Geographien des Ein- und Ausschlusses: Strafvollzug und -prozesse im Kontext der Aufarbeitung von Beteiligungshandlungen im syrischen Bürgerkrieg

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic study of anti-terror trials at higher regional appeal courts in Germany, conducted in 2015–2020, this article examines the interrelation between the German penal system and criminal trials as mutually constitutive, governmentally guided, and highly secured elements of a state-induced and Islam-centred terrorism prevention. This includes the physical nature of the courthouses, as well as discourses of risk inscribed within them, which are linked to corresponding racialized and gender-rendered readings of the ‚need for custody‘. Under the auspices of a ‚new penology‘ and legitimized as an elimination of ‚state-endangering actions‘, two logics emerge in the course of these proceedings that emphasize either a ‚rectification of the reformable‘ or a ‚confinement of the incorrigible‘, illustrating how a reshaped field of crime control and criminal justice can currently be observed that makes permanent incarceration the guarantor of a promise of security.