This is is a state law, not a federal one. As far as I understand it is limited to 2 months. Just a clarification, not a justification. It was a somewhat controversial law, and I think those cases clearly show why. Those laws always get justified with terrorism, and now they're jailing people that block traffic.
I don't think such laws should exist, and we should do better there. Unfortunately I don't expect that with the Bavarian politic landscape this will happen on the legislative way.
Also might be worth mentioning that the Bavarian state police law that these arrests are based on is actively challenged in court and there arrests could become part of that case.
I can't be alone in thinking that jailing people who obstruct traffic and jailing people who we believe intend to obstruct traffic are two totally different matters.
Usually that believe stems from the fact that those people explicitly announced they would do it again. And again. After being sentenced. In front of a judge.
Hasn't Germany ratified the European Convention on Human Rights? Those are definitely breaching the above and could easily be considered as fascist laws. This should be a fairly easy trial.
I do believe it is reasonable to hold repeat offenders. And I hope this law will be upheld when tried. These people do not understand democratic dialogue and so I have no pity for them.
It's kinda funny to me when I see the police drag protesters away from these industrial sights that they occupy. Because if we are to believe climate research then some of these industries are literally damaging the living space for all humans. In some cases the police should be hauling the exeutives away, not the protestors.
But the regular police can't be expected to do such deep investigations based on scientific data, so instead they end up protecting the interests of large corporations by hauling regular concerned citizens away. It's quite a bizarre state of events.
Yeah, well life is not so simple. Everyone would like to see a green energy transition, but we still need energy to power our everyday life and we need it also at a reasonable price. Protesting without providing alternatives is futile and counter-productive.
>Protesting without providing alternatives is futile and counter-productive.
I hear what you're saying, but please don't say that. The alternative is to just accept unchecked capitalism destroying our environment. So no, protesting is not futile and counter-productive. It's absolutely necessary to ensure that people remember what we're trying to change, while we change it.
> Protesting without providing alternatives is futile and counter-productive.
Alternatives are suggested but they are largely ignored, postponed to the next legislation, criticized (with no scientific evidence) and finally hijacked by fake environmentalist who are just creating disinformation for their own interest/agenda
Last I checked a car industry expo is not against the law. Disrupting or legitimately threatening a lawful activity is. These people are properly in custody and serving their cause by generating less CO2 in the process.
Seems you're missing the point of the comment you're replying to. You are focused on it presently being legal when the question is, "Should it be legal?"
That's their job. Police exist as armed enforcement of the status quo, and the status quo is that rich people make the rules and everybody else suffers the consequences.
I think sweeping statements like this might seem fair in the context of this article, but are actually harmful to democracy.
A fundamental right in liberal societies, for better or worse, is that of property rights. Yes, some people have a large amount of property so police will try to protect that large amount of property, but the police will also protect your property. More generally, police will protect you if you someone tries to physically attack you. We shouldn’t take this for granted since autocratic regimes care much less about these principles and will take away your property or physically harm you if they feel like it.
That’s very concerning. This bill came to life to prevent terrorist attacks like 9/11 but is now being abused in bavaria to jail climate protesters who could disturb the biggest automotive fair in the world.
The law is garbage and needs to go. I'm not defending it in the slightest.
Tangentially, saying "everyone warned this would happen" as a criticism of something is almost always hindsight bias or survivorship bias. There are plenty of things that "everyone" says will happen that never happen and for the ones that do happen, "everyone" tends to overstate how certain they were about it being the only possible outcome.
What is the value of everyone here wrt to voters? It makes you wonder what other policies the politicians who championed the "jail you for any reason under the guise of terrorism" policy also advocated for to get people to vote for them.
Specifically: in Bavaria. Which is, of course, in Germany, but also a bit of a "state within a state", ruled by one party (the CSU) since the beginning of time, er, of the Federal Republic of Germany, and where things like this, which would cause much more outrage elsewhere, can and do happen.
