Hundreds of students in Germany were sentenced to detention last year for skipping school, according to a survey conducted by the German media network «Deutschland». According to the survey results, in the states of Lower Saxony and Bremen in the first half of last year, 241 boys and 114 girls were subjected to this punishment. The state of Hesse recorded 48 cases until last October. The German Education and Science Union criticized this practice, with union president Anja Bensing-Stolze stating: «Sending teenagers to jail for a few days because of repeated school absenteeism is essentially a failure of school policy and an educational failure, and it is mostly useless or even counterproductive». In Germany, detention for teenagers can be imposed as a last resort before issuing a criminal sentence against those who repeatedly skip school.
