Reforms of the Criminal Sanctions System in Germany ? Achievements and Unresolved Problems

• Author: Frieder Dünkel
• Pages: 37-48

37

JURIDICA INTERNATIONAL 28/2019

Frieder Dünkel

Professor emeritus, dr. jur.

University of Greifswald

Reforms of the Criminal

Sanctions System

in Germany –

Achievements and Unresolved Problems*1

1. Preliminary remarks

Jaan Sootak is celebrating his 70th birthday, and I am happy to o er him my cordial congratulations at this

birthday ceremony personally. We f‌i rst met in the late 1980s, when I organised a conference on comparing

prison systems worldwide.*2 While primarily a penal lawyer, he has remained in our network of co-opera-

tion in penology and youth justice for 30 years.*3 His achievements as a penal law reformer in Estonia are

considerable, and he has always maintained a connection with German penal law jurisprudence as well as

practice. I have therefore chosen as my subject the reform of criminal law sanctions in Germany. It was 17

years ago that I presented a paper at the law reform conference here in Tartu on the same issue, and I have

to admit that the reform debate surrounding the criminal sanctions system in Germany continues to focus

on the same problems as at the beginning of the century, and that no real will for change is visible. However,

many aspects of the sanctioning practice could be seen as successes, and sometimes standstill might in fact

be progress, when ideas are refused that would worsen the penal law system. I will come back to that when

talking about electronic monitoring.

 The present paper deals with some of the recent debates on reform of the German criminal sanctions system, which are more

comprehensively summarised in the research of Nicholas Mohr presented in his Ph.D. thesis; see Mohr, Die Entwicklung

des Sanktionenrechts im deutschen Strafrecht – Bestandsaufnahme und Reformvorschläge, .

 See the f‌i rst results in van Zyl Smit/Dünkel, Eds., Imprisonment Today and Tomorrow – International Perspectives on

Prisoners' Rights and Prison Conditions, nd ed.,  (st ed., ), with a chapter on Estonia by Jaan Sootak, Rando

Antsmäe, and Olavi Israel (–).

 See, for example, his contributions on Estonia in Dünkel/Lappi-Seppälä/Morgenstern/van Zyl Smit, Eds., Kriminalität,

Kriminalpolitik, strafrechtliche Sanktionspraxis und Gefangenenraten im europäischen Vergleich,  (together with Anna

Markina, –) and in Dünkel/Grzywa//Horsf‌i eld/Pruin, Eds., Juvenile Justice Systems in Europe: Current Situation

and Reform Developments, nd ed.,  (together with Jaan Ginter, –). – DOI: http://dx.doi.org/./

issn-.

https://doi.org/10.12697/JI.2019.28.05