By Lukas Gilbert and Ulrich Jones
Every year, the German state locks up thousands of people because they cannot pay their fines. Hinz&Kunzt vendor Thomas is one of them.
Anyone wanting to speak with Hinz&Kunzt vendor Thomas, 56, currently has a dreary trek ahead of them. It leads past the allotments and railway tracks and over the A1 motorway where the traffic is backed up.
Public buses don’t run here. Instead, a prisoner transport truck with blacked-out windows rolls down the street. It slowly moves through the automatic gates and behind the rain-soaked concrete walls of the Billwerder correctional facility (JVA).
Thomas came here in a truck just like this a few weeks earlier after encountering a police checkpoint near to the Hoheluftbrücke metro station. He regularly travelled by bus and train to get around, or just to warm up or get some sleep.
This article first appeared in Hinz&Kunzt, a magazine sold on the streets of Hamburg, Germany, by people who have limited other ways of earning an income.