Association of judges fears overload
Hundreds of thousands of old cannabis cases are heading towards justice
March 17, 2024, 1:23 p.m
According to a media report, after the decision to legalize cannabis, hundreds of thousands of criminal files will have to be checked. The Association of Judges is overburdening the judiciary. Health Minister Lauterbach, on the other hand, believes the problem is manageable.
According to a media report, the cannabis legalization law means that more than 210,000 criminal files nationwide have to be checked. In the most populous federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia alone, 60,000 cases (as of March 15, 2024) would have to be looked at again, as an inquiry by the “Deutsche Richterzeitung” to the state ministries of justice – or in Saxony-Anhalt the public prosecutor general’s office – showed.
The background is the amnesty regulation for old cases provided for in the law. There is criticism of this from the states and from the German Judges Association (DRB), publisher of the judges’ newspaper. They fear that the judiciary will be overburdened. Federal Drug Commissioner Burkhard Blienert, on the other hand, called on the states to pave the way for the controversial legalization of cannabis.
“For the public prosecutor’s offices, the amnesty plans specifically mean that they have to manually evaluate all criminal files relating to the Narcotics Act again to determine whether the facts in question would be unpunished under the new legal situation,” said Richterbund managing director Sven Rebehn. It must be determined whether the narcotics offense involved cannabis and what quantity was involved.
Countries can only slow down
According to the Richterzeitung survey, 34,000 procedures in Hesse have to be reviewed as a result of the amnesty regulation for old cases. There are 29,000 cases in Bavaria and 25,000 in Baden-Württemberg. In the capital Berlin, with around 3.87 million inhabitants, there are 3,500 procedures.
According to the law passed by the Bundestag, possession and cultivation of the drug, with numerous requirements, should be permitted for adults to consume themselves from April 1st. The law will come to the Federal Council on March 22nd. It doesn’t require approval there, but the state chamber could call the mediation committee and thereby slow down the process.
Imprisonment sentences or fines that have already been imposed for cannabis offenses that will no longer be punishable under the law in the future should be waived when it comes into force, or recorded convictions should be deleted from the federal central register.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach rejected the criticism from the states. The Federal Ministry of Health estimates the number of complex procedures that would need to be examined at short notice to be a maximum of 7,500 nationwide. These are cases in which criminals have been imprisoned for multiple offenses and it needs to be clarified how an amnesty affects the overall sentence. The German Association of Judges said that the lower numbers mentioned only referred to detention cases and therefore only affected a small part of the actual effort.