After long delays and negotiations, the rental agreement between the Hanau construction company and the state of Hesse for the establishment of a youth law building has finally been signed.

This means that the opening of the facility, which has been postponed several times, is getting closer.

The country has now set the date for the beginning of 2023.

Luise Glaser-Lotz

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Main-Kinzig district.

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The house, in which representatives of the public prosecutor's office, youth court assistance, youth welfare office and the police are supposed to look after young offenders, should actually start operating in 2019. The handover of the building permit from the city of Hanau and the public presentation of the project took place in 2018. Most recently, it was said that the opening date would fall in the fourth quarter of 2022.

When the Hanau House of Youth Law begins its work in the old town, there will be seven such houses in Hesse.

So far there are three in Frankfurt and one each in Wiesbaden, Offenbach and Kassel.

According to Justice Minister Eva Kühne-Hörmann (CDU), twelve police officers, four public prosecutors and seven youth justice workers are to work together under the umbrella of the facility in Hanau.

The state government is thus continuing its successful commitment to fighting juvenile delinquency.

The signing of the lease is an essential step for the opening of the House of Youth Law in Hanau.

Together they want to prevent young people's criminal careers early and sustainably, before they become a danger to citizens.

Work makes an impact

The specialty in Hanau is the participation of two juvenile court assistants - the city of Hanau and the Main-Kinzig-Kreis. For the first time, the focus of the work should be on the prevention of juvenile delinquency in the context of right-wing extremist currents. The aim is to educate young people and identify extreme tendencies at an early stage in order to prevent radicalization. According to Kühne-Hörmann, the Hanau actors are to receive support from the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in Frankfurt, Chief Public Prosecutor Christina Kreis. According to the plans, the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime in Hesse and the Hessian Competence Center against Extremism would also be involved.

The minister said that the work of the Houses of Youth Rights so far is effective. For example, investigations into juvenile matters fell by around 27 percent between 2010 and 2020, and the number of juveniles convicted under juvenile criminal law fell by almost half between 2009 and 2019. Finance Minister Michael Boddenberg (CDU) called the project a successful model. In the difficult development phase from child to adult, young people sometimes behave in a manner that is relevant to criminal law. In order to successfully master this difficult phase, differentiated and holistic approaches are required, as offered by the houses of youth law.

A property has been found in Hanau for this purpose, which, due to its location between the city center and the palace garden, enables a special presence in the center of the city of Hanau.

The new House of Youth Law will be located in the immediate vicinity of the places where young people are anyway.

According to Eberhard Möller, President of the Police Headquarters in Southeast Hesse, a few months are sometimes enough for very young offenders to consolidate their criminal careers.

One wants to counteract this with the houses of the youth law by an intensive approach to the perpetrators, good information work between the different carriers and quick decisions.

Sluggish development of the house

Boddenberg addressed the sluggish development of the house in Hanau. This was not easy to achieve "due to the difficult property-specific environment". There were disagreements between the construction company Hanau and the Landesbetrieb Bau und Immobilien Hessen (FAZ from September 27, 2021). The property on Schloßplatz, opposite the CPH congress center in Hanau, belongs to the municipal construction company. The 24 previous apartments were to be renovated and then used again as living space.

But then the city decided to prepare the row of houses for a youth law house and to rent it to the State of Hesse.

At the time, the construction company put the investment costs at around nine million euros.

The contract partner is the Ministry of Finance through the Landesbetrieb Bau und Immobilien Hessen.

The basis for the structural design is the “functional description of services”, which, according to the construction company, could not be obtained from the state over a long period of time in the summer.

For months, they did not know what the construction work should have looked like in detail.

Therefore, the construction company stopped the work in autumn 2020, although it was already well advanced.

Comment on the topic: A project with potential