The Danish Church is allowed to veto buildings of wind turbines if they were within the 28x the height of the turbine. This is quite a long distance if you consider the 160m tall 14MW Siemens (though I think that may be offshore only).
There are more than 2000 churches in Denmark. Only the minister of the interior could override that veto.
On the face of it, this sounds very bad. I can't find confirmation that this is happening outside of the statements of the "letzte generation" group itself [1], and the article states as much.
The statement from the Munich police [2] says that protesters were taken into custody for their acts, namely blockading traffic. The length of the detention was apparently extended by the district court, but the statement does not give a reason for it. Presumably it's connected to the belief that they will continue to carry out similar acts if released.
I'm a bit conflicted here; if someone is being detained pre-trial for a crime, then "they are going to crime again" is a totally valid reason to hold them without bail pending trial. But it's not clear whether that is what is happening here.
Although I am writing from a US perspective, I don't think I'm saying anything that is really specific to US law; this is more my general feelings around the limitations of police authority and how it intersects with civil liberties.
I don't know if my understanding is correct, but I can't find direct evidence that the "preventative detention" law is actually being applied here -- I don't see any evidence of stormtroopers raiding people's houses and taking them into custody; just people who have already committed (minor) crimes being detained past the point of what some people would consider reasonable.
> The length of the detention was apparently extended by the district court, but the statement does not give a reason for it.
I don't think that that's what happened. The newspiece states quite clearly that the suspects were kept in jail as a preventative measure, in complete accordance with Germany's regional law.
The controversial part was that arguably the length of the preventive jail stay contrasts with the jail terms that the suspects are facing, and other regional courts determined shorter preventive jail terms.
I think that this is an issue where the court had to draw a line in the sand within the boundaries specified by the law. The court had a group of people known for conducting criminal acts and determined that the likelihood that they would continue their criminal activity if they would be released was almost certain. The court had to make a call, and had to choose between being responsible for allowing criminals to repeat their crimes, or ensure they wouldn't by keeping them in preventive jail.
> Diese Form des Freiheitsentzuges ist umso problematischer, da den Protestierenden, sollten sie für eine Blockade verurteilt werden, keine Haft droht. Die entsprechenden Verfahren enden regelmäßig lediglich mit Geldstrafen.
The crime they might have committed usually doesn't even result in jail time, only fines. Hence why such long detention seems especially unjustified.
I find it less clear what exactly the article is alleging.
It refers to a police practice, and says that a judge can extend it further, but the press release says that the police did not apply this practice. And no information is given about what the substance of the district court's decision was.
But all that said, my initial read on the article, "put a total of 27 supporters of the group in prison" is that the police are grabbing innocent people and putting them in preventative detention, but that does not appear to be supported by the article. Rather they are being held for minor crimes (which I don't think anyone is contesting that they committed) and being kept there (the article says "prison" but I don't know whether Germany has the same distinction at the US between prison and jail/pre-trial detention).
> I'm a bit conflicted here; if someone is being detained pre-trial for a crime, then "they are going to crime again" is a totally valid reason to hold them without bail pending trial. But it's not clear whether that is what is happening here.
Not a lawyer, but doesn't this depend on whether or not it is a violent crime? Someone who may murder again should be treated differently than someone who may shoplift again.
Not speaking to law, but in principle this seems like a case-by-case decision that (in the US) I would expect a judge to make. I would expect a competent judge to weigh the societal cost of the crime vs the probability of re-committing it vs the rights of the accused to a presumption of innocence.
For violent crimes it swings pretty hard on the societal cost of the crime (but maybe be mitigated if the crime was one of passion or if the motive was clear and not likely to result in a re-commission).
For jaywalking it swings pretty hard in the other direction.
For crimes where there is a victim but no violence, it would depend on the specifics of the case in question.
Asking because my context as an American may not apply: If an American were jailed for the maximum 60 days, then they would almost certainly be fired from their job for non-attendance and become 30+ days late on all of their bills since you cannot pay bills from jail. This includes car payments and/or rent, which can result in repossession/eviction proceedings being filed.
