| This dissertation explores strategies of criminal justice reform predicated upon reintegrating former offenders into German society. Between the 1880's and the early Weimar Republic, reformers promoted the idea of private "protective supervision" as an alternative to state measures of forced social exclusion. Christian charitable, organizations in particular sought ways to distinguish between salvageable and unsalvageable criminals and to guide former prisoners back into "productive, orderly lives." In contrast to the legal understanding of criminals as willing and independent lawbreakers, the Christian organizations saw the offender as weak-willed and malleable. The institutionalization of protective supervision, based upon a special relationship between the courts and the private welfare associations, helped to transform criminal justice practice during and immediately after World War I. Over the course of the Weimar Republic, the question of who would control protective supervision became a subject of major controversy, fed by growing anxieties over the "softening of criminal justice" and a crisis of social discipline.;The focus of the chapters moves between juridical issues, institutional developments, and broader cultural questions. Chapter 1 discusses social exclusionary measures against criminals in nineteenth-century German criminal policy. Chapter 2 considers how a therapeutic approach to punishment emerged around efforts to discipline vagrants, beggars, and prostitutes, a group of offenders---eventually categorized as "asocials"---who had historically been treated according to special principles. Chapter 3 looks at the movement to resettle former offenders in German colonies, and argues that the fantasy of sorting criminals according to type and placing each within a "suitable place" continued to influence criminal reform efforts long after this movement's failure on practical grounds Chapter 4 concerns the sensational case of one criminal in pre-war Germany who helped to shape popular criticism of the state's repressive methods. Chapters 6 and 7 focus upon how the war furthered a discourse of social integration in regard to former offenders. The last chapter examines the institutionalization of protective supervision during the Republic, as well as the crisis of the institution on the even of the Nazi seizure of power. |
