May be I am repeating myself but forced marriage has always been a criminal offense here in Germany under the existing code penal from 1870: section 240 “Coercion”, imprisonment up to 3 years.
A couple of years ago, section 240 subsection 4 was altered the way that “forced marriage” became an explicit “especially serious case” of coercion with imprisonment up to 5 years.
Now this: the law was changed again, they added a whole new section, same range of punishment: up to five years.
It is the same legal situation as before.
A typical political stunt; to address a problem by making tougher laws instead of actually doing something about it. It costs no money and it makes you look good in the eye of the voters who think that something is done about it, “you see we are tough on crime”.
I bet that something like 50 % of Germans will conclude that before this law reform “forced marriage” was fully legal in Germany and quite common in the neighbourhood. People have ideas!
I foresee that the policemen union will complain that the police will need more money and more personnel to do the extra job. They have a point because tough law is one thing but effective law enforcement is the key to lower crime rates.
A general observation: once a law has been made tougher, this won’t be changed again, even if after a couple of decades everything has turned back to normal and the hysteria is gone; because people got used to it and politicians who want to liberalise the penal code are not liked by voters, weak on crime nancies.
To give a counter example: 20 years ago they found out that the crime “rape” has a very high estimated number of unreported cases. What was done about it? Someone took some money to finance a special program that gives special teaching to female police officers and each police station now ought to have a female rape crime specialist that does the first talks with the rape victim and helps to save the evidence (don’t shower, don’t wash the underpants etc.).
Statistically this probably means that we have more (reported) rape crimes than before but I think the point is clear.
With regard to forced marriage, an alternative would have been to not touch the law and instead to spend some money for e.g. shelters for battered women because if you break up with your family you need a safe place to stay to make up your mind about how to carry on. Also, chances that affected women report of attempts of forced marriages against them would rise.
May be if extra social workers do home visits and talk to people and mediate and help women to get out, that would be a good idea, too. But then again, this costs money.
Ok, enough :=).
I know this is unpopular, “now they even spend our hard-earned tax money on immigrant problems”, but I you are honest about “forced marriage” as being a real problem and not only see as an additional chance to bash some muslims. then one should take a deeper look and ask what measures could be efficient.
To thoughen the law is many times just feel good politics. In a next step in estimated 10 years, the range of imprisonment for force marriages will be raised to up to 10 years.
You read it here first.
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