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Naumburg / Magdeburg (dpa / sa) - In Saxony-Anhalt, almost 470 people who were sentenced to a fine did charitable work as an alternative.
A good quarter of those convicted (26.4 percent) made use of this opportunity less than in the previous year.
In 2019 there were 637 convicts, as a spokesman for the Prosecutor General Naumburg announced.
Convicted persons can apply to the law enforcement authorities to convert a fine into community service.
As a rule, these are the public prosecutor's offices and the applicants are penniless.
"The possibilities to do community service are very diverse," said a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice. Usually these are activities in associations, municipal, state and church institutions. This ranges from work for independent charities, hospitals, old people's and nursing homes, nature conservation organizations to municipal green space or cemetery maintenance. In many municipalities, non-profit organizations are also active in promoting employment, which have set themselves the task of training, qualification and employment.
If the convicted person works, his substitute custodial sentence has expired.
The work must be free of charge and serve the public good.
According to the information, the execution of a day of detention can usually be averted by six hours of free work.
This saves the country, for example, the costs otherwise incurred for the accommodation of a person sentenced to a fine in a correctional facility.
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The decline in community service instead of imprisonment within a year is probably also a consequence of the corona pandemic, said the spokesman for the public prosecutor's office. For health and hygiene reasons, fewer substitute jobs were available than usual. The number of imprisonment days saved through community work was thus also down, at around 19,500 days last year in Saxony-Anhalt compared to 26,043 days in 2019 (minus 25, 1 percent). Overall, in 2020 the execution of a good 53 years' imprisonment was averted through charitable work.
In Saxony-Anhalt, according to the Ministry of Justice, non-profit work for convicted adults is organized by so-called Zebra specialist placement agencies.
Zebra stands for "centers for discharge assistance, counseling, rehabilitation and contact point for mediation of charitable work".
This is an association of independent agencies that deal with criminal work.
These bodies work according to a uniform concept and are supported by the Ministry of Justice, as the spokesman explained.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210428-99-380376 / 2
Criminal Code Paragraph 43 - Punishment for Indemnification