Dthree chairs, one table. There is no other furniture in the room where Klaus Dieter W. receives visitors. Or better: in which it is presented to its visitors. Klaus Dieter W. is a muscular man who doesn’t look like he’s 64 years old, but you can see that he can really lend a hand at work. He has already served his sentence for some time, but because he is still considered dangerous, he is in preventive detention in Werl Prison. W. finds this unfair. But he doesn’t want to talk about that, not even about the act for which he was convicted eleven years ago. “Just write: serious capital crime, even if I didn’t commit it,” W. pressed out bitterly when the sergeant had left the room. He has quite rightly been in prison several times in his life. Not this time.
W. would rather talk about the victory he achieved together with another prisoner, a “lifer” from Straubing Correctional Facility. The two had gone before the Federal Constitutional Court because of the low level of prisoner wages. And on June 20, the Second Senate actually decided that the penal laws of Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia are incompatible with the requirement for rehabilitation enshrined in the Basic Law – because prisoners receive too little money for their work.
The so-called basic remuneration corresponds to nine percent of the average salary of all pension insured persons in Germany. Depending on the performance of the prisoners and the type of work, hourly wages are between 1.37 and 2.30 euros. A smile crosses Klaus Dieter W.’s face: “Our constitutional complaints about these completely unfair mini-wages were successful, that was sensational.”
Constitutional judges call for “reasonable recognition”
After the hearing, his lawyer feared the court would approve the wage levels, as it did in the last case of this kind some twenty years ago. But things turned out differently. The judges blamed North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria on behalf of all federal states. Their rehabilitation concepts are “inconclusive”. The salary is not enough to pay maintenance and reparations to relatives and victims or to pay off debts and build up a pension.
Work in the penal system is only an effective means of social rehabilitation if it finds “appropriate recognition”. This “must in any case be suitable for showing the prisoner the value of regular work for a future independent and unpunished life in the form of a tangible advantage”. The legislature must ensure “that the (low) payment is not experienced as part of the sentence to be served”.
Benjamin Limbach invites us to the large conference table in his Düsseldorf office. The Green politician could make it easy for himself. He could say that he has only been Minister of Justice in North Rhine-Westphalia for a little over a year. And that he is therefore not responsible for the fact that there is still no reform idea in his house, although experts have been warning for years that it is only a matter of time before the Federal Constitutional Court overturns the prisoners’ wages. But he doesn’t make it easy for himself. “No minister likes to be told that the state has acted unconstitutionally at one point,” says Minister Limbach, the son of the former President of the Federal Constitutional Court Jutta Limbach. “But you also have to see that the judgment has put us in a wide, open field and offers us many possibilities.” The court leaves the states a great deal of leeway in the matter.
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