AUC Philosophica et Historica (Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philosophica et Historica) is a multidisciplinary academic journal focused on the humanities with more than 50 years of tradition.
The journal is indexed in CEEOL, DOAJ, and EBSCO.
AUC PHILOSOPHICA ET HISTORICA, Vol 2018 No 2 (2018), 9–22
Recidivism as a Measure of the Effectiveness of Sanctions: Experience from the Czech Republic
Jan Tomášek, Jan Rozum
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/24647055.2018.1
published online: 18. 04. 2018
abstract
Recidivism is one of the measures that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of sanctions imposed by the criminal justice system. The article summarizes findings from the most extensive research of this type in the Czech Republic. The sample included a total of 4,233 individuals sentenced to house arrest, community service, suspended sentences with supervision or released from prison in 2012. Recidivism was defined as a new record in the Criminal Register in 2014. It was revealed that 48.1% of the sample re-offended in the two year period. While the type of sanction imposed on the offender had a negligible impact, the likelihood of a new conviction was strongly linked to gender, age and previous criminal career. The significance of previous convictions and their number was confirmed also by the multivariate analysis using logistic regression. The importance of these findings is high and the recidivism should be monitored systematically in the Czech Republic. However, as the research showed, it is impossible to connect the effectiveness of crime control with simply finding “effective sanctions”. Inevitably, the criminal policy must be understood as an integral part of social policy.
keywords: Recidivism; effectiveness of penal policy; alternatives to prison; criminal carreer
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Recidivism as a Measure of the Effectiveness of Sanctions: Experience from the Czech Republic is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
