Germany

Bio

Kirstin Drenkhahn is a lawyer by training and full professor of criminal law and criminology at the Department of Law of the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on life in prisons, the deprivation of liberty in criminal matters, and the role of punishment in society. She has written about victimization in prison, attitudes about punishment and is preparing a book on “Impending Challenges to Penal Moderation in Germany and France”. As president of the German Probation Association, she gives expert opinions on criminal justice legislation in Germany. She grew up on a farm and as a land owner is involved in discussions about land use in Northern Germany.

Christoph Nagel works as a criminologist at the FU Berlin in Prof. Kirstins Drenkhahn's team. He studied sociology, with a major in the sociology of crime and methodological research. His research focuses on prison research, especially on the processes of resocialization after release from prison. An emphasis is placed on theories of desistance research, specifically exploring the importance of social and structural factors as well as the importance of the spatial environment, and the importance of "agency" in the desistance process. Coming from an agricultural family in Northern Germany, he has always been interested in the sociology of rural areas.