In California, rape of an unconscious person is not considered a violent felony for the purposes of 'strikes' as well as early release from prison. A rapist may serve as little as 50% of their sentence due to this fact.
It was only this year (2025) that rape of an unconscious person who was made unconscious by the assailant (a date rape drug provision like Germany's) became a violent felony. Germany is not alone in these types of reclassifications.
In California, attacking someone with a knife, solicitation of murder, and shooting a gun at someone in their car are all nonviolent felonies.
I'm happy--indeed eager--to have all of these (correctly) classified as violent felonies. But there's simply the matter of public opinion and how much space in state prisons there is. If we hold prison capacity constant, increasing the severity of punishment of one crime necessarily decreases the severity of punishment of other crimes.
The US has a lot of people in prison for "Felony Murder" .. being loosely connected to a crime in which someone dies.
This isn't even a crime in many other countries, the UK, Australia, for example.
Those countries charge people for their actions, not the actions of others.
In the US you have people on long sentences for Felony Murder because as teenagers they and friends broke into a house to rob it, and had one of the group shot by police, home owners, security.
Instead of a year or two for robbery, or even a parole sentence and hefty fine for being young and damn and trying doors they end up with fifty year or life sentences due to other people killing one of their friends.
There's one (of many) area that could be cleaned out to make room for the actually intentionally violent.
So if my importing a restricted exotic animal (felony under the Lacey act) leads to someone’s death (TSA agent shooting my mom who becomes hysterical as she sees the snake in my suitcase) I could go to prison for life?
California's rather controversial Prop 57 (early release from prison) uses the list of violent felonies outlined in § 667.5(c) of the California penal code, which excludes a number of felonies many feel are in fact violent. This is because it that list was never intended to be used as an exhaustive list or used for determining early release from prison, it was supposed to be a list of the most dire felonies used for calculating mandatory life imprisonment. Jerry Brown and his supporters changed that, and thus rape of an unconscious person and many other violent crimes still allowed perpetrators to serve only half of their sentences.
California Senate Bill 268 closed the classification gap by adding certain rapes of intoxicated or unconscious victims (especially when the defendant administered the intoxicating substance) to the list of “violent felonies” under § 667.5. It went into effect at the beginning of 2025.
Could someone with a background in law explain the advantage of a reclassification over imposing the same penalties on this particular group of substances?
Because outside of the legal definition, I would not call those “weapons” in everyday language. They are a thing on their own…
I don't have a background in law, but here are some suggestions. The German penal code often imposes harsher punishments for the same offense if a weapon was involved. Rape, for example, carries a minimum sentence of two years. If a weapon is present, it is a minimum of three years. If the weapon is used, the minimum sentence is 5 years.
Before the change, date rape drugs would have fallen under a minimum of three years because of a separate clause.
Classifying them as weapons would also affect crimes other than rape.
Additionally, if legal substances can be used as date rape drugs, classifying them as weapons would give the police more authority to act in certain situations.
One avenue, couched in specifics of US law, but I presume the ideas have analogs in Germany's legal system:
A battery occurs when a harmful physical contact occurs. Contact with a weapon is pretty much by definition battery.
The use of such a drug in the commission of rape or other violent crimes would then be a very easily proven case. If the substance is present in a victim's body, then battery has occured, basically by definition.
Given that rape and other violent crimes that are committed with the use of such drugs may not leave other physical signs on the body of the victim, then this may be the only physical evidence.
The examination for presence of such a drug in the bloodstream is also much less intrusive than for a typical rape kit exam.
There's nothing binary or black and white in such investigations, so this is an additional avenue to provide evidence to support the prosecution of these violent criminals.
There is a possibility that the accused has nothing to do with it, you still have to prove it wasn't some third party or the victim who procured and took the drug.
Let me clarify. I meant the following. Assume ghb is found and evidence of sex. The woman claims she didn't take it and didn't want to have sex. Wouldn't this be enough for a conviction?
if the jury believed the woman's claims, yes, it's enough for conviction. conviction rates are high not because it's easy to prove guilt, but because district attorneys don't bring case that are likely to be lost. the scenario you describe might not be considered strong enough to win, and resources are limited, so this hypothetical case might not get a hearing.
i'm not talking about a plea bargain, i'm talking about declining to prosecute, not filing charges after an arrest, or asking the court to dismiss the charges
i am sure that every victim allegation does not lead to a prosecution in Germany
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Germany has a written legal code. This could mean that punishments are more strictly classified than under a, say, precedence-based common law system. Changing the classification could move these kinds of crimes into harsher punishment bands.