Is the situation for short-term prisoners similar in Germany?
Your employer is not allowed to fire you if are in jail for less than 2 years. You also can't evict someone from their home because of jail. And the government might be paying your landlord for your time in jail as well (depending on the time etc.). It's complicated, but basically, Up to 6 months, all fine on all ends.
Germans don't have car payments usually. They pay for the car in cash, if they don't have enough, they buy a smaller car :)
"In Germany, while customers purchase 50 percent of stock cars through financing, they buy 35 percent via lease-based products and additional services."
Well that just sounds like taking a relaxing 6-month vacation from work while the law-abiding taxpayers pay your rent. Meanwhile, your employer and landlord are forced by the government to accept the employment and housing of someone with a criminal history?
I'm usually all for protecting the little guy over the corporate entity, but that sounds like n awful deal for everyone involved except the criminal.
It's complicated, and the law leaves a lot of wiggle room. In principle, it can be a valid reason to end an employment relationship from the employer side if someone is unable to perform their work due to being in jail. However there's a lot of hoops to jump through for the employer - the absence has to be of "significant length", the employer has to be able to show they deeply looked into it when they came to this conclusion, they need to consult with the employee on it, they may have to look into alternative solutions to fill the gap, etc. As a guideline, if the absence is expected to be two years or longer, much of this is no longer expected by the employer.
I think most employers would not get away with firing someone in this case.
That right can be waived to give the defense time to prepare, and it isn't always enforced for non-citizens detained abroad (e.g. Guantanamo), but I'm unaware of anything similar to the article happening in the US.
I'm referring to the maximum length of detention under the German law being used (if I'm reading things right). I am aware that the US has some pretty serious problems that are at least somewhat related, but I'm trying not to digress into that.
It seems that GP has deleted their comment before anyone else could reply.
I'll report it here, verbatim, as i still have it open in another tab:
-----
Are you talking about US citizens?
I'm unaware of that in any recent decades, and I assume you're talking about recent history.
More complicated cases take longer to prepare for trial, but can you point to a single example of a US citizen jailed for political purposes where their trial has clearly been delayed for political reasons?
"and become 30+ days late on all of their bills since you cannot pay bills from jail"
Do Americans have to authorize all their recurring payments every month again and again? I certainly never paid such bills "one by one"; I set up a regular monthly payment and it would be done automatically on the Nth day of a month.
60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, so this wouldn't matter. If they're not making money in jail they can't pay their rent, even if they have autopay set up.
Some people choose not to set up automatic payments, and the percentage of people who are living paycheck to paycheck or nearly so is high enough that, even among those who do, probably a significant percentage would see the second month's payments fail if they were set up using a bank draft or debit card rather than a credit card.
Some bills can't be autopaid either easily or at all, particularly utility bills. For those that can be autopaid, many people don't have them on autopay because of potential disruptions when living paycheck-to-paycheck. If you have to choose between food and rent, you better not have the rent on autopay, or you've accidentally made your choice.
> become 30+ days late on all of their bills since you cannot pay bills from jail
can't americans bind the utilities to their checking account? i (european) can do that. the bills are paid automatically from my balance (the same where i receive my salary). the web portal from my bank can lists all the entities allowed to pay bills from my balance, and i can revoke any of them unilaterally (in that case i'd have to go back to pay the bills one by one, manually).
They can but that's generally not the problem. You aren't getting paid while you're in jail, so those payments are likely to bounce (Americans often live paycheck to paycheck).
Most payments are done using SEPA mandates. The money automatically leaves your account, but you still get a piece of paper with the details.
I don’t remember paying a single bill manually for the past 3 years at least. Credit card is paid in full at the end of the month as well automatically.
Which all comes grinding to a halt pretty quickly when you stop getting paid because you're in jail.
I'm not sure about Germany specifically, but in the US the vast majority of people live paycheck-to-paycheck regardless of income bracket. Most are 2 weeks away from starting to have failing bill payments.
