Germany’s Merkel Backs Strict Youth Offender Measures

BERLIN (AP) – German Chancellor Merkel voiced support for introducing boot camps and other new measures against young offenders, according to comments released Friday as her conservative party geared up for state elections.

Merkel pointed to offenses committed by young immigrants as a problem, the Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported, defending a senior ally who has drawn sharp criticism for raising the issue as he seeks re-election.

Hesse state governor Roland Koch has made youth crime, particularly that committed by young immigrants, a major issue in his campaign for a Jan. 27 state election following a brutal attack by a Turkish and a Greek youth in Munich on a German retiree.

Last week, Koch declared that “we have too many criminal young foreigners” and said that “zero tolerance against violence” must be a key part of integration policy.

Koch has drawn loud criticism from the center-left Social Democrats, with whom Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union shares power nationally.

However, other Christian Democratic Union officials followed up by urging tougher measures against young offenders in general – including boot camp-like institutions for the toughest cases, and a so-called “warning-shot arrest” system under which offenders might be kept behind bars for a few weeks as a deterrent.

“I think a ‘warning-shot arrest’ and boot camps certainly could be a sensible complement to criminal law,” Merkel told Bild am Sonntag, according to a preview of an interview to be published in full Sunday, arguing that “they could make young people rethink.”

A short period behind bars, together with a probation sentence, “is better than degenerating ever further as a serial offender who later gets a long prison sentence,” she was quoted as saying.

Merkel urged the Social Democrats, who have questioned the need for tougher laws, to discuss such measures, Bild am Sonntag reported.

The party “cannot close its eyes to the fact that 43% of all violent crimes in Germany are committed by people under 21 and, of those, nearly half by foreign youths,” the chancellor was quoted as saying.

Koch is one of two top Christian Democratic Union figures seeking re-election in regional votes on Jan. 27, along with governor Christian Wulff of Lower Saxony. A third conservative-run state, Hamburg, votes in February.