Sections 361 and 362 of the Penal Code define as follows the offences which may entail detention in a Labour House:--
"(1) Whoever wanders about as a vagabond.
"(2) Whoever begs or causes children to beg or neglects to restrain from begging such persons as are under his control and oversight and belong to his household.
"(3) Whoever is so addicted to gambling, drunkenness, or idleness that he falls into such a condition as to be compelled to seek public help himself, or for those for whose maintenance he is responsible.
"(4) Any female who is placed under police control owing to professional immorality when she acts contrary to the police regulations issued in the interest of health, public order, and public decency, or who, without being under such control, is guilty of professional immorality.
"(5) Any person who, while in receipt of public relief, refuses out of sloth to do such work suited to his strength as the authorities may offer him.
"(6) Any person who, after losing his past lodging, fails to procure another within the time allotted to him by the competent authority and who cannot prove that in spite of his best endeavours he has been unable to do so."
An Amendment of the Penal Code dated June 25, 1900, added to this list of offenders procurers and _souteneurs_. The law enjoins that persons convicted of misdemeanours as above may be handed over to the State police authorities after undergoing the allotted imprisonment, with a view to their further detention in Labour Houses, there to be usefully employed under strict control. Some of the Prussian Labour Houses are used, to a small extent, for the reception of youths who are taken from parental control owing to bad behaviour.
The mode of procedure under this law is very summary, but very effectual. A vagrant, a loafer, or a work-shirker falls into the hands of the policeman, who in Germany is taught to protect both the highway and the street against uses for which they were never intended. By this official he is haled before the _Amtsgericht_, which is a local Court of First Instance for the adjudication of petty cases. As a rule, he is sentenced to a few weeks' imprisonment, and to be afterwards handed over to the _Landespolizei_ or State Police Authority. In effect, he is despatched to the district in which the original offence was committed. The whole of the documents in the case are passed on to the President or Prefect of this district, and it is this official who fixes the term of detention in the provincial Labour House. The maximum period is two years, but whether the man obtains discharge at the end of a shorter sentence depends entirely upon himself. If he shows distinct signs of improvement as the result of his discipline, he may be released. If not the sentence is probably prolonged for six months, or in bad cases to the maximum term, at the end of which the prisoner must unconditionally be discharged, whether reformed or not. In practice it rests entirely with the Director of the Labour House to determine whether a sentence should be prolonged or not, for though the District President nominally decides, it is on the direct representation of the Director, whose recommendation is seldom or never ignored.