Despite their different social systems, the prison systems of the two German states were also asymmetrically intertwined. After the end of the war, prison reforms were carried out in both East and West, and later interdependent prison inspections were conducted by the IRK. Parallel Amnesty plans failed, but the two German states competed for example to enact a prison law. In particular, the GDR rulers’ concern for world public opinion resulted in the inclusion of UN minimum standards in the regulation of prison conditions. In practice, however, only a few prominent political prisoners benefited from any kind of functionaries’ considerations.

Despite the significantly stricter conditions of detention after 1933 and the sometimes sporadic, sometimes frequent mistreatment of inmates that has also been proven for the penal system, the (juvenile) penal system (with the exception of prison camps and penitentiaries) was also considered to be a reasonably constitutional form of incarceration during the Nazi era. This is particularly true in comparison with other forms and institutions of persecution, such as police prisons and (juvenile) concentration camps. Without wishing to fundamentally question this assessment, the article draws attention to the various dangers to which prisoners were exposed in the juvenile penal system of the Nazi state. It examines the criminal biology examinations, the involvement of the juvenile penal system in the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases”, and the exclusion of prisoners from the juvenile penal system by transferring them to a prisons for adult offenders.

Youth dentention in the GDR was characterised by a high degree of physical violence among inmates. The article examines the role of the Staatssicherheit in youth prisons by the example of the „Jugendhaus Halle“, the biggest youth prison of the GDR which was established in 1971. Staff as well as the Stasi were fully aware of this grievance and did not intervene efficiently for a long time. However, in the year 1984 the Stasi started a serious attempt in order to curb violence. While the dictatorship made prisons a closed system where external interventions were almost impossible, changes could only come from within.

The essay shows that juvenile prisons have been the subject of great public interest in the 1960s and 1970s. This public attention did not only derive from politics, science and media due to reform debates in the juvenile justice system. Instead, many private individuals and associations became involved in prisons, especially in the work with young offenders. In addition, new ways of communicating with the outside world emerged for imprisoned juveniles. The article discusses the ambivalence of these reform efforts between staging and genuine change.