A Berlin S-Bahn train: traveling without a ticket can result in severe penalties.Image: www.imago-images.de
More and more people are ending up behind bars in Germany because they took buses or trains without a ticket. The Minister of Justice now wants to decriminalize it.
April 10, 2026, 7:26 p.mApril 10, 2026, 7:26 p.m
Birgit Baumann, Berlin / ch media
Go to jail for a few euros? Because you traveled from Berlin-Alexanderplatz to Berlin-Wannsee without a ticket on the S-Bahn? Something like that can happen in Germany. Anyone who travels on public transport without a ticket is committing a crime. And in extreme cases, it can even put you behind bars.
There has been a debate for years about whether this makes sense. Now the German Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig (SPD) is making it clear that she wants a change. “In my opinion there are good reasons for decriminalization,” she told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”. In view of overburdened courts and prisons, one must ask oneself the question: “Do people who cannot afford a ticket and end up in prison with a substitute prison sentence really belong there?”
Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig.Image: keystone
Absolutely not, says the “Freedom Fund Initiative,” which since 2021 has bailed out 1,679 people who went to jail for fare evasion. The legal basis can be found in Section 265a of the German Criminal Code (obtaining benefits by fraud), which was introduced during the Nazi era in 1935.
The substitute prison sentence is due if someone is unable to pay a fine that is due after using public transport without a ticket. According to the police crime statistics (PKS), around 144,000 cases of fraudulent services were registered in 2024. Around 9,000 of them go to prison. According to the “Initiative Freedom Fund”, most of them are unemployed (87 percent). 15 percent have no permanent address and 15 percent are at risk of suicide.
High costs of the procedures
Not only Minister Hubig and the initiative point out the costs that the state incurs, but also the German Bar Association (DAV). This assumes that the costs of criminal prosecution and prison sentences amount to 200 million euros annually – financed by taxpayers.
Fare evasion is a “poverty crime,” says DAV spokesman Swen Walentowski and criticizes the fact that claims from transport companies are even protected under criminal law: “If you don’t pay your electricity bill, no one would think of calling in the public prosecutor’s office.”
The criminalization of fare evasion was also a thorn in the side of the traffic light coalition made up of the SPD, Greens and FDP, which was voted out in 2025. Marco Buschmann (FDP), the then Minister of Justice, wanted to downgrade fare evasion to an administrative offense in 2024, but there was no reform.
Now Hubig first has to convince his coalition partner. That should be difficult. “There will be no decriminalization of fare evasion with the Union,” said Union faction deputy Günter Krings (CDU) to the “Rheinische Post” and the Funke media group.
He doesn’t want decriminalization – Günter Krings (CDU), vice-chairman of the Union.Image: www.imago-images.de
Because driving without a ticket is “not a prank, but a fraudulent crime that is detrimental to the community”. Krings fears that without the sword of Damocles of criminal liability, many more people would travel without a ticket and warns: “To compensate for this, the fares for everyone else would have to rise significantly.” The German Police Union (DPolG) sees it similarly: “Anyone who abolishes this criminal offense is undermining a central control instrument of the constitutional state.”