Abstract:
From 2006 to 2011 two co-ordinated research teams from the University of Tuebingen and the University of Marburg were intensely studying the Youth Correctional System of the German Federal State of Hesse. The research was concentrated on young male inmates from roughly 14 to 25 years of age, and dealt particularly with the acceptance of educational and treatment measures, their consequences after youth prison release, and the extent and structure of the former inmates´ recidivism, in terms of new convictions resp. penal sentences. The qualitative part of the project (Marburg team) administered semi-structured interviews at the beginning, near the end, and after the release of the young offenders. The researchers asked e. g. for the individual evaluation of the experienced measures, for personality development, social competency, everyday life structure after release in society, and for experiences with the parole service. In addition, prison and probation officers were asked for their impressions. The quantitative part of the project (Tuebingen team) was dealing with two full cohorts of releases, one for the year 2003, the other for the year 2006. Based on administrative documents of the Youth Prisons, and on records of the national criminal registry, the official criminal history of all ex-inmates until their release, and during their individualized terms of exactly three years post-release, was scrutinized and analysed under structural and longitudinal perspectives. Former reports had been delivered to the Hessian Ministry of Justice, and were made afterwards available to interested persons and institutions. With this volume, the Tuebingen team is presenting a thoroughly controlled new edition of the quantitative study results, with some revisions of resp. amendments to the text, and with additions of hitherto published relevant literature. In the companion volume (“Materialienband”= No. 41) to this TüKrim Series additional explanations, tables and figures are being presented.