Do you really pay you bills manually each month? When regular payments (like rent) are not debited directly from my account, I set up an auto transfer that sends out rent to my landlord at the 1st day of each month.
Personally, I have everything automated. Including one incredibly dumb thing: I have to pay my homeowners' association dues (I live in a small condo building, so we have shared expenses) by check, so I have my bank mail a check to their bank. It's incredibly dumb that I can't easily set up an automated electronic bank transfer, but at least I can automate mailing a paper check.
US government agencies can also be annoying about this. For example, the city/county of San Francisco does not offer a way to automatically pay property taxes, which are billed twice a year. (My mortgage lender pays mine for me via an escrow account that gets funded along with my automatic monthly mortgage payment.)
But a lot of people in the US are un- or under-banked, and don't always have access to automation, if the people/orgs they have to pay support any kind of automation at all. Many landlords (especially those who cater to lower-income folks) will only accept cash or check. Many people who have to pay them don't have an online bill-pay system. And even many who could automate things, don't, because their finances are precarious enough that they will sometimes choose to skip a credit card payment, or pay their rent late, etc., and they'll make these decisions month-to-month.
If many people in the US were in jail for two months, after the first month (of not working, thus not getting paid) they wouldn't have enough money in their bank account to cover all their monthly bills. An unfortunate amount of people here live paycheck-to-paycheck.
Also consider that there's a lot of overlap between people who have unstable finances and people who are more likely to get caught up in the justice system, regardless of their innocence or guilt.
It is almost impossible to fire long term employees in Germany. But getting proper employment is very difficult for this reason. Most people are on yearly contracts, part time jobs etc...
This is just false, plain and simple. I’ll just take one of your statements and refute it, because the other parts are so broad and generalizing that you’ll just come around and make other shit up:
Absolutely untrue. Source: was fired from indefinite employment contract in Germany. If they hate you and start throwing at you Abmahnung, Aufhebung, and Kundigung, you need a lawyer immediately and the pile of papers and letters starts growing exponentially.
I want to believe that there was a "specific action". An explicit announcement to block a road / airport / whatever.
Unfortunately, it is cheaper for the gonvernment to detain people than to send police to prevent it shortly before it is going to happen.
Also, the ruling party in Bavaria is mainly controlled by the opinions people exchange in pubs over a couple of beers (one beer being a quarter gallon), and there common sense isn't considered that much.
No art has been destroyed, it all sits behind glass so it's just a matter of cleaning/replacing the frame for the painting. And much as I love art, I think throwing food or paint at it is a good reminder that while you can make more art you can't bring back lost species or ecosystems.
If anyone LSO/LG have earned the "reputation" for destructive or disrupting stunts
I actually do think they're indirectly being financed by the oil industry (LSO head figures go around in private jets) to antagonize and create a bad (but not unrealistic) caricature of the climate protestors. And of course there's plenty of people willing to play the roles
Greta looks like the serious grownup compared to LSO
Readit News
I don't think such laws should exist, and we should do better there. Unfortunately I don't expect that with the Bavarian politic landscape this will happen on the legislative way.
https://www.merkur.de/deutschland/kleber-aktivisten-letzte-g...
Dead Comment
But the regular police can't be expected to do such deep investigations based on scientific data, so instead they end up protecting the interests of large corporations by hauling regular concerned citizens away. It's quite a bizarre state of events.
I hear what you're saying, but please don't say that. The alternative is to just accept unchecked capitalism destroying our environment. So no, protesting is not futile and counter-productive. It's absolutely necessary to ensure that people remember what we're trying to change, while we change it.
Alternatives are suggested but they are largely ignored, postponed to the next legislation, criticized (with no scientific evidence) and finally hijacked by fake environmentalist who are just creating disinformation for their own interest/agenda
Seems like a win-win.
A fundamental right in liberal societies, for better or worse, is that of property rights. Yes, some people have a large amount of property so police will try to protect that large amount of property, but the police will also protect your property. More generally, police will protect you if you someone tries to physically attack you. We shouldn’t take this for granted since autocratic regimes care much less about these principles and will take away your property or physically harm you if they feel like it.
