In Germany, riding buses or trains without a valid ticket is treated as a criminal offence that typically carries a €60 fine. If that fine goes unpaid, it can be converted into a substitute prison sentence (Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe) of up to one year. In recent years roughly 7,000 to 9,000 people a year have served time for fare evasion.
Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig (SPD) has proposed changing the approach: she wants to decriminalize riding without a ticket and reclassify it as a civil infraction, similar to illegal parking, to avoid sending people to jail. In an interview she asked whether people who cannot afford a ticket really belong behind bars. Hubig points to a coalition agreement commitment to review and repeal unnecessary regulations and says the justice system spends about €200 million annually processing these cases.
The German Bar Association (DAV), which represents about 60,000 lawyers, backs the proposal. DAV executive director Sven Walentowski argued that criminalising fare evasion yields little public benefit while causing significant social harm.
The plan has critics. Günter Krings, deputy parliamentary leader for the CDU/CSU, said the justice ministry should concentrate on more serious criminal-law issues. The police union GdP warned that decriminalisation could make some people less likely to bother with buying tickets. Hubig’s proposal faces the same political hurdles that met her predecessor Marco Buschmann’s 2023 suggestion to reconsider the offence. A 2023 infratest-dimap poll found roughly two-thirds of respondents supported ending imprisonment for fare evaders.
Campaigners say change is overdue. The Freiheitsfonds (“freedom fund”) has campaigned against the law—originally introduced in 1935—raising donations to bail nearly 1,700 people. The group says most jailed for fare evasion received summary fines and ended up imprisoned because they couldn’t pay, and estimates about 9,000 people are affected annually. Freiheitsfonds also lists 13 German cities, including Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Bonn and Leipzig, that currently avoid filing criminal charges for fare evasion.
This article was translated from German.