In Germany you can go to prison for travelling on public transport without a ticket. It’s estimated that 7,000 people are serving a jail sentence for this at any one time. Most of them are serial offenders, usually unemployed or homeless, the poorest people in German society. The law that enables courts to imprison people for not paying a fare dates from the early 1930s when it was introduced by the Nazi government. The public transport companies defend its existence. They say they lose hundreds of millions of Euros a year to people cheating on their fares and that it’s important to retain the threat of prison as a deterrent.

As Tim Mansel discovers for Assignment, others disagree and are campaigning for the law to be abolished. Most eye-catching is a campaign run by the Freedom Fund, set up in Berlin in 2021, which has raised hundreds of thousands of Euros. Its founder, Arne Semsrott, describes the law as “deeply unjust,” saying it “discriminates heavily against people who don’t have money, against people who don’t have housing, against people who are already in crisis.”

Produced and presented by Tim Mansel

(Image: Gisa März, who served a prison sentence for fare dodging. Credit: Tim Mansel/BBC)