Social services in the criminal justice system
Project date range: 1992 – 1999
Description
The nationwide research project presented a status description of social services in the field of criminal justice in Germany. Both for adult and juvenile offenders, supervision of offenders is a legal option for persons with a suspended sentence of not more than 2 years imprisonment or with a decision of conditional early release after a prison term. In some but not in all categories of cases, supervision by the probation service is mandatory. Moreover there is a sanction of intensive supervision for ex-prisoners with longer sentences who were only released at the end of their full prison term and for offenders released from special hospitals and similar institutions. Besides finding out more about possible faults of the services, issues of cooperation were in the spotlight of the research.
Methods
Comparative legal analysis of regulations within jurisdictions of the federal states; surveys of over 1.000 social workers of the probation service, over 100 social workers of the court assistance agencies, more than 100 practitioners working in comprehensive social services of the justice system, and 15 social workers assigned to supervising authorities in the context of intensive supervision, complemented by surveys of judges and public prosecutors and case-based documentation of the work flow in probation agencies.
Publications
- Block, Petra (1997). Rechtliche Strukturen der Sozialen Dienste in der Justiz - eine vergleichende Analyse der Ländervorschriften. 2., vollständig überarb. und aktualisierte Aufl. Kriminologie und Praxis; Bd. 11. Wiesbaden: KrimZ.
- Kurze, Martin (1999). Soziale Arbeit und Strafjustiz. Eine Untersuchung zur Arbeit von Gerichtshilfe, Bewährungshilfe, Führungsaufsicht. Wiesbaden: KrimZ. (Kriminologie und Praxis (KuP); Bd. 26)
- Kurze, Martin; Feuerhelm, Wolfgang (1999). Soziale Dienste zwischen Bewahrung und Innovation. (Berichte, Materialien, Arbeitspapiere; Heft 16). Wiesbaden: KrimZ.