The law being written does not prevent changing it[0]. Someone changed the written law once to add these weapon-specific provisions, they can do it again. And unless the optimal provisions for date rape drugs are identical to those for weapons, they probably should do it again.
[0] It might actually be easier to change a properly written law. I hate our stupid precedent-based system in the US.
If aliens land in Germany on a field and a peasant shoots them with his shotgun, he would have committed no crime in my opinion. No murder, since Aliens are not humans. It would not be illegal hunting, since aliens are not animals. Illegal discharge of a firearm?
That is definitely not how German law would deal with the situation in practice. Aliens would certainly be considered people and protected by the law, even if they weren't humans, and they would definitely still be animals.
Shooting an alien robot though, then you would have something legally problematic. Ownership? Is it so advanced it's a person? But you'd probably get something like those Star Trek episodes with legal weirdness rather than any no-crime-without-law reasoning.
You don't understand the problem. If we encounter aliens, they would likely make a law to protect them. In the situation I came up with, this is their first encounter with us, and they would NOT be protected.
You are very optimistic that they will be considered animals. For example they would have to live on organic matter. And they would have to have a spine to get more protection since living things with a spine are considered more valuable (Wirbeltiere).
GROK (And using all the Roman law principles on what German law is based):
Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege (Art. 103 Abs. 2 Grundgesetz + § 1 StGB) is the decisive wall that the prosecution would smash into in a real first-contact case under current German law.
This principle has four sub-requirements (all must be fulfilled for a conviction):
Lex scripta – there must be a written statute
→ Yes, §§ 211, 212 StGB exist.
Lex certa – the statute must be sufficiently precise
→ “Mensch” is precise if you are Homo sapiens. It is not precise (in fact completely indeterminate) when the victim is an unknown extraterrestrial species.
Lex stricta – no punishment by analogy, no extension to the detriment of the defendant
→ This is the killer.
→ Extending the word “Mensch” in §§ 211/212 to include extraterrestrials would be a clear case of forbidden analogy that worsens the legal position of the accused.
→ German courts are constitutionally barred from doing this in criminal law (unlike in civil law or constitutional law, where they sometimes stretch concepts to protect victims).
Lex praevia – the law must have existed before the act
→ Also fulfilled, but irrelevant here.
Ah. Yes. You are right. I had to read the law. I can understand the choice to write 'human' there, it becomes very clear, assuming there will be no aliens.
You don't understand the problem. If we encounter aliens, they would likely make a law to protect them. In the situation I came up with, this is their first encounter with us, and they would NOT be protected.
You are very optimistic that they will be considered animals. For example they would have to live on organic matter. And they would have to have a spine to get more protection since living things with a spine are considered more valuable (Wirbeltiere).
GROK (And using all the Roman law principles on what German law is based):
Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege (Art. 103 Abs. 2 Grundgesetz + § 1 StGB) is the decisive wall that the prosecution would smash into in a real first-contact case under current German law. This principle has four sub-requirements (all must be fulfilled for a conviction):
Lex scripta – there must be a written statute → Yes, §§ 211, 212 StGB exist.
Lex certa – the statute must be sufficiently precise → “Mensch” is precise if you are Homo sapiens. It is not precise (in fact completely indeterminate) when the victim is an unknown extraterrestrial species.
Lex stricta – no punishment by analogy, no extension to the detriment of the defendant → This is the killer. → Extending the word “Mensch” in §§ 211/212 to include extraterrestrials would be a clear case of forbidden analogy that worsens the legal position of the accused. → German courts are constitutionally barred from doing this in criminal law (unlike in civil law or constitutional law, where they sometimes stretch concepts to protect victims).
Lex praevia – the law must have existed before the act → Also fulfilled, but irrelevant here.
You can't write a law for every possible situation. And many laws were introduced because they were committed, and they realized, there is no law to punish the person.
English common law had many good ideas. The US criminal system may be a mess, but the underlying ideas are good. Not everybody can be Norway.... ;-)
I wasn't able to find any information on how exactly that reclassification is happening. Everyone just quotes that one sentence by the Federal Minister of the Interior that they are doing it.
