Older Violent Offenders Before The Court For Execution Of Prison Sentences

As much as violent offences are the beloved item of criminal novels and, the more brutal the better of the media, there is little research about this issue, when it comes to convicted offenders being in their sixties and seventies, and subjects of whether or not to be released. This article cannot present any evaluated database but must refer to common experience drawn from many individual cases mostly related to prisoners serving a life-time sentence or preventive detention. The discussion requires a distinction between a large variety of violations and will lead to the finding that every single violent offender must be closely and individually scrutinized. Nevertheless, the law provides some rules which, although they are given for every decision to be made on sentenced offenders who are to be released or to stay in penitentiary (which is, according to German law, a decision dedicated to a special Chamber of the Court), show specific implementations when applied to this group; what it does not show is pure age as a valid protective factor.