Inclusion of prior convictions in aggregate youth sentence; correction of unified juvenile penalty

The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) partially granted the defendant's appeal by modifying the Landgericht Krefeld’s judgment of 23 June 2023 to incorporate prior convictions from the Amtsgericht Krefeld (5 February 2020) and the Amtsgericht Hameln (21 July 2021) into the aggregate youth sentence of two years and six months, while dismissing the remainder of the appeal and ordering the defendant to bear the costs of the proceedings. The dispute centered on the proper calculation of the "Einheitsjugendstrafe" (unified youth sentence) under juvenile criminal law, specifically challenging whether prior, previously unrecorded convictions must be consolidated into the current aggregate penalty. The decisive legal basis was the doctrine of sentence aggregation in juvenile criminal proceedings, which mandates the inclusion of all relevant prior convictions to ensure a comprehensive and proportionate total custodial sentence, resulting in the correction of the original judgment to reflect the complete scope of the defendant’s criminal history.