Sometimes they do protect people, but that is typically an exception
Tangentially, saying "everyone warned this would happen" as a criticism of something is almost always hindsight bias or survivorship bias. There are plenty of things that "everyone" says will happen that never happen and for the ones that do happen, "everyone" tends to overstate how certain they were about it being the only possible outcome.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/dozens-face-rico-charges-over-...
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-over-60-stop-cop-city...
EDIT: I'm being downvoted for this? They literally have total police surveillance, all the Germans here in Hamburg talk about it all the time
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
There are more than 2000 churches in Denmark. Only the minister of the interior could override that veto.
The statement from the Munich police [2] says that protesters were taken into custody for their acts, namely blockading traffic. The length of the detention was apparently extended by the district court, but the statement does not give a reason for it. Presumably it's connected to the belief that they will continue to carry out similar acts if released.
I'm a bit conflicted here; if someone is being detained pre-trial for a crime, then "they are going to crime again" is a totally valid reason to hold them without bail pending trial. But it's not clear whether that is what is happening here.
Although I am writing from a US perspective, I don't think I'm saying anything that is really specific to US law; this is more my general feelings around the limitations of police authority and how it intersects with civil liberties.
I don't know if my understanding is correct, but I can't find direct evidence that the "preventative detention" law is actually being applied here -- I don't see any evidence of stormtroopers raiding people's houses and taking them into custody; just people who have already committed (minor) crimes being detained past the point of what some people would consider reasonable.
[1] https://letztegeneration.org/blog/2023/09/liebe-und-wut-brie...
[2] https://www.polizei.bayern.de/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/0...
I don't think that that's what happened. The newspiece states quite clearly that the suspects were kept in jail as a preventative measure, in complete accordance with Germany's regional law.
The controversial part was that arguably the length of the preventive jail stay contrasts with the jail terms that the suspects are facing, and other regional courts determined shorter preventive jail terms.
I think that this is an issue where the court had to draw a line in the sand within the boundaries specified by the law. The court had a group of people known for conducting criminal acts and determined that the likelihood that they would continue their criminal activity if they would be released was almost certain. The court had to make a call, and had to choose between being responsible for allowing criminals to repeat their crimes, or ensure they wouldn't by keeping them in preventive jail.
> Diese Form des Freiheitsentzuges ist umso problematischer, da den Protestierenden, sollten sie für eine Blockade verurteilt werden, keine Haft droht. Die entsprechenden Verfahren enden regelmäßig lediglich mit Geldstrafen.
The crime they might have committed usually doesn't even result in jail time, only fines. Hence why such long detention seems especially unjustified.
It refers to a police practice, and says that a judge can extend it further, but the press release says that the police did not apply this practice. And no information is given about what the substance of the district court's decision was.
But all that said, my initial read on the article, "put a total of 27 supporters of the group in prison" is that the police are grabbing innocent people and putting them in preventative detention, but that does not appear to be supported by the article. Rather they are being held for minor crimes (which I don't think anyone is contesting that they committed) and being kept there (the article says "prison" but I don't know whether Germany has the same distinction at the US between prison and jail/pre-trial detention).
Not a lawyer, but doesn't this depend on whether or not it is a violent crime? Someone who may murder again should be treated differently than someone who may shoplift again.
For violent crimes it swings pretty hard on the societal cost of the crime (but maybe be mitigated if the crime was one of passion or if the motive was clear and not likely to result in a re-commission).
For jaywalking it swings pretty hard in the other direction.
For crimes where there is a victim but no violence, it would depend on the specifics of the case in question.
Is the situation for short-term prisoners similar in Germany?
Germans don't have car payments usually. They pay for the car in cash, if they don't have enough, they buy a smaller car :)
[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1065113/umfra....
They do actually :-)
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/...