My best guess is that they don't see a chance to get a law to this effect passed (see also the note about the other related bill being postponed), so they are taking some measure that's in the existing jurisdiction of the ministry. That might be the ministry passing regulations to this effect, or the federal police trying to declare date rape drugs as illegal weapons
They fall into the same fuzzy area as chemical weapons imo. They have a non-standard form factor, sure, but they’re still primarily intended to harm people
it's just a bad quickly written comment that only has surface level thoughts I was writing a paragraph about it, but realized that in the end it boils down to any kind of sexual actions during intoxication is same as statutory rape (cannot give consent) and really shouldn't happen at all, in reality the comment was just outsourcing this conclusion instead of thinking about it for more than few seconds.
I hope the classification for these drugs is not so wide that "normal" drug users are now weapon holders while using their stuff recreational without harming anybody.
Edit: I got more infos:
- Germany's national authorities will classify GBL and 1,4-Butanediol as weapons under German criminal law, treating administration as weapon deployment to strengthen prosecution.
- Under previous German criminal law, administering date-rape drugs was often charged as bodily harm without weapon classification, while survivor groups noted victims face memory loss complicating evidence.
- The reform permits courts to apply strengthened sentencing, allowing German prosecutors and courts to impose longer prison terms and mandatory minimums since administering drugs counts as weapon use, aiding prosecution.
- Survivors of drug-facilitated assault stand to gain a stronger legal foundation and clearer accountability, while the symbolic framing signals a cultural shift in German society prioritizing survivor protection.
- Legal experts warn that judicial training, forensic improvements and survivor-centered reporting systems are vital, while critics caution offenders may exploit loopholes or switch substances without such measures.
Seems reasonable, but maybe not exactly a weapon. It is used to subdue someone, but not as a threat. Should be a parallel class.
And while the intended assault is a sexual assault, a date rape drug still incapacitates you, which easily classifies as kidnapping, unlawful detainment, etc.
I would have thought poisoning someone, even with a sedative, would already be a serious crime. This makes me wonder if this is addressing a weakness in the force of law or if it’s political pandering to look tough on a class of crime without changing anything.
Exactly, or a piece of wood. If you threaten someone with a 2x4 you may have intended to use it as a weapon even if it was technically just a piece of wood.
This can of course lead to problems where the police can turn everything into a weapon even if it was never intended to be one, but I'd argue this is less of a problem with these rape drugs, as this shouldn't be a thing people normally carry with themselves for legit reasons.
In Germany participation in a gang rape of a minor might get you nothing more than probation (No, not because there was any doubt over the guilt, the guilt was established.).
It is completely ridiculous to debate these nuanced laws about rape, when the punishment for participating in a brutal gang rape is a stern talking to.
Please tell me which legal case you mean? Sounds very much like a bubble-YouTube story about ‘Muslims can rape everybody in Germany without getting punishment.’
Acquittals happen when there are contradictions in the evidence or victims testimonies, but when it's clear that a rape occurred and the perpetrator only gets a stern talking to - don't really know such stuff happening.
By the way, this is a statement by the city itself, not any reporting on it.
The statement explicitly states, that the guilt of the perpetrators was established. And they are guilty of raping a person which could not help themselves "Die Angeklagten der ersten und zweiten Gruppe wurden aufgrund dieser Feststellungen der Vergewaltigung unter Ausnutzung einer hilflosen Lage schuldig gesprochen".
Oh, they also filmed the rape and robbed her. The girl was 15.
It confirms the same things. The highest punishment were two years and 9 months, all other perpetrators (again, there was no doubt about the guilt) received probation. It also mentions their ages as being between 16 and 20. While I can see some circumstances lessening the guilt of a 16 year old, a 20 year old knows that he is commiting a heinous crime.
Just to make it clear. There was no doubt what happened. The guilt of the perpetrator was established.
Can you honestly tell me that this was justice? That the perpetrators received a punishment worthy of their crime, which after all consistent of gang rape, robbery and filming a 15 year old getting raped.
No, that is horrible, I get less punishment for youth etc. But they know what they did and did it multiple times, and it was nearly systematic (I read about 80 witnesses? wtf is going on?)
Even if you are 15, you know what you are doing is horrible. I hope this dudes suffer in the future, horrendous human beings and the judge should be ashamed.
In such cases, I understand that people take the law into their own hands. Imagine this being your daughter.
Out of my head: 50% or Rapes are committed by non-German citizens. But they make only 10% of the population.
