High Security in Prisons

After two years of construction, the Wuppertal-Ronsdorf correctional facility (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany) was handed over to the justice system in June 2011. The facility has been in full operation since February 2012. The prison has 510 places in the closed prison system (310 for juvenile offenders / 200 for young prisoners on remand), which are distributed over four detention houses in two building complexes. In addition, there are gate and administration buildings, three factory buildings with 18 workshops, a kitchen building and a sports hall on the approximately 10-hectare grounds.

The new prison hospital at Leipzig Prison (Saxony, Germany) replaces the existing prison hospital. The neighbouring listed buildings of the original detention hospital were built in 1913 and are limited by the structural possibilities. The new building will create a contemporary standard for the central medical care of prisoners. The capacity of the prison hospital will increase from 70 to 80 beds. Of these, 50 beds are allocated to psychiatry, 25 beds to somatics and 5 beds to a ward suitable for wheelchairs to accommodate elderly or disabled prisoners. The furnishings of the infirmaries largely correspond to those of regular detention rooms. The infirmary rooms offer more space to move the infirmary beds in and between the rooms. In addition to the infirmaries, an outpatient clinic with an X-ray room and two specially secured detention rooms for the accommodation of violent or suicidal prisoners will be built in the building. The construction costs for the new building are estimated at about 15.8 million euros.

The new preventive detention building was constructed on the grounds of Diez Prison (Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany). The 19.5 million euro building offers space for 64 preventive detainees. In the four-storey building with a T-shaped floor plan, they have 18 square metre rooms, each with its own bathroom and a small kitchenette. The new building became necessary due to a decision by the Federal Constitutional Court in May 2011. The practice of executing preventive detention in prison buildings, which had been common in all federal states until then, was declared unconstitutional.

The foundation stone for the new prison building in Landshut (Bavaria, Germany) with 515 places and 36 places for youth detention was laid on 22 April 2002. The first two construction phases of the new prison were completed in 2007. The third construction phase was completed in March 2010 and includes an annex for remand prisoners. The new building on the outskirts of the Lower Bavarian district capital, which cost almost 73 million euros, replaces the approximately 100-year-old detention centre in the centre of Landshut.

The Clinic for Forensic Psychiatry at LVR-Klinikum Essen (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany) has a total of 54 places. The facility is used for temporary placement in accordance with Section 126a of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Accordingly, patients are accommodated here if there are urgent reasons to believe that they have committed an unlawful act in a state of incapacity. Thus, the accommodation corresponds to a type of "pre-trial detention". The patients remain in the facility until their main hearing, after which they may be transferred to a psychiatric hospital.