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Over recent decades, income, wealth, and other inequalities have widened. This matters because in practice, all people are not equal before the law. Across institutions, states punish “crimes of poverty” and use sanctions to govern people met with economic injustice. Punitiveness is part of the logic of the current political economy—but it does not have to be that way .
Germany’s plans for cannabis legalization will create a two-tiered marijuana policy, with legal access and immunity from prosecution for some, and continued criminalization for people from racialized, migrantized, and other frequently-policed groups.
Along with partners (RE)Claim/MCDS (France), Hungarian Helsinki Committee (Hungary), Justice Collective urges the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing and the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights to demand a Europe-wide stop to the criminalization of poverty, racist police practices, and debtor’s prisons.
Interviews with judges and prosecutors in Germany suggest the urgent need to rethink the punishment of low-level cases in Germany. About 500,000 low-level cases are fined in Germany per year. Courts prioritize efficiency in calculating fines, with the result that fines are often too high for people to pay. The system punishes a high volume of cases connected to poverty or other social issues that could be solved with non-punitive sanctions. Taken together, the system generates significant harm and alternative social policies must be considered.
In Lacatus v. Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights held that a Swiss law punishing begging with high fines and prison violated a person’s right to dignity because it criminalized poverty. In this briefing, we find that the punishment of poverty detailed in Lacatus is not an anomaly: Switzerland’s courts disparately sentence people with lower incomes, racialized people, and migrants. People charged face serious consequences, including prison.
Want to observe court hearings but unsure where to start?
Our new Legal Guide for Courtwatching – created in collaboration with the criminal defense law clinic Freie University Berlin – walks you through every step of the process. This guide goes beyond being a practical resource – it’s an invitation to engage in courtwatching as a form of activism.