The early legislation of Germany relative to begging and vagrancy was not greatly dissimilar in spirit from our own. Down to the sixteenth century Germany was satisfied with the mere prohibition of these practices. A Resolution of the Diet at Lindau in 1497 simply forbade vagabondage, and ordered the authorities to exercise supervision over beggars of all kinds. In 1532 Emperor Charles V., in Article 30 of his Penal Court Ordinance, similarly enjoined the authorities to "exercise vigilant oversight over beggars and vagrants," and in 1557 the Imperial Police Ordinance sanctioned the issue of begging letters to poor people for whose support local funds did not exist.
During the eighteenth century a series of decrees and regulations were issued against begging in various German States, but without suppressing it, and towards the end of the century the evil in many parts of the country had reached proportions which threatened public security.
"As late as the third quarter of the eighteenth century, and in some parts of the country until its close, the most shameless and wide-spread mendicity defied at once the severest official prohibitions and the best meant endeavour of the communes and private individuals."[59]
Then it was that the idea of the disciplinary treatment of vagrants and loafers in general took root, leading in time to the institution all over the country of special houses of detention, not inaptly called Labour Houses, for the reception of these offenders, of the work-shy of every description, and of certain other classes of people who followed a disorderly mode of life. When the Empire was established, the practice of the various States was embodied in the Imperial Penal Code, and Labour House treatment is now the recognised mode of correcting sloth, loafing, and habitual intemperance and immorality throughout Germany.
Sections 361 and 362 of the Penal Code define as follows the offences which may entail detention in a Labour House:—
"(1) Whoever wanders about as a vagabond.
"(2) Whoever begs or causes children to beg or neglects to restrain from begging such persons as are under his control and oversight and belong to his household.
"(3) Whoever is so addicted to gambling, drunkenness, or idleness that he falls into such a condition as to be compelled to seek public help himself, or for those for whose maintenance he is responsible.
"(4) Any female who is placed under police control owing to professional immorality when she acts contrary to the police regulations issued in the interest of health, public order, and public decency, or who, without being under such control, is guilty of professional immorality.
"(5) Any person who, while in receipt of public relief, refuses out of sloth to do such work suited to his strength as the authorities may offer him.
"(6) Any person who, after losing his past lodging, fails to procure another within the time allotted to him by the competent authority and who cannot prove that in spite of his best endeavours he has been unable to do so."
An Amendment of the Penal Code dated June 25, 1900, added to this list of offenders procurers and souteneurs. The law enjoins that persons convicted of misdemeanours as above may be handed over to the State police authorities after undergoing the allotted imprisonment, with a view to their further detention in Labour Houses, there to be usefully employed under strict control. Some of the Prussian Labour Houses are used, to a small extent, for the reception of youths who are taken from parental control owing to bad behaviour.
The mode of procedure under this law is very summary, but very effectual. A vagrant, a loafer, or a work-shirker falls into the hands of the policeman, who in Germany is taught to protect both the highway and the street against uses for which they were never intended. By this official he is haled before the Amtsgericht, which is a local Court of First Instance for the adjudication of petty cases. As a rule, he is sentenced to a few weeks' imprisonment, and to be afterwards handed over to the Landespolizei or State Police Authority. In effect, he is despatched to the district in which the original offence was committed. The whole of the documents in the case are passed on to the President or Prefect of this district, and it is this official who fixes the term of detention in the provincial Labour House. The maximum period is two years, but whether the man obtains discharge at the end of a shorter sentence depends entirely upon himself. If he shows distinct signs of improvement as the result of his discipline, he may be released. If not the sentence is probably prolonged for six months, or in bad cases to the maximum term, at the end of which the prisoner must unconditionally be discharged, whether reformed or not. In practice it rests entirely with the Director of the Labour House to determine whether a sentence should be prolonged or not, for though the District President nominally decides, it is on the direct representation of the Director, whose recommendation is seldom or never ignored.
Thus, the Labour House is not punitive in the technical sense; it exists for the one purpose of training the lazy and the vicious to a life of labour and industry. Labour Houses of this kind are found in almost all the States, in numbers proportionate to the population. Some of them, however, serve for large towns, as in the case of Berlin, Hamburg, and Dresden. Prussia has twenty-five Labour Houses, of which seven are for men only, two for women only, and sixteen for both sexes. The following is a list of these institutions, with the accommodation they afforded in the year 1908:—