The escape from Straubing raises questions about security in the Bavarian correctional system. CSU parliamentary group leader Holetschek: Less patience with those who refuse treatment.
Straubing – The Straubing District Hospital advertises its “security service specially trained for correctional facilities”. In addition, “good structural conditions” and “state-of-the-art security technology” are supposed to ensure that no one leaves the forensic facility without permission. Actually.
On Saturday four men still managed to escapeThey are between 27 and 31 years old, brutal, dangerous. A member of staff at the clinic was injured in the face by them. According to the findings, the men threatened to kill him with a sharp object – possibly a shard of glass – if he did not open the gate. Since then, the police have been searching for them. In vain until the editorial deadline.
At the same time, the question arises as to what is going wrong in the Bavarian correctional system. It is already the second escape this month, after an inmate recently ran away during his day release. The man from Somalia had killed and beheaded a homeless man in 2021. His companions lost sight of him while he was at the cinema. That was less than two weeks ago. Now the next incident, again in Lower Bavaria.
The CSU in the state parliament is pushing for tightening of the correctional system
The political pressure on the responsible social minister, Ulrike Scharf (CSU), has grown considerably, it is said in Munich. This can be seen from the events of Sunday: After an initial, very tame statement on the outbreak, Scharf sent a sharply worded second press release a few hours later, according to which “everything is being examined” and she admitted that there is a clear need for improvement. One suspects that the second statement was probably preceded by a clear announcement from Prime Minister Markus Söder, who had just returned from vacation. Neither Söder nor other ministers responsible for security want to give Scharf public advice or reprimand. Internally, however, it is said that the mood, especially among citizens in Lower Bavaria, is very tense, and that Scharf had already been very cautious in communicating in the first case of the Somali.
The CSU in the state parliament is now pushing for tighter measures in the penal system, as parliamentary group leader Klaus Holetschek told our newspaper. He demands: “Patients who emphatically refuse therapy or abuse relaxations must be sent back to prison more quickly.” If patients refuse, applications for termination of therapy must also be made more quickly and decisions made more quickly. The background: three of the four escapees had already attracted attention. “In addition, we must provide even better training for the therapeutically trained nursing staff in forensics, whom I would like to thank for their challenging daily work with the patients, and review procedures and structural conditions in order to increase safety in the facilities,” says Holetschek.
According to SPD, incident in Straubing a “disaster foretold” for the state government
From the SPD’s point of view, the incident in Straubing is a “disaster waiting to happen” for the state government. Five years ago, the then CSU social minister Kerstin Schreyer announced that, in view of planned restructuring at the Straubing district hospital, she would “give special consideration to the security needs of the population,” recalls Horst Arnold, the parliamentary group’s legal policy spokesman.
The correctional system is used for offenders who are considered to have diminished responsibility due to a mental illness or addiction. Unlike in prison, they are housed in psychiatric clinics or rehabilitation centers. There are 14 such facilities in Bavaria – three of them in Upper Bavaria – with around 3,000 inmates. In addition to the current four-fold escape, so-called escapes occurred four more times by individuals in 2024. There were four such incidents in 2023 and seven in 2022, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs. According to the Ministry of Justice, there were also three escapes from Bavarian prisons in 2023 and even one real breakout from the area protected by walls or barbed wire.
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