Advertisement

BVG

New Berlin justice minister wants fare-dodgers to 'clean up schools'

The Local Germany
The Local Germany - [email protected]
New Berlin justice minister wants fare-dodgers to 'clean up schools'
Photo: DPA.

The designated justice minister for Berlin is pushing to punish fare-dodgers with social work rather than jail time, local media reported this week.

Advertisement

Dirk Behrendt of the Green party, who is set to be officially appointed Berlin justice minister on Thursday, wants to make fare-dodging an administrative offence rather than a criminal one, punishable with social work rather than jail time.

Currently those who are caught riding public transit without tickets are fined €60. Transit companies can decide whether to file an official police report against fare-dodgers - whether after the first instance of the infringement or the third, according to Deutsche Anwaltauskunft, the magazine for the German Lawyers’ Association.

Offenders can then be sent to jail if they still refuse to pay a court-ordered fine, or if they have committed other crimes as well. At certain times, up to one third of the prisoners in Berlin jails were fare-dodgers who had refused to pay their fines, according to the magazine.

The Green, Die Linke (Left Party) and Pirate parties have long been pushing for fare-dodging to no longer be punishable with prison time.

But changing the law would require a national reform, and it's not within the coalition agreement of the new Berlin government to put forward such a change, according to Tagesspiegel.

“There are around 400 people who are serving time in prison… because they did not pay a fine,” Behrendt told the Berliner Morgenpost on Tuesday, adding that many of these people are fare-dodgers.

“These are people who actually do not belong in prison.”

Behrendt’s idea is that instead of going to jail, fare-dodgers would do social work, like helping to clean up or renovate schools, using the motto “sweating instead of sitting”, Tagesspiegel reports.

This in turn would also free up jails and lessen the burden on courts, argues Behrendt.

“If we could take around 200 of these people out of prison, then we would have more space.”

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also