Hünfeld correctional facility

Information about the institution
Main entrance of the Hünfeld prison
Surname	Hünfeld correctional facility
Reference year	2005
Detention places	502

The Hünfeld correctional facility is the first partially privatized correctional facility in Germany. It is located in Hünfeld in the Fulda district in Hesse and offers 502 prison places.

The Hessian model project

Due to the overcrowding of the Hessian prisons, another new prison building was planned in Hesse a few years ago. According to the then Hessian Justice Minister Christean Wagner , experiences in England, France and the USA have shown that (partially) privatized prisons are cheaper and more effective. That is why it was decided in the coalition agreement of the then Hessian government parties CDU and FDP in spring 1999 that the planning, construction and operation of a new prison should be transferred to private hands as far as legally possible. On this basis, the Hessian Ministry of Justice set up a working group to develop the legal framework for such a model project. The working group came to the conclusion that the privatization of the penal system as a whole was inadmissible in Germany, since the penal system belonged to the core area of state performance and as such could not be privatized in terms of Article 33 Paragraph 4 of the Basic Law . Within the prison system, however, it was considered possible to privatize certain areas within the framework of a public-private partnership . The following areas were placed in private hands:

Planning and construction,
Property management (construction maintenance, servicing, cleaning, maintenance, etc.),
Video surveillance of the property,
Supply (kitchen, cleaning, clothing distribution),
Care and medical care (nursing staff, hospital ward),
social and educational counseling services,
Management of the workshops,
Measures for school and vocational training for prisoners,
Sports and leisure activities, musical activities and the management of the library as well
certain parts of the surveillance and control management such as the daily control of the functionality of the security systems.

These tasks are carried out by the contractually bound persons as administrative assistants .

Due to the constitutional requirements, the following were not privatized :

the major part of the surveillance management, i.e. the admission and release of prisoners, prison planning, disciplinary measures, etc.,
the rest of the surveillance and control management, i.e. the control of external contacts as well as the arrangement and implementation of security measures or direct coercion as well
the entire organizational sovereignty.

These tasks will continue to be carried out by civil servants .

The responsibility for the operation of the penal institution remains solely in the hands of the state because of Section 156 (2) of the Penal Code . The proportion of privatized prison staff is 45%. A total of 95 employees will work for the private operator, 116 employees will be public servants. Cost savings compared to other penal institutions in Hesse have not been proven. According to the Hessian Ministry of Justice, the costs per prison place in 2007 were 83.18 euros per day, whereas in the Darmstadt prison it was only 79.28 euros. Compared to other federal states, Hessen has very high detention costs.

After a Europe-wide tender in 2003, the steep GmbH from Bonn (formerly Serco GmbH) was awarded the contract as the most economical provider. The state of Hesse signed an operating contract with her on November 8, 2004 , and the tasks that could be privatized were transferred to her. The construction of the institute had already been carried out in a joint venture procedure. The state of Hesse continues to own the property (no BOT model, see Public Private Partnership ).

On December 7, 2005 the prison was officially opened by the then Prime Minister of Hesse, Roland Koch . The night before, the then Hessian Justice Minister Jürgen Banzer had stayed as a guest in the prison on a trial basis.

The building

The JVA Hünfeld was designed as a comb-shaped facility, which is located along a two-storey access corridor, the so-called enforcement corridor. The main thoroughfare is intended to closely network all areas of the institution and to combine all uses such as accommodation buildings, workplaces and functional areas under one roof in the sense of a “concept of short distances”. The facility is surrounded by a green wall.

The prison has a cell phone detector which can locate cell phones in the area of the institution.

literature

Susann Barisch: Privatization in the German penal system. Taking into account the youth penal system and taking into account relevant developments in Great Britain, France and the USA . Waxmann Verlag, Münster et al. 2010, ISBN 978-3-8309-2255-1 , ( Internationale Hochschulschriften 538), (also: Passau, Univ., Diss., 2009).
Torsten Kunze: Privatization in the penal system. The Hessian model project of a partially privatized correctional facility In: Erik Meurer, Günter Stephan (Hrsg.): Accounting and controlling in public administration. Concepts, experience reports and practical solutions . Haufe Verlag, Freiburg 2003, ISSN 1438-8154 , Group 6, pp. 695-715.
Thomas Mösinger: Privatization of the penal system . In: Bayerische Verwaltungsblätter (BayVBl) NF 53 = 138, 2007, ISSN 0522-5337 , pp. 417-428.
Rolf Stober (Ed.): Privatization in Prison? Heymann, Cologne et al. 2001, ISBN 3-452-24996-4 , ( law of the security industry ).
Christean Wagner : Privatization in Prisons - A Concept for the Future . In: Journal for Legal Policy (ZRP) 33, 2000, ISSN 0514-6496 , pp. 169-216.

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ steep online shop for marketing the products of the JVA workshops

↑ Can privatization save costs in prison? ( Memento from April 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) - Article from April 18, 2008 by the Stuttgarter Zeitung

↑ A comparison of the average daily detention costs of the federal states in the years 2001 to 2003 (PDF; 350 kB) - Presentation on April 7, 2006 by the German Association for Juvenile Courts and Youth Courts, Saxony

↑ Justice Minister: Privatization in the penal system is proving to be a great success ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Press release on November 10, 2004 from the Hessian Ministry of Justice@1@ 2

↑ Detailed information about the stay in the prison (PDF; 118 kB) - report from February 2007 by the Association of Hessian Criminal Defense Lawyers

50.670147222222 9.7864638888889Coordinates: 50 ° 40 ′ 12.5 " N , 9 ° 47 ′ 11.3" E