BMinister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) wants to remove paragraphs from criminal law that are no longer up-to-date in 2023. “We will systematically scour the penal code,” said Buschmann to the newspapers of the Funke media group (Saturday). “We will examine closely which criminal offenses are historically outdated. We will remove outdated penal provisions.”
An example is tearing a note off the bulletin board. This is a punishable offense under current law if it is an official announcement and is punishable by a fine or even imprisonment for up to one year. The misuse of “credit cards” is also outdated. These cards have been abolished for more than 20 years.
According to the Minister of Justice, criminal law must focus on “really” serious violations of norms. “And dead wood in the penal code obscures the view of the essentials,” says Buschmann. “If we want an efficient, strong constitutional state, then we must have the courage to shed old ballast.”
The modernization of criminal law is part of the coalition agreement of the traffic light government. It states that criminal law will be “systematically checked for manageability, legitimacy and contradictory values”, with a focus on “historically outdated criminal offenses”.
Most recently, the federal cabinet had already introduced a bill to relax the alternative prison sentence.
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