportation detention against foreign nationals with no criminal record etc. (Application to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Fifth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders in Toronto / Canada, September 1975).

Ten years later, Pécic went public again with an enforcement plan. In a “proposed law to avoid imprisonment for mothers” (1985) he called for exemption from prison for pregnant women and mothers with children; a corresponding bill (BT-Drs. 11/1403 of December 1, 1987) was introduced by Christa Nickels for the parliamentary group of the Greens in the Bundestag (but ultimately rejected).

public relation

Since the mid-1970s, Pécic has been one of the widely publicized prisoners in the Federal Republic. It was developed by Werner Höfer invited to the WDR broadcast "Councellor Law" and published critical essays on various aspects of the prison system in anthologies and magazines. In the early 1980s, still in a closed prison, Pécic developed, together with other prisoners and supported by the then Justice Senator Eva Leithäuser , an extensive prison-critical traveling exhibition on the history of the prison system using the example of Hamburg. This was shown up and down the country in the following years. a. in Hamburg, Bremen, Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Mannheim and Baden-Baden, each in connection with public discussion events.

Life after prison

Pécic spent the rest of his working life on the basis of an AB measure as an archivist, documentary and photographer at the Hamburg University of Music . The attempt to sue the social courts for a pension for his years of work in prison was just as unsuccessful as a retrial to prove his innocence. However, he was successful as a technical inventor. In 1979 the German Patent Office granted him a patent for a jet engine for jet aircraft that he was still developing (DE 20 25 399 C3); He received patents in 2005 (DE 100 57 349 B4) and 2008 (DE 101 40 040 B4) for a pedal bike with a new type of shaft drive . He lived on social welfare in Hamburg until his death (2015) and worked on his autobiography (more on the webpage of the prison archive [1] ).

Sources (Selected Writings)

Alternative draft of an executive law , parts I and II, with a foreword by Rudolf Wassermann. Cologne 1974.
A perpetrator demands action . In: Werner Höfer (Ed.) Knast oder Galgen? Violent crimes and the execution of sentences between judgment and popular feeling; Controversy between those affected, those involved, those called. Percha on Lake Starnberg in 1975.
The prison system from the perspective of a prisoner . In: Schwind / Blau (ed.) Prison in practice, Berlin 1976.
Commentary on the Prison Act (AK StVollzG) (with others), 1st edition, Neuwied 1980, 2nd edition Neuwied 1982, 3rd edition Neuwied 1990.
The development of sentences and the execution of sentences from the Middle Ages to the present in Hamburg: d. historical Processing u. Implementation d. Past in d. Presence as a plea for necessary reforms d. Criminal law and penal system , Hamburg 1982.

In addition, unpublished typescripts on Denis Pécic's memoirs are available as a trilogy in the prison archive at the University of Bremen.

Secondary literature

Feest, Johannes: Information on the case of Denis Pécic , processes, 78 (1985), pp. 124-126
"The three lives of Denis Pécic" . 50-minute feature by Kurt Kreiler , broadcast on June 4, 2004, 8:10 pm (Deutschlandfunk Köln).
Kai Schlieter: Prison rebel in the penal system, taz November 2, 2010

Web links

Individual evidence

personal data
SURNAME	Pécic, Denis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	stateless prisoner and prison critic
DATE OF BIRTH	October 8, 1928

[1] Hamburger Abendblatt of December 13, 1969

[2] Denis Pecic: The retrospective of the life in friendship with Johannes. In: Correspondence in matters: prison system, legal cultures, criminal policy, human rights, ed. by Sven Burkhardt, Christine Graebsch and Hellmut Pollähne, Münster 2005, p. 172

[3] Events of November 29, 1985

[4] Alternative draft of an Executive Act, p. 74.