ABSTRACT
What is the situation of many of the so-called ‘criminals’? Behind peep-holes, between bed and toilet, with the knowledge that they are left alone with their problems, and abandoned. Their labour they see as hard labour, their sentence seems too high and unjustified. The worst for them is to feel that they are powerless in the hands of an omnipotent system. Immediately the prisoner arrives he has to strip in front of the guards, to bow down for inspection, to clean himself and then to be dressed in the prison clothes. Inmates say that they have to leave their personality at this moment in the deposit room. Things that are important, even essential, to them are taken from them. Whatever they do, the whole day is under control and regulation. Each favour has to be requested in writing. Sentence is not only detention. The inmate is losing all right of self-determination or self-government so that he feels that finally his own life is not anymore owned by himself. Decisions are taken about him. He is accommodated in a very small room, without any possibility of privacy, surrounded by fences and walls. The inmate feels like a second-or third-class-man…
This (a close translation) is part of an article in the inmate newspaper Die Posaune (The Trombone), brought out in the prison of Geldern in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Federal Republic of Germany. It is a reflection on the prison situation. The execution of a punishment must by its nature be an evil. Yet can it, despite its destructive elements, help to solve the problems of those concerned? Does it try, as far as possible, to keep the dignity of each one afflicted by it? These are questions which have to be answered not only by the penal system as a whole, but also by each prison within it.
