Electronic Monitoring in Europe – Key Findings from Germany

Electronic Monitoring in Europe: Key findings from Germany

The national workshop on Electronic Monitoring in Europe: Key findings from Germany provided an opportunity to hear about, and engage with, the findings of the European Commission funded project entitled: ‘Creativity and Effectiveness in the use electronic monitoring (EM) as an alternative to imprisonment in EU member states’. The research was carried out in five jurisdictions (Belgium, England & Wales, Germany, the Netherlands and Scotland) providing up-to-date analysis of current and future uses of EM in each jurisdiction as well as insights gained from the first comparative EM research in the EU.

At the workshop the main findings of the research in Germany were presented in the context of the broader findings arising from the comparative research. Critical reflections were provided by academic experts, policy-makers and practitioners.

The workshop took place in Berlin on 25th January 2016 at the Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum (Humboldt-Universität), Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 3, 10117 Berlin, Germany.

The languages spoken at the workshop were German and English. Simultaneous translation was provided.

Participants interested in the main findings of the comparative research are also encouraged to attend the Conference on Electronic Monitoring in Europe held in Brussels on 18th February 2016.

Target Audience

The workshop was useful for individuals with responsibility for and/or an interest in electronic monitoring including:

• European and government officials
• Criminal justice policy-makers
• Prison managers and staff
• Probation managers and staff
• Police
• Judiciary
• Electronic monitoring equipment and service providers
• Academics and researchers
• Postgraduate researchers and students

Download Speaker biographies in English and German.

Hans Dieter Amthor

Hans Dieter Amthor is the director of the joint monitoring centre (GÜL - Gemeinsame Überwachungsstelle der Länder). He studied pedagogy and evangelic theology at J.-W.-Goethe University in Frankfurt, graduating in 1977. Following this, he taught at Fritz-Bauer-Haus in Bad Homburg, a residential provision for offenders under probation. In 1980 he continued his university career by studying social work at the University of Applied Science in Frankfurt. He has undertaken a number of jobs in criminal justice, including manager of a residential unit for young offenders; justice assistant at the public prosecutor's office in Darmstadt; working at the department for criminal law at the Hessian Ministry of Justice; and probation officer at the public prosecutor’s office in Darmstadt. Mr Amthor’s first involvement with electronic monitoring was in 1998 when he became an officer for the EM project. He was involved in the foundation of the joint monitoring centre in Hessen (GÜL) and has been the director of the GÜL since 1998.

Bernd Moritz Bӧsert

Bernd Moritz Bösert has worked at the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection since 1992. He started his career at the Directorate of Commercial and Economic Law, before moving to the Policy Planning Unit, where he was Head of the Cabinet and Parliament Division. Following this, he went to the Criminal Law Directorate. He has been the director for the Division for the German Criminal Code - General Part since 2006. In 2010 he was involved in introducing the legislation for the electronic monitoring of high-risk offenders into the law on supervision of conduct.

Anne Bräuchle

Anne Bräuchle is currently a research assistant at the Institute of Criminology, University of Tübingen. In 2013, she graduated from the University of Tübingen with a degree in law. Her major field of study was in criminology and criminal justice. Ms. Bräuchle has been undertaking her PhD since 2013, in Prof. Kinzig’s research group on electronic monitoring in Germany. She is conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis in the field of criminal and penal law.

Marc Coester

Prof. Dr. Marc Coester studied educational science at the University of Tübingen, following which he worked as a social worker. He returned to the Institute of Criminology in Tübingen and Marburg to write his PhD thesis. Between 2006 and 2014 he worked for the Crime Prevention Council of Lower Saxony in the Ministry of Justice in the area of the prevention of right-wing extremism. He is currently Professor for Criminology at the Berlin School of Economics and Law. He also works for the German Congress on Crime Prevention and is president of the DBH-Association for Social Work, Criminal Law and Criminal Policy. His research interests include extremism, hate crimes, crime prevention and evaluation.

Kirstin Drenkhahn

Kirstin Drenkhahn is an associate Professor of Criminal Law and Criminology at Freie Universität Berlin, and has been since 2011. Prior to that, she was a research associate at the Department of Criminology, University of Greifswald with Prof. Dr. Frieder Dünkel. Her PhD was entitled “Social therapy in the German penal system” ("Sozialtherapeutischer Strafvollzug in Deutschland") and was awarded in 2006. She has undertaken research on a range of criminal justice areas, including prison research, penal sanctions, restorative justice and youth justice. She has been involved with a number of research projects, including “Long-term Imprisonment and the Issue of Human Rights in Member States of the European Union” (2007-2014).

Frieder Dünkel

Frieder Dünkel has been a Professor of Criminology in the Faculty of law and political science, University of Greifswald, since 1992. He was pro-dean and dean of the faculty of political science between 1995 and 1997, and prorector of the university between 2010 and 2013. He was the international relations representative for the faculty and was the coordinator for the Erasmus programme between 1994 and 2015. He has been a visiting professor at numerous universities, including in France, England, Switzerland and Russia.

Frieder Dünkel studied law at the Universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg between 1969 and 1974. He was a research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute of Foreign and International Criminal Law from 1977 to 1992 (Department of Criminology with Prof. Günther Kaiser). He completed his Ph.D. in 1979 and his ‘habilitation’ (postdoctoral qualification) in 1989 at the University of Freiburg. His research interests include youth justice, penology, alternatives to prison, (including from an international perspective), crime prevention, criminal procedure and criminal law. He has published widely in these areas (41 books and 532 articles as of 1 November 2015). In October 2015, he became Professor Emeritus, but has a continuing involvement with several research projects. He is currently President of the European Society of Criminology (ESC).

