2022/09/30 by Marcel Streng · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #European history and politics #Psychoanalysis and Social Critique #Sociology and Education Studies
paper · doi:10.13109/gege.2022.48.2.220
openalex publication_date 2022/09/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
The article compares the concepts of prison labor in West and East German prison laws and penological discourses in the 1970s and 1980s and explores changes in the government of the prison system during this period. In the West German case, the meaning of prison work became more differentiated through processes of educationalization and therapeutization. Relations and conduct in prison were built less on authoritarianism, and group dynamics became the most important pedagogicaltherapeutic governmental technique. Legal guidelines and penological discourse in East Germany, on the other hand, were fixed on the concept of collective education through labor. Correctional strategies gave prisoners very little autonomy.