1. Organisation 

1.1 Head Office

The Head Office for the whole Bavarian Prison Service is in the Bavarian Ministry of Justice. There a Department "Prison Service" with altogether 25 co-workers is established. To their tasks belong the organisation of prison service, staff matters including basic and further training of the staff, the setting up and execution of the budget for all prisons, construction matters, co-operation in legislation in the domain of prison service, matters of educational and vocational training of prisoners, the employment of prisoners and also the revision of petitions and complaints.

There is no middle-level authority ("Strafvollzugsamt") established between the Ministry of Justice and the prisons. The direct contact between the head office, whose representatives are visiting and inspecting the Bavarian prisons regularly, and the prisons proved good in the past. This contact grants short ways of decision and guarantees that the ministry is close to the practice of the prison service.

1.2 Institutions of prison service

Bavaria is equipped with 36 prisons (21 independent and 15 affiliate prisons) and also 6 institutions for the short-time arresting of juveniles. For basic and further training of the prison staff the Bavarian Prison Staff Training School is established in Straubing.

1.3 Situation of Quartering

The Bavarian prisons are equipped with 11.522 quartering places.
Of them are

10.798 for male prisoners (including 779 in the open regime) and that,

7.177 of them are single-quartering places and
3.621 group-quartering places; and further

724 places for female prisoners (including 12 in the open regime), and that

443 of them are single-quartering places and
281 group-quartering places.

During the last years the actual situation of quartering in the Bavarian prisons has increased significantly. The following chart shows the development of the quartering numbers since 1991, in each year the actual state of March, 31st.:

= Quartering numbers

= Quartering places

In spite of a slow decrease for the last three years the numbers of prisoners are already on a high level. Altogether the numbers of prisoners have increased for about 23% since 1991. At the end of November 1998 the situation of quartering was highly difficult. With 12.907 prisoners the largest number of prisoners in the Bavarian Prison Service since 1948 had to be registered; only in the years directly after the second world war the numbers of prisoners had been larger.

The main reasons for this situation are the strong increase in the numbers of foreign remand prisoners and of foreign convicted prisoners since the opening of the borders to the eastern neighbourhood-countries, the increasing globalisation of heavy criminality, in particular gang- and drug-criminality and also the increase in the numbers of prisoners to be deported.
47,4% of the remand prisoners in Bavaria are citizens of foreign countries at the moment; in relation to the whole number of prisoners the amount of foreign prisoners is around 35% at the moment. On March 31^st 2002, 3.953 foreign prisoners coming from 108 different countries were imprisoned. The following chart shows the structure of nationalities of foreign prisoners on March, 31^st 2002:

The following charts show the development of the amount of foreign prisoners in the prisons of Bavaria (each year on March, 31^st):

As a result of this process, the quartering situation of the Bavarian Prison Service is extraordinary tense. The following chart shows the quartering situation on March, 31^st 2002:

According to this chart, the Bavarian prisons were over-crowded with 429 prisoners; this is equivalent to an average quartering-rate of 103,72 %. Because of the different competence of the Bavarian prisons, a inter-prison


balancing of the quartering numbers is only possible in a limited way. So the over-crowding of single prisons may exceed this average-rate in an extensive way. Because of this process, the Ministry of Justice makes great efforts to adjust the number of quartering places to the increased requirements by constructing new prisons and by enlarging of already existing prisons. Thus over 1.200 new quartering places could have been established since 1992.

Of the 11.953 imprisoned persons on March,31^st 2002 were

1.4 Competence

In a "Plan for the execution in the State of Bavaria" is fixed to which prison someone arrested or sentenced will be sent to the execution of detention on remand or for the convictional imprisonment by the competent judge respectively by the enforcement-authority (public prosecutor's office).

As a rule, detention on remand will be executed at the seat of the public prosecutor's office which is leading the lawsuit. Important prisons for detention on remand are in München (Munich, 1.501 quartering places), Nürnberg (1050 quartering places) and Augsburg (253 quartering places).

The following rules are valid for the execution of imprisonment:

Sentenced persons, who never had been imprisoned (or had been imprisoned for a maximum time of 3 months) are assigned to prisons for first-time imprisonment (Erstvollzug). Competent for the execution of sentences for a prolonged time are in

·  Northern Bavaria:
the prison of St. Georgen-Bayreuth (926 quartering places),

·  Southern Bavaria:
the prison of Landsberg am Lech (674 quartering places).

Sentenced persons with experience in imprisonment (pre-sentenced persons) will be assigned to the so-called regular-execution (Regelvollzug). Competent for the execution of sentences for a prolonged time are the prisons of Amberg (519 quartering places), Kaisheim (585 quartering places) and Bernau (812 quartering places).

Persons who are sentenced to an imprisonment for a very long time (more than 6 years, lifelong imprisonment, measure of detention for security reasons) generally are imprisoned at the prison of Straubing (845 quartering places).

Female convicted prisoners mainly are imprisoned in the prison of Aichach (439 quartering places for women). Departments for female prisoners furthermore are established in the prisons of Aschaffenburg, Bamberg, Memmingen, München, Nürnberg, Regensburg, Traunstein and Würzburg.

Sentences for juveniles are executed in the prisons of Ebrach (337 quartering places), Neuburg-Herrenwörth (204 quartering places) and Laufen-Lebenau (197 quartering places). The department for convicted female juvenile prisoners is located in the prison of Aichach (58 quartering places for juveniles).

To arrange the (adult) penal-execution also for convicted juvenile prisoners, who are taken out of the juvenile-penal-institutions (§ 92 (2) JGG), and for young convicted prisoners up to an age of 25 years according to their age and their level of development, the former prison for juveniles Niederschönenfeld (261 quartering places) had been converted into a prison for young male adults. The specially trained staff working in Niederschönenfeld who has a long standing experience in penal-execution for juveniles and the outstanding educational and vocational offers are making it possible to meet the special requirements of the young prisoners in an intensified way.

Larger hospital-departments are established e.g. in the prisons of Amberg, Munich, Nürnberg, Straubing (psychiatric), St. Georgen-Bayreuth (Tbc-, diabetics) and Würzburg (psychiatric).