Juvenile detention in Germany as a contemporary sanction of German juvenile criminal law? - A comparison with Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands

According to Dölling, juvenile detention is "one of the most controversial sanctions in German juvenile criminal law". As the most common measure involving deprivation of liberty, juvenile detention is regulated in §§ 13 to 16a of the Juvenile Court Act. Due to its assignment to the so-called means of discipline, it has a foreboding character, with which not only education but also the compensation of guilt and retribution is pursued.

Juvenile detention has undergone some changes in the past. For example, the federal states have their own juvenile detention laws and in 2013 the so-called "warning shot arrest" was included in § 16a JGG. Despite these changes, the criticism of and the well-known problems in connection with juvenile detention persist: the lack of personnel specially qualified for juvenile detention, the inconsistent content of the offer, the marginalised living conditions of young people affected by structural disadvantage in the areas of education, work and health, or social exclusion processes. Against this background, the question arises as to whether German juvenile detention is still a contemporary sanction in the German juvenile justice system. Can it do justice to the goal of the JGG? Are further changes necessary? The questions raised are to be answered by a comparison with European countries, with reference to the Scandinavian countries, among others. Compared to Germany, they have a more welfare-oriented approach to juvenile criminal law. In Norway, for example, the national mediation service Konfliktrådet and in Sweden the social services play a central role in juvenile justice. These institutions have a great responsibility in the context of enforcement with regard to the sanctions imposed in order to avoid contact between young offenders and the criminal justice system.  First, the situation in national law is to be worked out in concrete terms, in order to analyse the foreign regulatory systems in the next step. In the context of this analysis, in addition to the applicable law, the current data on criminal prosecution and the prison system as well as the current state of research with recourse to empirical studies will be examined. Based on this, individual regulatory contents will be compared and the possibilities of a possible reform of the German regulations will be discussed. Finally, the legal framework of a potential new regulation and the target requirements that are placed on it should be dealt with so that a concrete reform proposal can be drawn up.