Youth Crime

The 76-year-old retired school director was assaulted last week after asking two youths, one Turkish and one Greek, not to smoke in the underground. It was a request which left the pensioner seriously injured and has sparked furious debate among politicians on how Germany should best deal with its wayward youth.

Several politicians from Germany's Christian Democratic Party (CDU) say the attack shows that the time has come to re-evaluate the treatment of young offenders and moreover, agressive young foreigners living in Germany. In an interview with the mass-circulation Bild newspaper, the state premier for Hesse, Roland Koch said young foreigners were too quick to use violence.

"Zero tolerance of violence should be an integral part of our integration policy," he said adding that Germany had, up until now, shown a "strange sociological understanding" for violent members of ethnic minority groups.

"People who live in Germany should behave in a decent manner and refrain from violence," Koch said. "Those who can't live according to our rules, are in the wrong place."

Suitable punishment

Wolfgang Bosbach, deputy head of the Christian Democratic Union's parliamentary group is also in favor of tougher measures against young offenders. He told the online version of Der Spiegel news magazine was time for Germany to stop thinking it could prevent recidivism with "social-therapeutic" measures. He said offenders with "serious criminal energy" should be suitably punished rather than packed off on "sailing trips around the Aegean."

Bosbach argues that young foreign criminals should be faced with more than just time behind bars.

"The most frightening prospect for young offenders is deportation," he said, adding that a sentence of one year imprisonment without probation should be enough for a deportation. He criticized the current system for making expulsion unnecessarily difficult.

Both Koch and Bosbach said it was time to remove the kid gloves when dealing with criminals aged between 18 and 21. Under current German law, a judge can decide on a case-by-case basis whether an offender should be tried according to adult or juvenile law. Bosbach said the use of the latter for felons in that age group should be "the absolute exception".

Koch told the Bild newspaper that young offenders should not be treated with understanding. "Prison has to be felt to have the desired effect."

Sentencing youths is a balancing act

But Social Democrat domestic policy expert Dieter Wiefelspütz has warned against a rash tightening of juvenile criminal law. In an interview with the Web site, he said the fact that the culprits behind last week's tragic and brutal incident had already been caught and were now looking at weighty sentences, was proof enough that the law did not need to be overhauled.

However, Wiefelspütz said dealing with juvenile criminals is always a balancing act which requires making a choice between locking an offender away or offering them the chance of re-socialization.

He said it would be wrong to impose tough sentences across the board for youth violence. "The constitutional state has the appropriate instruments and it knows how to use them," the politician concluded.