Prison Vienna Josefstadt

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Entrance of the Josefstadt Prison in Wickenburggasse
Back entrance to the regional court and access to the prison

The prison Josefstadt is a Judicial Gefangenenhaus that the Regional Court of Vienna Criminal is affiliated. It is located on Wickenburggasse in Vienna's 8th district, Josefstadt, in direct structural connection with the courthouse.

In common parlance, the Viennese have usually called the institution the “Gray House” since the beginning of its existence . This name can be traced back to the prisoners' gray clothes at the time.

Conception

The prison is the largest Austrian penal institution and can accommodate up to 1057 inmates. People are accommodated here for the execution of sentences and measures for a period of up to 18 months. The prison is entirely housed in the building of the Regional Court for Criminal Matters in Vienna, but there are branch offices for prisoners with lung diseases on Wilhelmshöhe as well as a closed sick department in the Barmherzige Brüder hospital . Section D only accommodates young prisoners on remand and convicts, most of whom were previously imprisoned in the Erdberg prison. JA Josefstadt also has the Austrian prison guard school and the central transfer service for all prisons in Austria attached.

On August 30, 2007, 1,226 prisoners were incarcerated in the Josefstadt prison, of which 798 were remand prisoners. The resulting total capacity utilization of the prison is almost 116%. This makes the Josefstadt Prison one of the most heavily used prison facilities in Austria.

history

In 1831 Emperor Franz I approved the construction of a criminal court building in Alservorstadt . After around seven years of construction, the building was handed over to its intended use in 1839. Since then, the criminal trials that had previously been held in the Schranne have taken place here . Numerous expansions and renovations have taken place to this day, the last for the time being ended in 1995. Many "sensational trials" were carried out here, including economic crimes such as the Lucona case or, most recently, the BAWAG trial. During the Nazi era, the "Gray House" was notorious as a place of execution for political prisoners.

On April 13, 2005, a Ukrainian detainee managed to escape from the prison after receiving a visit from an alleged lawyer. He presented forged documents and got into an unsupervised room with the inmate, where he handed him clothes that had been carried in a suitcase. Then both marched unmolested out of the building, in front of which an escape car was already waiting. After this incident, a biometric system was set up that registers the face of every visitor. In addition, every visitor now receives their own admission card. When leaving the building, the visitor's face is checked. The door in the opposite direction and out of the prison to freedom will only open for those who have been captured when entering.

Despite the new security measures, another security incident occurred on June 30, 2011. A Serbian detainee pretended to be his cellmate on the day he was released and was released in place of his colleague, after which he immediately went into hiding. The inmate only gave the name and date of birth of his fellow inmate and was not checked further. The real release prisoner did not report until the evening and had to be released as well. In response to these incidents, Peter Prechtl from the prison management announced that fingerprint systems would be used in the future.

After the building infrastructure of the entire prison and of the neighboring criminal regional court increasingly required modernization, the General Directorate for Prisons announced in 2017 that the prison and the courthouse would be gradually refurbished from 2020 onwards. During the renovation work, the inmates of the affected parts of the prison are to be moved to the Simmering and Hirtenberg prisons .

Web links

Commons : Prison Vienna Josefstadt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Website of the Josefstadt prison in the justice department.

Individual evidence

  1. Inquiry response (PDF; 22 kB) from the Federal Minister of Justice on the subject of current prisoner numbers .
  2. ^ ORF Vienna: face control in prison . Article of January 19, 2006.
  3. ^ ORF Vienna: Wrong prisoner released from prison . Article of July 18, 2011.
  4. ^ ORF Vienna: Josefstadt prison is being completely renovated . Article dated August 7, 2017.

Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 49 ″  N , 16 ° 21 ′ 16 ″  E