Merkel Backs Boot Camps for Criminal Youths As Poll Nears

The German chancellor has given her backing to a controversial plan to introduce boot camps and "warning-shot" spells in prison for criminal youths in response to an election-driven debate about young immigrants and violent crime.

Angela Merkel said the measures were necessary to give Germany an "atmosphere of basic security" following an incident in which a pensioner was beaten up by two foreign youths. The assault provoked national outrage and declarations by a Merkel ally that foreign youths were behind a growing violent crime wave.

"Warning-shot arrests and boot camps could clearly be a sensible complement to criminal law," the chancellor told a tabloid newspaper in an interview. "They could encourage young people to change and prevent them from getting sent to prison later," she added.

Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at the weekend proposed a swath of tougher laws to crack down on young criminals, including higher sentences and the swifter expulsion of immigrant offenders.

The issue was first seized upon several weeks ago by the CDU's Roland Koch, the state governor of the western state of Hesse and a major Merkel ally, who is fighting for re-election in just under three weeks' time and risks losing his absolute majority.

His campaign had seemed to lack direction until just before Christmas, when a pensioner was brutally beaten and called "shit German" on the Munich underground network by two youths - one Greek and one Turkish - whom he had asked to extinguish their cigarettes. The incident was captured on CCTV images which were subsequently broadcast across German television networks.

Koch's declaration that "we have too many criminal young foreigners", and that a "zero tolerance against violence" was key to foreign integration, were splashed across the media. He has subsequently threatened Germany's 15 million immigrants with "consequences" if they fail to "play the rules of the game" and adapt to a German way of life, criticizing them for everything from failing to learn German to their "strange attitudes" towards the country's strict waste disposal laws, as well as the "odd" way Muslims slaughter animals "in their kitchens".

The topic has led the news headlines for weeks and is likely to continue to dominate as parties begin to focus on national elections which are due next year.

In her statements made at the weekend, Merkel challenged the Social Democrats, her coalition partners, to address the issue of youth crime. "The SPD cannot close its eyes to the fact that 43% of all violent crimes in Germany are committed by people under 21 years of age, and that nearly half of these are by foreign youths," she said.

The debate has created the perception that immigrant crime is on the rise, despite the fact that Federal Crime Office statistics show that crime by non-Germans has been on the decline since 1999 and youth crime as a percentage of all crimes has remained stable at around 12% for 15 years.

The SPD yesterday accused Merkel's party of using "rightwing populism" in its effort to win the January 27 poll in Hesse and Lower Saxony. The crime debate has completely overshadowed the SPD's attempts to put the issue of a national minimum wage at the top of the agenda.

Political observers have expressed their surprise at Merkel's decision to position herself at the center of such an emotional debate. Since taking up the post as chairwoman of the CDU in 1998 she has avoided making bold statements about integration issues and has earned a reputation as a chancellor of the center.

Last month she won praise within her party for stating that mosques should not be allowed to dwarf churches.

She dismissed as "absurd" the suggestion that Koch was playing to his electorate, stressing that it was necessary to debate the issue.