Auge um Auge

What to do with dangerous people? With men who have committed murder or abused children? And who may reoffend? They might be rehabilitated, but only perhaps. This is why preventive detention was introduced, the indefinite imprisonment – to protect society from those who could do it again.

Susan Boos speaks with experts, with those in preventive detention, and with their relatives. The renowned expert Frank Urbaniok explains how he developed his diagnostic model Fotres, which aims to determine who is truly dangerous and must remain incarcerated. Mr. Vogt shares why he cannot bear to be detained longer and would prefer to take his life with Exit. Ms. Scherer feels guilty because she believes she is partly responsible for her son being held in preventive detention as a pedophile.

Susan Boos travels through the archipelagos of preventive detention – from the Swiss system, where detainees are treated as ordinary prisoners, to Germany, where they live in special prisons, and to the Netherlands, where efforts are made to provide them with as normal a life as possible behind fences. Back in Switzerland, she learns from law professor Martino Mona why there should be no preventive detention in a rule of law and what he would do with dangerous individuals.