And these are not Australians, Americans, Japanese or Chinese, they are mainly from countries with tribal structures, different attitudes towards violence and women. Many of them living on social welfare.
This is not a judgment of them, as humans, just an observation based on numbers. The question is: Is this kind of immigration a good idea, or will it lead to instability?
Ah yes, nothing like the right propaganda thing where a random chart is made to magically align with their rhetoric without actually being so in reality.
Categorising date rape drugs as weapons will help both men and women raped under the influence of such an attack. No point in bringing the victim's gender here.
In California, rape of an unconscious person is not considered a violent felony for the purposes of 'strikes' as well as early release from prison. A rapist may serve as little as 50% of their sentence due to this fact.
It was only this year (2025) that rape of an unconscious person who was made unconscious by the assailant (a date rape drug provision like Germany's) became a violent felony. Germany is not alone in these types of reclassifications.
So if they're unconscious for some other reason - or the assailant wasn't the one who drugged them - it's not a felony?
Sometimes I'm still surprised at how politicians can defend certain positions.
> Sometimes I'm still surprised at how politicians can defend certain positions.
Well, the people who opposed it were widely decried as racist.
It's pretty easy to push things past the public when the press is complicit and the opposition is tarred and feathered as evil oppressors.
It's still a felony, just not classified as a "violent" one for the purposes of strikes/early release.
[dead]
In California, attacking someone with a knife, solicitation of murder, and shooting a gun at someone in their car are all nonviolent felonies.
I'm happy--indeed eager--to have all of these (correctly) classified as violent felonies. But there's simply the matter of public opinion and how much space in state prisons there is. If we hold prison capacity constant, increasing the severity of punishment of one crime necessarily decreases the severity of punishment of other crimes.
The US has a lot of people in prison for "Felony Murder" .. being loosely connected to a crime in which someone dies.
This isn't even a crime in many other countries, the UK, Australia, for example.
Those countries charge people for their actions, not the actions of others.
In the US you have people on long sentences for Felony Murder because as teenagers they and friends broke into a house to rob it, and had one of the group shot by police, home owners, security.
Instead of a year or two for robbery, or even a parole sentence and hefty fine for being young and damn and trying doors they end up with fifty year or life sentences due to other people killing one of their friends.
There's one (of many) area that could be cleaned out to make room for the actually intentionally violent.
So if my importing a restricted exotic animal (felony under the Lacey act) leads to someone’s death (TSA agent shooting my mom who becomes hysterical as she sees the snake in my suitcase) I could go to prison for life?
Source?
California's rather controversial Prop 57 (early release from prison) uses the list of violent felonies outlined in § 667.5(c) of the California penal code, which excludes a number of felonies many feel are in fact violent. This is because it that list was never intended to be used as an exhaustive list or used for determining early release from prison, it was supposed to be a list of the most dire felonies used for calculating mandatory life imprisonment. Jerry Brown and his supporters changed that, and thus rape of an unconscious person and many other violent crimes still allowed perpetrators to serve only half of their sentences.
California Senate Bill 268 closed the classification gap by adding certain rapes of intoxicated or unconscious victims (especially when the defendant administered the intoxicating substance) to the list of “violent felonies” under § 667.5. It went into effect at the beginning of 2025.
Could someone with a background in law explain the advantage of a reclassification over imposing the same penalties on this particular group of substances?
Because outside of the legal definition, I would not call those “weapons” in everyday language. They are a thing on their own…
I don't have a background in law, but here are some suggestions. The German penal code often imposes harsher punishments for the same offense if a weapon was involved. Rape, for example, carries a minimum sentence of two years. If a weapon is present, it is a minimum of three years. If the weapon is used, the minimum sentence is 5 years.
Before the change, date rape drugs would have fallen under a minimum of three years because of a separate clause.
Classifying them as weapons would also affect crimes other than rape.
Additionally, if legal substances can be used as date rape drugs, classifying them as weapons would give the police more authority to act in certain situations.
One avenue, couched in specifics of US law, but I presume the ideas have analogs in Germany's legal system:
A battery occurs when a harmful physical contact occurs. Contact with a weapon is pretty much by definition battery.
The use of such a drug in the commission of rape or other violent crimes would then be a very easily proven case. If the substance is present in a victim's body, then battery has occured, basically by definition.
Given that rape and other violent crimes that are committed with the use of such drugs may not leave other physical signs on the body of the victim, then this may be the only physical evidence.
