… about (Non-Governmental) Offender Support Service
One of the services provided by the offender support service is to help people who have committed crimes. The non-governmental offender support service is not state-run but a non-profit organisation.
Offender Support Service
There are a variety of offers for people who have come into contact with delinquency and crime in some way. These offers are either provided by the state or by non-profit organisation.
Offender support service mainly works with people who have become delinquent.
The aim of these services is to support people before, after or during court proceedings, a stay in prison and to prevent them from becoming delinquents in the first place.
Offender assistance includes
- Sozialer Dienst der Justiz (Probation Service)
- Youth Courts Assistance Service
- offender support service in prison
- Non-governmental Offender Support
Non-Governmental Offender Support Service
The non-governmental offender support service is not organised by the government. It is run by associations or welfare organisations. This means the offender support service does not operate on the state's behalf, but their clients are offenders themselves. It is independent from the judiciary.
This means that the non-governmental offender support service does not have a state mission.
Every person who has committed a criminal offence or is affected by it, as well as their relatives and support persons can contact an association for offender support.
The offender support service offers confidential and voluntary programmes for free.
Germany does not have a uniform structure.
The non-governmental offender support is organised differently from one state to the next.
These are the programmes:
- Consultation and assistance for offenders
- Debt settlement
- Alternatives to incarceration and reduction of imprisonment, for example to find an alternative to default imprisonment by working in community services
- Victim-offender-mediation (out-of-court conciliation proceedings)
- Preparations for release and/or transition management
- After-prison support
- Assistance inside and outside of prison for relatives
- Leisure activities for prisoners
- Social training programmes, for example anger management courses
- Addiction counselling for prisoners and ex-prisoners
- Voluntary work programmes for many of the above mentioned fields
Non-Governmental Offender Support Service in Saxony-Anhalt
For more information (sources)
- Bukowski/Nickolai (2018): Soziale Arbeit in der Straffälligenhilfe. Kohlhammer GmbH, Stuttgart
- Kawamura-Reindl/Schneider (2015): Lehrbuch Soziale Arbeit mit Straffälligen. Beltz Juventa. Wienheim und Basel