Prof. Dr. Axel Dessecker
Seminar: Rehabilitation programmes in prison (Summer term 2024)
According to the law, the purpose of serving a prison sentence is "to lead a life without criminal offences in a socially responsible manner in the future" (Section 2 sentence 1 of the 1976 German Prison Act). Similar objectives apply to other custodial sanctions. The seminar will focus on the means of achieving such objectives of prison sentences, which are usually labelled with the general term "rehabilitation". It will deal primarily with practically significant rehabilitative measures from a criminological perspective and available research.
The seminar will be mostly in German. Should you be interested to present a paper in English please don't hesitate to ask.
Seminar: Legal resources in criminal law (Summer term 2023)
The seminar took up a number of topics that have recently been increasingly discussed against the background of current developments for the legal system as a whole and relates them to criminal law and its application. At the same time, "access to law" is considered a classic topic of the sociology of law. Exemplarily, it was discussed how legal resources are used, what opportunities exist for this and how successful such steps are.
Seminar (together with Dr. Sabine Hohmann-Fricke): Statistics and empirical research in criminology (Summer term 2022)
Official statistics such as those of the Federal Statistical Office and the Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany provide important information on criminological issues at regular intervals and over long periods of time. The traditional reports of the authorities have recently been supplemented by databases offered via the Internet. This results in new digital evaluation possibilities, which were partly data from empirical studies were also included, such as the nationwide recidivism study on legal probation after criminal sanctions, which is being conducted primarily at the University of Göttingen.