– After allegations against the correctional facilities in Augsburg-Gablingen and Nuremberg, the focus is on particularly secure detention rooms. How do the cells without dangerous objects differ from the usual detention cells?
At the end of October, a Bavarian prison made headlines. Prisoners at the Augsburg-Gablingen prison make serious allegations. Prison employees are said to have mistreated prisoners in “specially secured cells without dangerous objects”.
In November, our media company reported on allegations against the Nuremberg prison. This is also about “specially secured detention rooms”. The public prosecutor's offices are currently investigating both in Nuremberg and, in the fall, Augsburg-Gablingen.
For our Advent calendar of the true crime podcast “Abysses,” we look behind an otherwise closed door at the police and justice system every day in 24 episodes. The current episode is about the various prison cells in the Nuremberg JVA. Since the recordings took place before the allegations against Bavarian prisons, the podcast episode provided insights that would no longer be possible at the moment.
In Bavarian correctional facilities there are traditionally three different types of detention cells. In normal cells, prisoners live either alone or together with other prisoners. If they behave aggressively and thus pose a danger to fellow inmates or prison employees, they will be separated spatially. They are then housed in security detention rooms. The infamous “bunker” in prison parlance is the third type of detention cell.
There are five of these “detention rooms without dangerous objects” in Nuremberg. “It’s all about endangering yourself. We want to protect prisoners from themselves,” explains Teresa Apfelbacher, head of department at the Nuremberg prison. Inmates in exceptional psychological situations or with severe withdrawal symptoms are temporarily housed in the cells.
Teresa Apfelbacher and the head of the criminal detention department, Frank Edelmann, describe how long prisoners spend on average there and how the cells differ from normal detention rooms in the new podcast episode of the Abyss Advent Calendar.
