How did German unification affect existing sentences for criminal convicts?
score:45
Thanks to some hints provided in the comments to my original post here, I have been able to locate some sources that answer my questions, at least on a high level:
Beginning in 1989, even before the details of political reunification were being seriously considered, the GDR granted a number of automatic amnesties. Two of these—one on 1 October 1989 and another on 6 December 1989—were targetted at specific classes of crimes, including political crimes like Republikflucht that were not recognized as such in the FRG. At the same time, the GDR also significantly loosened its rules concerning judicial review of sentences and convictions, a circumstance that many prisoners availed themselves of in order to get their sentences reduced or convictions overturned. A third amnesty in 1990, which was made in furtherance of the impending reunification, resulted in a reduction in sentences across the board. Excepted from this amnesty were "Nazi crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity, murder, and aggravated violent or sexual offences", which were also illegal in the FRG.
Together, these measures had the effect of reducing the prison population from 24,171 in November 1989 to 4375 in July 1990, with still further reductions in the days immediately before reunification. So relatively speaking, there were not all that many prisoners left when reunification took effect, and of these, it's unlikely that many (or even any) of them had been convicted for activities that weren't considered crimes in the FRG.
The third amnesty, the law for which seems to have been carried over into West German law, granted every remaining prisoner the right to have his or her conviction reviewed by an independent commission. These commissions were indeed constituted after reunification, and in about half of all cases the committee recommended clemency, conditional release, or quashing of the conviction.
Nothing I have found indicates that there was any automatic adjustment of the sentences apart from the above-noted amnesties; it seems all prisoners who wanted their sentences altered or convictions overturned had to initiate judicial review themselves, either pre- or post-unification.
I've found this information in various primary and secondary sources, though it's all briefly summarized (with references) in Corrections in the German Democratic Republic: A Field for Research by Jörg Arnold and Johannes Feest (British Journal of Criminology 35(1), 1995, pp. 81–94, DOI: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a048490).
More post
- 📝 Exactly what time of the day was the UN charter official?
- 📝 Why were some German conquered territories (eg: Poland) referred to as 'Generalgouvernement'?
- 📝 How were books published in Ancient Greece?
- 📝 Why didn't all non-Russian states become independent during the collapse of the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Identification of Aircraft, Weimar, Germany, May, 1945
- 📝 Which European monarch of the middle ages died furthest from home?
- 📝 How true to the originals are Che Guevara's published diaries?
- 📝 Was the "anti-suffragist Beresford Hope" related to Alexander Beresford Hope?
- 📝 Placard with 3 red crosses - probably WW1
- 📝 Why did the Merovingians and Pippinids adopt Christianity so fervently?
- 📝 Did the more experienced hoplites fight in the front or the back of the phalanx?
- 📝 How were ship kills accounted in WWII?
- 📝 Identifying rising sun pin WW1 or WWII
- 📝 What coin/token is this? Copper "1 1900" Rev: Austro-Hungarian arms
- 📝 Did the cost ineffectiveness the V2 and V1 rocket program actually matter to the Nazis?
- 📝 In Britain, what was the "Junior Service" in 1913?
- 📝 Where and how did scientists of the 18th and 19th century learn foreign languages?
- 📝 Did Abraham Lincoln have a duel with cannons?
- 📝 What Roman Republican legal structures lasted into the Empire and which ones didn't?
- 📝 Was there a Norse custom of "one keeps what one defends"?
- 📝 Were there any non-Afrikaner apartheid supporters in South Africa before 1994?
- 📝 Why did baseball become more popular than cricket in the USA?
- 📝 US Citizenship Prior to the 14th Amendment
- 📝 Why didn't the Japanese disbelieve (1) an unencrypted emergency and (2) a report in a captured code?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union have multiple airplane manufacturers?
- 📝 What influence did Benjamin Franklin's association with Freemasonry have on his success in France?
- 📝 What alternative locations were considered for the United Nations?
- 📝 Where did the term "Indies" come from?
- 📝 What happened to these buildings near the Seine?
- 📝 Non-voluntary deferments in WWII?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How did German unification affect existing sentences for criminal convicts?
- 📝 How did German racial laws affect people who weren't Jewish but one of their parents wasn't German?
- 📝 How did Nazi Germany produce such an impressive portfolio of officers for WW2?
- 📝 How did medieval manors handle population growth? Was there room for more fields to be ploughed?
- 📝 Historically, why did the US station their nuclear weapons in Germany for delivery through German pilots?
- 📝 Nuremberg Laws - Did they affect existing marriages between Jews and Non-Jews?
- 📝 How long did it take for a diplomat to travel between Berlin and Vienna in the 1770's?
- 📝 How did ancient empires account for slow propagation of information e.g. in their legal codes?
- 📝 What historical reasons did the Nazis give for hating the Jews? How did they identify non-practicing Jews?
- 📝 How long did it take for a letter to arrive in England in the 1830s?
- 📝 When and how did the West lose its dependency on the USSR for Titanium?
- 📝 How did people apply for university in the 18th century?
- 📝 Where and how did the allies scrounge enough food for the Soviets AND the British?
- 📝 How strong a land force did Germany need for a conquest of the British Isles in the summer of 1940?
- 📝 How did himuros operate for storing and transporting ice in Heian Japan?
- 📝 How long did it take approximately for a person to travel from Basel to Hanover (1753) by any means of transport?
- 📝 How did the English Civil War affect the American Colonies policy-wise?
- 📝 How did the Boston Tea Party protest affect the British?
- 📝 How did the KPD relate to the German state during the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?
- 📝 How did the US abolition of slavery affect the cotton exports?
- 📝 How did western saloons lock up for the night?
- 📝 How did the baking soda recipe for crack cocaine catch on?
- 📝 How common was the German desire for revenge for the humiliation of 1918 armistice?
- 📝 How did tobacco affect the English colonies economically during the 17th Century?
- 📝 How difficult was Muraviev's amassing of troops for the forcing of the Treaty of Aigun, and what effects on development did it have?
- 📝 In Mongolian Conquests, how did they screen the population for engineers?
- 📝 How did the Soviet Union officially justify the need for foreign travel and emigration restrictions?
- 📝 How did pastoral nomads keep winning battles/wars? When did the tide turn against them for settled societies?
- 📝 How did the forces required for invading Norway compare to those actually used for invading North Africa?
- 📝 How did Porfirio Diaz leave Mexico for Europe?