Research

The focus of research is on life in prison and other forms of detention, penal sanctions depriving of liberty, restorative justice and victimology, juvenile justice, criminology and state crime.

Deprivation of liberty

Long-term Imprisonment and the Issue of Human Rights in Member States of the European Union. The project has been started at the University of Greifswald and was funded by the EU from 2007-2009 funded by the EU. With an international group of researchers (from DE: Manuela Dudeck, Frieder Dünkel and Kirstin Drenkhahn), we investigate living conditions in eleven countries of prisoners are serving sentences of at least five years of imprisonment or secure preventive detention (project outline as pdf). The final report has been published by Routledge in July 2014 (order here).
Psychological distress in prisoners(spin-off of the project on long-term imprisonment, with Manuela Dudeck). We are currently developing a screening tool for psychological distress in prisoners under the direction of Manuela Dudeck and Gabriele Franke. The project has already yielded several publications (see Publications).
Using telephones in prison - implication of prisoners' using telephones for private calls (Jan Fährmann, doctoral thesis).

Secure preventive detention after the decisions of the Eurorpean Court of Human Rights since 2009 and recent decisions of the German Federal Constitutional Court (with Christine Morgenstern, several publications).
Commentary on ss. 66, 66b and 66c of the German Criminal Code for the 3nd edition of the Münchener Kommentar zum Strafgesetzbuch (with Christine Morgenstern and Thomas Ullenbruch, published 2016).

Restorative Justice in the prison environment.
The role of the community in criminal justice in the PR China and in Germany (Juan Du, doctoral thesis).
LGBTI people as victims of hate crimes in Germany, Israel and Post-Soviet World (Oleh Vovk, doctoral thesis in the Human Rights Under Pressure Programme)

Commentary on the Youth Prison Acts of the federal states, areas: open institutions, transfer, social-therapeutic institutions, evaluation/research (directors: Kirstin Drenkhahn, Frieder Dünkel, Jochen Goerdeler and Philip Walkenhorst).
Comitting offences in youth prison: The obligation of disclosure of the prison governor in jurisprudence, prison research and practice (Alexandra Schwan, doctoral thesis).
Contacts with the outside world in youth prisons: sexuality and long undersupervised visits (Julian Knop, doctoral thesis).
Parental rights - Inclusion of parents of juvenile prisoners in sentence planning (Johanna Schmid, doctoral thesis)
Unaccompanied child refugees (Julia Wegner, doctoral thesis)

In "Punitiveness in Comparison" (with Tobias Singelnstein, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Fabien Jobard, Centre Marc Bloch Berlin/CNRS Paris, Laurent Bègue and Oulmann Zerhouni, Université Grenoble-Alpes, Laboratoire InterUniversitaire de Psychologie) we study attitudes towards punishment in general populations and among judges and prosecutors in Germany and France. The project is financially supported by the French Ministry of Justice.
This project is integrated in the larger project on "Penal Cultures on the Continent - France and Germany in Comparison" with Tobias Singelnstein, Fabien Jobard, Nicolas Hubé (Université Paris 1 Panthéon - Sorbonne) und Mathilde Darley (CNRS/Cesdip) where we studies the production of criminal law and the discourse on punishment.

Mainstreaming crimes of the state within criminology (with Dawn Rothe, Wolfgang Form andElmar Weitekamp): research meeting in Norfolk/Virginia, 2014; State crime study days and workshop in Berlin, 2015; Summer course for Masters and doctoral students at Philipps-University, Marburg on "State Crime: Crimes of the Powerful" (June 2016); Summer course for Masters and doctoral students at the Freie Universität Berlin on "State Crime: Crimes of the Powerful" (June 2018)
Thematic issue on international criminal law/criminology for the Archivs des Völkerrechts (with Sigrid Boysen, fall 2016)
Development of security technologies and related policies (Joseph Farha, doctoral thesis in the Human Rights Under Pressure Programme)