Help for those at risk
The Help for Endangered was a social assistance benefit after the Federal Social Security Act of 1962, which was declared incompatible and void shortly after entry into force of the Federal Constitutional Court with the Basic Law.
The help for the endangered enabled the social welfare agency to imprison the homeless simply because they are homeless and to place them in a correctional facility . The law did not provide for a time limit so that this detention could in principle be for life.
Several federal states, including Hesse and Hamburg, filed a regulatory review application because they considered this provision to be unconstitutional. The Federal Constitutional Court thereupon ruled on July 18, 1967 that this service violated the right to freedom of the person under Article 2, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law. The freedom of the person is such a high legal value that it can only be restricted for particularly important reasons. Such weighty reasons can either be the protection of the general public, as in the case of criminals, or the protection of the person concerned, as in the case of the forced admission of mentally ill persons. The help for those at risk, however, serves neither to protect the general public nor to protect those affected, but solely and exclusively for educational purposes. However, the state does not have the right to improve its citizens and therefore also not the right to deprive them of their liberty without endangering themselves or others. The lack of a time limit, which is like a life imprisonment , also violates the principle of proportionality. In the end, the court stated that the conditions for such detention are too vague and thus also violate the requirement of certainty, which must be particularly observed in the case of measures involving deprivation of liberty.
The legislature then deleted this benefit from the law. The case law of the Federal Constitutional Court is still used today when it comes to the deprivation of liberty.
literature
- Friederike Föcking: Care in the economic boom: The emergence of the Federal Social Welfare Act of 1961 . Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 3486594737