Dhe Hessian Justice Minister Roman Poseck (CDU) can imagine that fare evasion is no longer a crime, unlike in the past. The judiciary must be relieved, the Union politician stated on Tuesday in the Hessian state parliament. To do this, the legal framework would have to be made more efficient.
In this context, Poseck was “open” to a debate about the deletion of individual penal provisions. According to the minister, broad-based decriminalization is the wrong approach. But personally, he thinks, for example, a deletion or change in the penal provision for fraudulently obtaining services in buses and trains is “worth considering”.
It should not be overlooked that the prosecution of fare evasion according to the relevant paragraph of the Criminal Code “ties up considerable and possibly also disproportionate resources”. In doing so, Poseck basically agreed with the attitude of Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP).
New jobs are not enough
He had announced in the summer that he would have a downgrading of fare evasion from a criminal offense to an administrative offense examined in his house next year. The Criminal Code falls within federal jurisdiction. But the states are involved in the legislation through the Bundesrat. Gerald Kummer, the legal policy spokesman for the Hessian SPD parliamentary group, recalled that the Social Democratic members of the state parliament had already submitted a corresponding application. That is why he is pleased about the confession of the Minister of Justice. But he is curious to see how the black-green coalition government will react to this proposal.
In a plenary debate, Poseck and Kummer expressed their views on the creation of 477 additional posts for the Hessian judiciary announced by the Minister of Justice a few weeks ago. That’s far from enough, said the Social Democrat. In the budget deliberations of the past few years, the SPD has demanded 1,500 new jobs for good reasons. The state government has always denied the need. But suddenly what the SPD has been saying for years is correct. The announced job creation is a “declaration of bankruptcy for the judicial policy of the last 23 years under a CDU-led state government,” said Kummer.
The replacement of Justice Minister Eva Kühne-Hörmann (CDU) with Poseck was the “admission of this failure”. The package now presented could only be a start. It is a reconstruction program for institutions that you have previously destroyed yourself. “First tear everything down with the wrecking ball and then get praise for the construction?” Kummer said the state government couldn’t get away with that.
Poseck’s approach is correct, “but there is still a lot of room for improvement,” said Ulrich Wilken, MP for the Left. The representative of the FDP parliamentary group, Marion Schardt-Sauer, also praised Poseck’s plans in principle. But in this case too, unfortunately, “the old song applies: too little, too late”.
The MP Gerhard Schenk (AfD) emphasized that the planned “stately” increase in personnel would put an additional burden on the taxpayer in these economically tense times. From the AfD’s point of view, it “would not have been necessary if the causes had been put a stop to in good time”. They consist of “millions of unnecessary asylum procedures”.
As reported, the additional positions are to be created as part of the double budget presented in the draft by the state government for the next two years. The state parliament will debate this for the first time in plenary this Wednesday. This is followed by deliberations in the budget committee. The budget is to be approved at the end of January.
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