In September 2009, more than 370.000 persons were being held in remand detention in the 47 Member States of the Council of Europe, 136.000 of them in the European Union and 11. 000 in Germany. For all of them the presumption of innocence (Art. 6 II ECHR) prevails - remand detention, however, sometimes lasts very long and the conditions in remand institutions are often worse than in ordinary prisons. The order to remand a suspect in custody requires (at least) a sufficient degree of suspicion against him or her, a ground for detention (usually the risk of absconding or the risk of obscuring/tampering with evidence) and is subject to considerations of proportionality.

According to the study „An analysis of minimum standards in pre-trial detention and the grounds for regular review in the Member States of the EU“, conducted by the Universities of Tilburg and Greifswald (Project directors: A. van Kalmthout/ C. Morgenstern) from November 2007 to March 2009, these minimum requirements are met by the legal provisions of all 27 Member States of the EU. Deficits, however, exist in legal practice – in particular with regard to proportionality aspects, the length of remand detention and the living conditions in remand prisons. The study was conducted against the background of increasing demands for judicial cooperation within the EU. To provide the reader with basic knowledge about the subject in other EU Member States, it aimed at taking stock of law and practice of pre-trial (or remand) detention and consists of 27 country reports and a short “introductory summary”; the results were published in 2009 by Wolf Legal Publishers.

The current research project of Christine Morgenstern (Habilitation) pursues and deepens this comparative approach and expands it by an additional dimension: For the first time, all European Standards and Instruments relating to remand/pre-trial detention will be analyzed – this refers both to the Council of Europe and the EU. Against this background, national law, national practice, national criminal policy and national research findings of selected countries will be examined and commonalities, divergences and the implementation of European Standards will be illustrated. The study will thus provide a comprehensive survey of different national remand detention systems and issues by combining normative reflection with criminological perspectives. Moreover, and more practically, it will provide insights for national and European criminal policy by identifying transnational problems with regard to remand detention and consider chances and risks of mutual recognition mechanisms in that matter.