Silke Eilzer

Before studying law at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt on Main and at the University of Leicester, UK, judge Silke Eilzer completed a training as registrar. Her practical legal training included stages at the German Consulate General in Los Angeles and at the European Parliament in Luxembourg. In 2006 she became a judge at the district in Hanau specialising protection of minors and economic delinquency. Between 2010 and 2013 she worked as a section head for Electronic Monitoring, mutual legal assistance, victim support, narcotics law and law governing sexual offences at the Hessian Ministry of Justice. After being seconded to the Hessian Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt in 2014 she returned to Hanau and is now working at the local court as a senior judge.

Anthea Hucklesby

Professor Anthea Hucklesby is Professor of Criminal Justice at the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law and Pro-Dean for Research and Innovation at the University of Leeds, UK. She has undertaken research and published in a range of areas in the criminal justice process including electronic monitoring, police and court bail, drug misuse in prison, pre-trial drugs intervention, prisoners’ resettlement, community sentences and private and third sector involvement in criminal justice. She is currently leading a European Commission Directorate of Justice funded project on ‘Creativity and effectiveness in the use of electronic monitoring as an alternative to imprisonment in EU member states’ (JUST/2013/JPEN/AG/4510). Her recent books include: A. Hucklesby and E. Wincup, (eds) (2010) Drug Interventions in Criminal Justice, Open University Press; A. Hucklesby (2011) Bail Support Schemes for Adults, Policy Press, A. Crawford and A. Hucklesby (eds) (2013) Legitimacy and Compliance in Criminal Justice, Routledge and A. Hucklesby and M. Corcoran (eds) (2015) The Voluntary Sector and Criminal Justice. She has also published a trio of articles on electronic monitoring: A. Hucklesby, (2008) ‘Vehicles of Desistance: the impact of electronically monitored curfew orders’, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 8(1): 51-71; A. Hucklesby (2009) ‘Understanding offenders’ compliance: a case study of electronically monitored curfew orders’, Journal of Law and Society, 36(2): 248-71 and A. Hucklesby (2011) ‘The Nightlife of Electronic Monitoring Officers’, Criminal Justice, 11(1): 1-18 and contributed a chapter to on ‘Insiders’ Views of Electronically Monitored Curfew Orders’ to M. Nellis, K. Beyens and D. Kaminski (eds) (2012) Electronically Monitored Punishment: International and Critical Perspectives, Routledge. She is currently editing a companion volume to the Voluntary Sector and Criminal Justice on the Private Sector and Criminal Justice with Stuart Lister which is due to be published in 2016.

Alexander Kolz

Dr. Alexander Kolz has been a Judge since 2007, and since 2011 Judge at the Landgericht Frankfurt am Main. Between 2012 to 2014 he worked as a research assistant at the Federal Constitutional Court, and since 2014 as Head of Unit in the Department of Criminal Law, pardons and crime prevention in the Hesse Ministry of Justice.

Jochen Müller

Dr. Jochen Müller was a judge from 1990 to 2009 and has been the chairperson of a large criminal chamber at the Regional Court (Landgericht) of Frankfurt am Main since 2000. In October 2009 he was seconded to the Hessian Ministry of Justice and in May 2010 he was appointed assistant head and deputy leader of the department of criminal law, clemency and crime prevention.

Mike Nellis

Mike Nellis is an Emeritus Professor of Criminal and Community Justice, The Centre for Law, Crime & Justice, Law School University of Strathclyde. Mike was formerly a social worker with young offenders in London, has a PhD from the Institute of Criminology in Cambridge, and was involved in the training of probation officers at the University of Birmingham. He has written widely on the fortunes of the probation service, alternatives to imprisonment and particularly the electronic monitoring of offenders, on which he is an acknowledged expert. In respect of the latter, he has been actively involved since 2005 in the planning of a series of European conferences on EM, and between 2011 and 2013 acted as one of two advisers to a Council of Europe Committee on Penal Affairs which drew up an ethical recommendation on EM, for circulation in the Council’s member countries. He teaches a Master’s degree course on “surveillance, technology and criminal justice” studies in the Strathclyde Law School. He has recently co-edited Electronically Monitored Punishment: international and critical perspectives, with Belgian colleagues Kristel Beyens and Dan Kaminski. He has recently become editor of the Journal of Offender Monitoring.

Christoph Thiele

Christophe Thiele is currently a PhD student in the department of criminology at the University of Greifswald. His research topic is conjugal and family relationships for prisoners. Between 2009 and 2013 he studied law at Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald. Between 2013 and 2014 he worked as a graduate assistant in the department of criminology (Prof. Dr. Frieder Dünkel). Between 2014 and 2015 he worked as a research assistant on a collaborative project: “Creativity and Effectiveness in the Use of Electronic Monitoring as an Alternative to Imprisonment in EU Member States”. He is currently working with Prof. Dr. Stefan Harrendorf as a research assistant in the department of criminology and criminal law.

Ursula Werner

Ursula Werner has been involved in electronic monitoring since 1999. She studied maths and physics and trained at the Hessen centre for technical monitoring (Hessische Zentrale für Datenverarbeitung – HZD) as a computer programmer in the area of housing benefit. After working at Wiesbaden hospital, she returned to work for the HZD in 1999, as maanger of electronic presence monitoirng (EPK, Elektronische Präsenzkontrolle). Since 2011, she has held other roles in relation to electronic monitoring, including in the management of electronic location monitoring (EAÜ, Elektronische Aufenthaltsüberwachung) in 2011 and in the management of electronic monitoring in the criminal justice system, since 2013.