Overview
- An RND survey confirms that several hundred students were placed in short-term Jugendarrest for repeated truancy in 2025.
- Lower Saxony and Bremen reported 241 boys and 114 girls in the first half of the year, while Hesse logged 48 cases through October.
- Baden-Württemberg, Thuringia, Schleswig-Holstein, and Saxony cited lower figures, and several other states had no current cases or do not collect such data.
- The GEW criticized arrest for truancy as ineffective or harmful, whereas Lower Saxony’s justice ministry defended it as a useful instrument.
- Under German law Jugendarrest is a time-limited last resort below a youth sentence, and experts note rising absenteeism that disproportionately affects disadvantaged children.