For weeks, the activists of the protest group “Last Generation” have dominated the headlines: They stick themselves in museums, streets and airports – always with the aim of creating more awareness for the climate crisis.
It is disputed whether they succeed in this way, but at least they repeatedly provoke calls for harsher penalties. In England, a first activist was sentenced to six months in prison this week. In Bavaria, these are sometimes even pronounced in advance: activists were taken into preventive detention there after an action so that they could not, as announced, be stuck again.
This measure is already controversial among the interior ministers of the other federal states, and is now being tightened up again for two activists: while their families celebrate Christmas together at the end of December, two activists have to remain behind bars until January 5th. Two other activists got off a little lighter: their preventive detention ends on December 11th. All cases were heard in Munich this week.
There is criticism of preventive detention, among other things, because it is not implemented uniformly at state level. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) has already called for “uniform rules”. In Bavaria, people can be taken into preventive custody for up to 30 days in individual cases. In most other federal states, the maximum duration is much shorter. Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU), on the other hand, finds preventive detention appropriate if “someone reports to the police that they will commit another crime.”
The long preventive detention is also noteworthy, as traditionally in many federal states there is a so-called “Christmas amnesty” shortly before the holidays: Anyone who is about to be released at this point can hope to be released before the holidays. Courts and politicians are therefore fundamentally in favor of easing prison sentences around the holidays. The opposite now applies to climate activists: they will be behind bars, even though they have not committed any recent crimes.
Sources: BR24