"In Germany, while customers purchase 50 percent of stock cars through financing, they buy 35 percent via lease-based products and additional services."
There's a lot of leasing.
I'm usually all for protecting the little guy over the corporate entity, but that sounds like n awful deal for everyone involved except the criminal.
I think most employers would not get away with firing someone in this case.
In the US, political prisoners have been jailed for years without trial. 60 days would be a major respite.
That right can be waived to give the defense time to prepare, and it isn't always enforced for non-citizens detained abroad (e.g. Guantanamo), but I'm unaware of anything similar to the article happening in the US.
I'll report it here, verbatim, as i still have it open in another tab:
-----
Are you talking about US citizens?
I'm unaware of that in any recent decades, and I assume you're talking about recent history.
More complicated cases take longer to prepare for trial, but can you point to a single example of a US citizen jailed for political purposes where their trial has clearly been delayed for political reasons?
-----
and here is what i wanted to reply:
> I'm unaware of that in any recent decades
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuAAPsiD768 - " The secret US prisons you've never heard of before | Will Potter"
Deleted Comment
Do Americans have to authorize all their recurring payments every month again and again? I certainly never paid such bills "one by one"; I set up a regular monthly payment and it would be done automatically on the Nth day of a month.
https://ir.lendingclub.com/news/news-details/2023/60-of-Amer...
can't americans bind the utilities to their checking account? i (european) can do that. the bills are paid automatically from my balance (the same where i receive my salary). the web portal from my bank can lists all the entities allowed to pay bills from my balance, and i can revoke any of them unilaterally (in that case i'd have to go back to pay the bills one by one, manually).
I don’t remember paying a single bill manually for the past 3 years at least. Credit card is paid in full at the end of the month as well automatically.
I'm not sure about Germany specifically, but in the US the vast majority of people live paycheck-to-paycheck regardless of income bracket. Most are 2 weeks away from starting to have failing bill payments.
How does this work in the US?
Personally, I have everything automated. Including one incredibly dumb thing: I have to pay my homeowners' association dues (I live in a small condo building, so we have shared expenses) by check, so I have my bank mail a check to their bank. It's incredibly dumb that I can't easily set up an automated electronic bank transfer, but at least I can automate mailing a paper check.
US government agencies can also be annoying about this. For example, the city/county of San Francisco does not offer a way to automatically pay property taxes, which are billed twice a year. (My mortgage lender pays mine for me via an escrow account that gets funded along with my automatic monthly mortgage payment.)
But a lot of people in the US are un- or under-banked, and don't always have access to automation, if the people/orgs they have to pay support any kind of automation at all. Many landlords (especially those who cater to lower-income folks) will only accept cash or check. Many people who have to pay them don't have an online bill-pay system. And even many who could automate things, don't, because their finances are precarious enough that they will sometimes choose to skip a credit card payment, or pay their rent late, etc., and they'll make these decisions month-to-month.
If many people in the US were in jail for two months, after the first month (of not working, thus not getting paid) they wouldn't have enough money in their bank account to cover all their monthly bills. An unfortunate amount of people here live paycheck-to-paycheck.
Also consider that there's a lot of overlap between people who have unstable finances and people who are more likely to get caught up in the justice system, regardless of their innocence or guilt.
Deleted Comment
The share of part-time employment in Germany was 7.4% of all employment contracts in 2021. Nothing significant changed since then. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Arbeit/Arbeitsmarkt/Qualit...
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Probably none of those kids have a Job, so no worries.
Unfortunately, it is cheaper for the gonvernment to detain people than to send police to prevent it shortly before it is going to happen.
Also, the ruling party in Bavaria is mainly controlled by the opinions people exchange in pubs over a couple of beers (one beer being a quarter gallon), and there common sense isn't considered that much.
I actually do think they're indirectly being financed by the oil industry (LSO head figures go around in private jets) to antagonize and create a bad (but not unrealistic) caricature of the climate protestors. And of course there's plenty of people willing to play the roles
Greta looks like the serious grownup compared to LSO