Fehlentscheidungen in der Justiz

Wrongful convictions are an unbearable form of injustice that still occurs in Germany today. The last empirical German studies on this issue took place in the 1950s and 1970s. This study is an up-to-date investigation of wrongful convictions in criminal cases that looks at prevalence and risk factors in order to develop strategies for avoiding such misjudgements using three approaches: First, using a meta-analysis, it systematically analyses, interprets and summarises the findings of the studies from the 1950s and 1970s. Second, it portrays the present situation in Germany by evaluating data from the Statistisches Bundesamt (Germany’s federal statistical authority) on the number of cases reopened between 2001 and 2015. Finally, the study conducts a file analysis of currently reopened cases, whose applications to be reopened were submitted to the courts in the city of Hamburg between 2003 and 2015.