Prison Bützow

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Prison Bützow
State penal institution in Dreibergen around 1845 (painting by Lisch )
Information about the institution
Surname Prison Bützow
Reference year 1839
Detention places 533

The Bützow correctional facility is located on an area of ​​around 270,000 square meters in the Dreibergen district in the northwest of the small town of Bützow in the Rostock district in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Germany) . It is the largest of the four penal institutions in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

history

The JVA Bützow is one of the oldest and most notorious prisons in Germany. Construction began in 1835 with the purchase of the property. In March 1838 convicts started from the fortress Dömitz to build the house prisoners 1. The prison was on April 25, 1839 prison opened and the prisoners Dreibergen house with 60 convicts occupied. The construction phase that followed lasted for almost ten years until 1847. By then, a temporary women's shelter was completed in addition to the men's ward and a men's isolation ward. Civil servants' houses and wings for offices were built in the immediate vicinity. In 1847 the institution had a capacity of 294 convicts, 60 of them women. In 1860 another man's safe house with isolation cells was built, and in 1883 the women’s penitentiary was put into use, which is located on an area separated from the men’s houses. In the years 1902 to 1906 there was another major renovation of the men's custody houses in order to be able to run the institution more effectively. More individual cells were created for the accommodation, but also work rooms, baths, service rooms and a prayer room were gained by connecting the individual custodians. The extension for the hospital was also completed in 1906.

During the Nazi dictatorship , hundreds of death sentences were carried out here in an apple cellar converted into an execution cellar. From December 1944 until the end of the war, the guillotine from the Central Execution Site V ( UH Hamburg-Stadt ) was placed there. The Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) used the prison for the forced repatriation of Soviet citizens and for Germans. In September 1947 around 500 bodies were recovered from the rubble of a building in Bützow. According to investigations, these were former prisoners who were killed by prison guards shortly before Germany's surrender. In the GDR the penal institution was one of the feared three big B (Bützow, Bautzen , Brandenburg ) - penal institutions in which opponents of the regime suffered from particularly harsh prison conditions. After 1950 the politician William Borm was temporarily imprisoned here. The conscientious objector Nico Huebner was also imprisoned there at the end of the 1970s.

The prison continued to operate after the political changes in the GDR and German reunification . Structural norms and conditions were hardly changed afterwards, because the then state government of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania only spent sparse money on restoration work or even new buildings in the Bützow prison. Lined up, only separated by blankets, dark cells occupied by up to eight prisoners - instead of individual accommodation - were just as standard at that time as poor hygienic conditions, sexual assault and violence among prisoners. In addition, there were overburdened and poorly paid judicial staff. Escape from the asylum's catacombs was not common, but it was also not uncommon.

In the mid-1990s, almost the same catastrophic and inhumane conditions prevailed in the vaults of the institution as once for the convicted prisoners in the former regime. The print media liked to call this prison a scandal or horrific prison. On October 3, 1995, one of the most brutal prisoner mutinies in a German prison took place there. Five prisoners who had been intoxicated by self-distilled schnapps overpowered four law enforcement officers, took them hostage and wanted to blackmail a getaway car and thus their release. To reinforce their demands, they cut the faces of their victims with sharp edible knives and a hatchet, stabbed them in the back, hit their heads against gates, and brutally abused and tortured them for several hours. The mutiny was ended by the SEK after just under five hours .

JVA Bützow, 2010

Large parts of the film Underdogs , which was completed in 2007, were shot in the JVA Bützow.

Occupancy

The JVA Bützow is designed for around 452 prisoners, 35 of which are prison places for women. The institution is the only one in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to have an inpatient hospital department with an outpatient clinic, 36 beds and four full-time doctors .

From June 2005 to December 2007, the Bützow JVA was the only diagnostic center in Germany until July 2008 for the penal system in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for the admission of sex offenders sentenced to prison terms of more than four years and prisoners convicted of homicides , with those of selected experts First, an extensive psychological diagnosis was carried out before they were transferred to other institutions or their suitability for relaxation from prison was recognized. For structural reasons, the diagnostic center for the penal system in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has been located in the JVA Waldeck near Rostock since January 2008 .

Enforcement jurisdiction

According to the enforcement plan for the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the Bützow prison is primarily a closed penal system for adult male and female prisoners , but also with the option of pre- trial detention . Since 2013 there also 20 detention places for enforcement of existing preventive detention .

literature

  • Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: Political criminal justice 1945-1989- The prison location Bützow as a place of remembrance and learning. 1st edition. ISBN 978-3-89892-958-5 .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. a b 500 bodies of prisoners discovered. In:  Welt am Abend , September 24, 1947, p. 4 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / waa
  2. https://www.svz.de/lokales/wehrdienst-verweigerer-im-buetzower-gefaengnis-id4658586.html
  3. As in North Africa. In: Der Spiegel. December 25, 1995, accessed January 28, 2011
  4. hostage drama in the Bützow prison. In: BILD newspaper. October 10, 1996, p. 3
  5. ↑ Daily entries for October 4, 1995 on: chroniknet.de accessed on September 23, 2011

Web links

Commons : Bützow correctional facility  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 53 ° 51 '8.9 "  N , 11 ° 57' 54.2"  E