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Photo: h9images / imago images / Panthermedia
High prison walls are no obstacle for them: With drones, cell phones, drugs and weapons can be smuggled into prisons, the situation can be scouted out or videos and photos can simply be taken without permission.
Figures show that these dangers are real.
In the most populous federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, ten drone flights were sighted over prisons in 2021, twice as many as in the previous year, as the Ministry of Justice announced at the request of the dpa news agency.
In Lower Saxony, the penal institutions counted nine approaches or overflights by mid-November, as the Ministry of Justice announced.
In the previous year there were a similar number with eight sightings.
Three of the incidents since early 2020 have been counted as attempts to bring cigarettes, cell phones and drugs into prisons.
The Baden-Württemberg Justice Minister Marion Gentges (CDU) demands that drones be programmed at the factory so that they cannot fly into closed airspaces.
This is already possible with the help of the GPS coordinates of the no-fly zones.
So far, however, the German federal states have failed in Brussels at the EU Commission with a push for a better system.
An overflight ban does not only apply to prisons and their immediate vicinity in Baden-Württemberg.
So far, however, the authorities have hardly had any means of monitoring compliance with the ban and punishing violations.
The justice ministers of the federal states agreed in mid-November to ask the federal government to work towards an EU-wide solution to the problem.
Expensive defense in Bavaria has never been used
Bavaria has already set up its own defense system.
In October 2020 eight of the 36 Bavarian prisons were equipped with the mobile drone defense system "Dropster" in a pilot project.
According to the Ministry of Justice there, Bavaria was the first German state to systematically shoot down drones over prisons.
Cost point: around 5,000 euros per piece of equipment, so a total of 75,000 euros in pure material costs.
In addition, there are training courses for the employees who are supposed to fetch drones from the sky with the net pistols.
With the help of a gas cartridge, a 2.40 meter by 2.40 meter large net is shot up, which is supposed to catch the drone and cause it to crash.
Just a drone over a Bavarian prison
However, the drone defense system has not been used once, as the Bavarian Ministry of Justice announced.
This year, only a single drone was sighted over prisons in Bavaria by the end of November.
In the same period last year there were 13 sighted drones over or near prisons.
»The threat posed by drones is to be taken seriously.
There have already been two attempts to fly in cell phones and drugs, "said a ministry spokeswoman.
According to her, a total of 58 drones were discovered in the immediate vicinity of a Bavarian prison between 2015 and November 2021.
The judiciary sees a danger not only in the fact that drugs or weapons could be smuggled into the prison - but also in the violation of personal rights when illegally taking pictures of prisoners by drone.
"An outbreak with the help of a drone cannot be ruled out"
The ministry also refers to a spectacular case in France: There a high-ranking member of organized crime managed a spectacular escape from the Réau correctional facility on July 1, 2018.
His accomplices would have explored the local conditions of the institution over a long period of time using drones.
Commercial, professional drones are now able to transport up to 100 kilograms.
"An outbreak with the help of a drone can therefore also not be ruled out," said the ministry spokeswoman.
mmq / dpa