The examination for presence of such a drug in the bloodstream is also much less intrusive than for a typical rape kit exam.
There's nothing binary or black and white in such investigations, so this is an additional avenue to provide evidence to support the prosecution of these violent criminals.
> If the substance is present in a victim's body
There is a possibility that the accused has nothing to do with it, you still have to prove it wasn't some third party or the victim who procured and took the drug.
> you still have to prove it wasn't some third party or the victim who procured and took the drug.
Does it actually work that way in the real world?
Yes, people can and do recreationally take GHB quite often. (also commonly used in date rape cases)
The same can be said for MDMA, and others
Let me clarify. I meant the following. Assume ghb is found and evidence of sex. The woman claims she didn't take it and didn't want to have sex. Wouldn't this be enough for a conviction?
if the jury believed the woman's claims, yes, it's enough for conviction. conviction rates are high not because it's easy to prove guilt, but because district attorneys don't bring case that are likely to be lost. the scenario you describe might not be considered strong enough to win, and resources are limited, so this hypothetical case might not get a hearing.
Not in German law. There are no plea bargains there.
i'm not talking about a plea bargain, i'm talking about declining to prosecute, not filing charges after an arrest, or asking the court to dismiss the charges
i am sure that every victim allegation does not lead to a prosecution in Germany
It should not be enough for a conviction.
[dead]
Otherwise it would have been a free send anyone promiscuous to jail card.
Have sex, take a tiny amount of whatever drug it is, straight to cops.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Germany has a written legal code. This could mean that punishments are more strictly classified than under a, say, precedence-based common law system. Changing the classification could move these kinds of crimes into harsher punishment bands.
The law being written does not prevent changing it[0]. Someone changed the written law once to add these weapon-specific provisions, they can do it again. And unless the optimal provisions for date rape drugs are identical to those for weapons, they probably should do it again.
[0] It might actually be easier to change a properly written law. I hate our stupid precedent-based system in the US.
No law, no crime. [nullum crimen sine lege]
If aliens land in Germany on a field and a peasant shoots them with his shotgun, he would have committed no crime in my opinion. No murder, since Aliens are not humans. It would not be illegal hunting, since aliens are not animals. Illegal discharge of a firearm?
In the US the outcome may be very different.
That is definitely not how German law would deal with the situation in practice. Aliens would certainly be considered people and protected by the law, even if they weren't humans, and they would definitely still be animals.
Shooting an alien robot though, then you would have something legally problematic. Ownership? Is it so advanced it's a person? But you'd probably get something like those Star Trek episodes with legal weirdness rather than any no-crime-without-law reasoning.
You don't understand the problem. If we encounter aliens, they would likely make a law to protect them. In the situation I came up with, this is their first encounter with us, and they would NOT be protected.
You are very optimistic that they will be considered animals. For example they would have to live on organic matter. And they would have to have a spine to get more protection since living things with a spine are considered more valuable (Wirbeltiere).
GROK (And using all the Roman law principles on what German law is based):
Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege (Art. 103 Abs. 2 Grundgesetz + § 1 StGB) is the decisive wall that the prosecution would smash into in a real first-contact case under current German law. This principle has four sub-requirements (all must be fulfilled for a conviction):
Lex scripta – there must be a written statute → Yes, §§ 211, 212 StGB exist.
Lex certa – the statute must be sufficiently precise → “Mensch” is precise if you are Homo sapiens. It is not precise (in fact completely indeterminate) when the victim is an unknown extraterrestrial species.
Lex stricta – no punishment by analogy, no extension to the detriment of the defendant → This is the killer. → Extending the word “Mensch” in §§ 211/212 to include extraterrestrials would be a clear case of forbidden analogy that worsens the legal position of the accused. → German courts are constitutionally barred from doing this in criminal law (unlike in civil law or constitutional law, where they sometimes stretch concepts to protect victims).
Lex praevia – the law must have existed before the act → Also fulfilled, but irrelevant here.
Ah. Yes. You are right. I had to read the law. I can understand the choice to write 'human' there, it becomes very clear, assuming there will be no aliens.
Anyway this is a matter of judicial discretion to decide whether personhood and rights would apply to an alien visitor.
The only difference between precedent laws and codes is that the judges act as a secondary less stable legislature.
You could very well have a mixed system where legislature has to filter and ratify court rulings to decide which become law and which do not.
