Chris, who asked me not to use his last name but encouraged me to use his nickname, “Bear,” has been incarcerated in German prisons for 31 years. He would not describe his crime, but it must have been very violent: Even defendants who get a “life sentence” for murder in Germany are released after 15 years if staff no longer deem them dangerous. Chris, on the other hand, is in a program known as “preventative detention.” He may die in prison, or he may go home in less than a year — depending on whether he can prove he won’t be dangerous if released.
In the 1980s, American state legislatures began approving programs to hold sex offenders after their sentences were completed. Generally called “civil commitment” for those criminals deemed to be “sexually violent predators,” these programs theoretically allow offenders to be released after they’re treated and judged to no longer represent a threat to society. But in practice, those who get wrapped up in them are almost never actually let go.
In Germany, criminals kept after their sentence, generally for rape or murder, do get released. Every year, two or three of the roughly 40 inmates in the preventative detention unit at Tegel Prison, in Berlin — which I visited on Tuesday with a group of corrections officials, prosecutors, researchers, and activists from the United States — are let go. There are roughly 500 prisoners in the program across Germany, though the numbers are on the decline. Until 2011, their ranks included men who had committed theft and fraud, but now are restricted to violent crimes (primarily rape and murder), according to Kerstin Becker, the head of the preventative detention unit at Tegel Prison.
[For more of this story, written by Maurice Chammah, go to https://www.themarshallproject...st-violent-criminals]
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