Preventative Detention in Germany: A Social Defense Measure

The internment of safety or the Sicherungsverwahrung is a social defense measure introduced in Germany under the law of November 23, 1933, on typical criminals. It is based on Italian positivism, as well as on the papers Stooss or von Liszt wrote in the late 19th century. Misused under the Third Reich, it returned in its original sense after the war. It was framed in the 1970s and then revised in the 1990s. Since then, its scope has gradually widened due to a series ex post facto (retroactive application) laws, which can refer to the “criminal law of the enemy.” This paper shows that this legislative upswing contributed to ideological and legal drifts, which the European Court of Human Rights put an end to in the case of “M. versus Germany” on December 17, 2009.