"Vorbeugungshaft"

Text typed with typewriter: State Criminal Police Criminal Investigation Department Krim. Inspekt. Vorb. 3, Index: Richter 3735 K.6.42, Berlin C 2, May 18, 1942, Dircksenstrasse 14, Postmark: criminal prison Tegel in Berlin May 20, 1942, To the Director of the Berlin-Tegel Prison. Subject: (deadname blackened) Richter, born Sept. 24, 1907 Lichterfelde, Reference: none, It is planned to take Richter into Vorbeugungshaft (preventive police custody). I therefore request that he not be released after serving his sentence, but be returned to the Berlin Police Prison for the Preventive Criminal Investigation Department by means of collective transportation. At the same time, I request that you use the enclosed form to report on his behaviour in the prison. Please return both forms to me. If he has been transferred to another prison, please send this letter there. Please confirm your receipt of the letter and inform me of the expected date of release. By order Signature.

_Richters preventive imprisonment warrant

_Richter

Content Warning: This text discusses murder.

This "Vorbeugungshaftbefehl" (preventive arrest warrant) was issued by the Berlin criminal police's "Kriminalinspektion Vorbeugung" (Criminal Inspectorate Prevention), shortly before house servant _Richters release from Berlin Tegel prison on May 18th 1942. They had been in prison because they had been found guilty of Section 175 of the criminal code. Even if the prison staff at Berlin Tegel saw no reason to continue to imprison _Richter, Kriminalinspektion Vorbeugung was of a different opinion. _Richter was further arrested, this time in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Less than three months later, on July 28, they were murdered by the SS in a killing operation targeting internees who were understood to be homosexual in the clinker factory of Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

“Vorbeugungshaft” (preventive imprisonment) was an instrument of the criminal police under Nazi rule. Through it, the criminal police was able to imprison people without a court order and for an indefinite period of time, often in a concentration camp. “Vorbeugungshaft” operated in a legal vacuum because no legal steps could be taken against it. Most often it was used when a person was expected to be released from prison after serving a sentence, for example as a result of a court case. If Kriminalinspektion Vorbeugung deemed a person to be a threat to public safety or not be living in accordance with Nazi ideology, that person was immediately arrested again.