In short this has nothing to do with having actual laws
You don't understand the problem. If we encounter aliens, they would likely make a law to protect them. In the situation I came up with, this is their first encounter with us, and they would NOT be protected. You are very optimistic that they will be considered animals. For example they would have to live on organic matter. And they would have to have a spine to get more protection since living things with a spine are considered more valuable (Wirbeltiere).
GROK (And using all the Roman law principles on what German law is based):
Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege (Art. 103 Abs. 2 Grundgesetz + § 1 StGB) is the decisive wall that the prosecution would smash into in a real first-contact case under current German law. This principle has four sub-requirements (all must be fulfilled for a conviction):
Lex scripta – there must be a written statute → Yes, §§ 211, 212 StGB exist.
Lex certa – the statute must be sufficiently precise → “Mensch” is precise if you are Homo sapiens. It is not precise (in fact completely indeterminate) when the victim is an unknown extraterrestrial species.
Lex stricta – no punishment by analogy, no extension to the detriment of the defendant → This is the killer. → Extending the word “Mensch” in §§ 211/212 to include extraterrestrials would be a clear case of forbidden analogy that worsens the legal position of the accused. → German courts are constitutionally barred from doing this in criminal law (unlike in civil law or constitutional law, where they sometimes stretch concepts to protect victims).
Lex praevia – the law must have existed before the act → Also fulfilled, but irrelevant here.
I still do not get what this has to do with whether judges act as a secondary legislature
How do you think that bears on my post, which is a variation on "please write the damn law, but in a sensical way please"?
You can't write a law for every possible situation. And many laws were introduced because they were committed, and they realized, there is no law to punish the person.
English common law had many good ideas. The US criminal system may be a mess, but the underlying ideas are good. Not everybody can be Norway.... ;-)
I am pretty sure that hunting laws would apply
[dead]
I think weapons is the right term. It's a method of chemical restraint. Combat gases with similar functions are regarded as weapons too.
I wasn't able to find any information on how exactly that reclassification is happening. Everyone just quotes that one sentence by the Federal Minister of the Interior that they are doing it.
My best guess is that they don't see a chance to get a law to this effect passed (see also the note about the other related bill being postponed), so they are taking some measure that's in the existing jurisdiction of the ministry. That might be the ministry passing regulations to this effect, or the federal police trying to declare date rape drugs as illegal weapons
They fall into the same fuzzy area as chemical weapons imo. They have a non-standard form factor, sure, but they’re still primarily intended to harm people
[flagged]
Wait did you just put rape in quotes wtf
it is to imply ambiguity which I guess reading it a 2nd time can imply something entirely different woops.
If you were to put your point into more careful words, what would it be?
it's just a bad quickly written comment that only has surface level thoughts I was writing a paragraph about it, but realized that in the end it boils down to any kind of sexual actions during intoxication is same as statutory rape (cannot give consent) and really shouldn't happen at all, in reality the comment was just outsourcing this conclusion instead of thinking about it for more than few seconds.
"Forget it, Jake. It's Hacker News."
I hope the classification for these drugs is not so wide that "normal" drug users are now weapon holders while using their stuff recreational without harming anybody.
Edit: I got more infos:
- Germany's national authorities will classify GBL and 1,4-Butanediol as weapons under German criminal law, treating administration as weapon deployment to strengthen prosecution.
- Under previous German criminal law, administering date-rape drugs was often charged as bodily harm without weapon classification, while survivor groups noted victims face memory loss complicating evidence.
- The reform permits courts to apply strengthened sentencing, allowing German prosecutors and courts to impose longer prison terms and mandatory minimums since administering drugs counts as weapon use, aiding prosecution.
- Survivors of drug-facilitated assault stand to gain a stronger legal foundation and clearer accountability, while the symbolic framing signals a cultural shift in German society prioritizing survivor protection.
- Legal experts warn that judicial training, forensic improvements and survivor-centered reporting systems are vital, while critics caution offenders may exploit loopholes or switch substances without such measures.
---
Seems reasonable, complicated topic
Does this mean that possession / carrying of GBL in a public context (e.g. at party) is also being made illegal and can get you sent to prison?
Seems reasonable, but maybe not exactly a weapon. It is used to subdue someone, but not as a threat. Should be a parallel class.
And while the intended assault is a sexual assault, a date rape drug still incapacitates you, which easily classifies as kidnapping, unlawful detainment, etc.
I would have thought poisoning someone, even with a sedative, would already be a serious crime. This makes me wonder if this is addressing a weakness in the force of law or if it’s political pandering to look tough on a class of crime without changing anything.
It is already. This offense is ususlly dropped since other crimes overshadow it and mostly the biggest crime matters in the german criminal court.
A stick of dynamite probably counts as a weapon too (I would think?), in a legal sense. I'd say it's a reasonable perspective for the legalese.
Also, cars have been considered weapons in some cases.
Exactly, or a piece of wood. If you threaten someone with a 2x4 you may have intended to use it as a weapon even if it was technically just a piece of wood.
This can of course lead to problems where the police can turn everything into a weapon even if it was never intended to be one, but I'd argue this is less of a problem with these rape drugs, as this shouldn't be a thing people normally carry with themselves for legit reasons.
In a fundamental level giving someone a drug like this without their knowledge and against their will is an attack on their bodily autonomy.
And bodily autonomy is a human right.
In Germany participation in a gang rape of a minor might get you nothing more than probation (No, not because there was any doubt over the guilt, the guilt was established.).
It is completely ridiculous to debate these nuanced laws about rape, when the punishment for participating in a brutal gang rape is a stern talking to.
We have to do this little song and dance and punish everybody and nobody will say it’s entirely an immigrant problem.
Please tell me which legal case you mean? Sounds very much like a bubble-YouTube story about ‘Muslims can rape everybody in Germany without getting punishment.’
Acquittals happen when there are contradictions in the evidence or victims testimonies, but when it's clear that a rape occurred and the perpetrator only gets a stern talking to - don't really know such stuff happening.
I assume you can use some translation software or speak German: https://justiz.hamburg.de/gerichte/oberlandesgericht/gericht...
By the way, this is a statement by the city itself, not any reporting on it.
The statement explicitly states, that the guilt of the perpetrators was established. And they are guilty of raping a person which could not help themselves "Die Angeklagten der ersten und zweiten Gruppe wurden aufgrund dieser Feststellungen der Vergewaltigung unter Ausnutzung einer hilflosen Lage schuldig gesprochen".
Oh, they also filmed the rape and robbed her. The girl was 15.
Here is another article, by the German state media: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/hamburg/Stadtpark-Prozess-Bun...
It confirms the same things. The highest punishment were two years and 9 months, all other perpetrators (again, there was no doubt about the guilt) received probation. It also mentions their ages as being between 16 and 20. While I can see some circumstances lessening the guilt of a 16 year old, a 20 year old knows that he is commiting a heinous crime.
Just to make it clear. There was no doubt what happened. The guilt of the perpetrator was established.
Can you honestly tell me that this was justice? That the perpetrators received a punishment worthy of their crime, which after all consistent of gang rape, robbery and filming a 15 year old getting raped.
Thanks, didn't know that one.
No, that is horrible, I get less punishment for youth etc. But they know what they did and did it multiple times, and it was nearly systematic (I read about 80 witnesses? wtf is going on?)
Even if you are 15, you know what you are doing is horrible. I hope this dudes suffer in the future, horrendous human beings and the judge should be ashamed.
In such cases, I understand that people take the law into their own hands. Imagine this being your daughter.
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What's the elephant? What are you trying to say?
Out of my head: 50% or Rapes are committed by non-German citizens. But they make only 10% of the population.
And these are not Australians, Americans, Japanese or Chinese, they are mainly from countries with tribal structures, different attitudes towards violence and women. Many of them living on social welfare.
This is not a judgment of them, as humans, just an observation based on numbers. The question is: Is this kind of immigration a good idea, or will it lead to instability?
Time to open the borders to North Korean immigration?
Ah yes, nothing like the right propaganda thing where a random chart is made to magically align with their rhetoric without actually being so in reality.
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I see nazi scaremongering bots have now arrived here as well.
I wonder why lie about Poland?
This is a technical community, I think you can imagine the majority of visitors (hopefully) understand data and charts.
Anyone could find a link to the source?
> rape by ethnicity
doesn't say of victims or perpetrators. or either?
Perpetrator
Why do I have to assume perpetrator?
Pretending not to understand a chart will not stop people from voting for the right wing parties. Just a thought, in case you care about that.
sensational but vague label just a sign that it's generally sus. no links to underlying data. it's very easy to make up bar charts.
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Categorising date rape drugs as weapons will help both men and women raped under the influence of such an attack. No point in bringing the victim's gender here.
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