Suspended Prison Sentences in Czechia: How They Came to Dominate the Penal Landscape and Their Consequences

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11220%2F25%3A10505768" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11220/25:10505768 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=kQW.X8TO_Y" target="_blank" >https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=kQW.X8TO_Y</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10609-025-09515-4" target="_blank" >10.1007/s10609-025-09515-4</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Suspended Prison Sentences in Czechia: How They Came to Dominate the Penal Landscape and Their Consequences

Original language description

Suspended prison sentences are the most commonly imposed sanction type in the majority of post-communist European countries. In Czechia, they began to be widely used within a year after they were first introduced in 1919 despite having been conceived as a rather exceptional measure. Since the 1989 Velvet revolution they have come to dominate the Czech penal landscape, in part due to the unavailability of intermediate sanctions, increasing crime rates, limited state resources and the historic overuse of short prison sentences. Now, in 2024, when none of these factors apply any longer, suspended prison sentences continue to occupy a central position within the Czech penal system. The prominence of suspended prison sentences complicates principled sentencing because the legal provisions that govern them have not changed as their scope and use have increased. This has led to suspended prison sentences being considered a separate type of sanction rather than as a variant prison sentence by practitioners, making it difficult to formulate a coherent conception of this sanction and to define rules governing its imposition. The revocation of suspension after very long suspended prison sentences were imposed in Czechia was also one reason for the country&apos;s very high prison population. I argue that one of the main reasons why the scope of suspended prison sentences was enlarged so much without any consideration of the harmful effects this would cause was an ill-considered penal policy created in the absence of sophisticated sentencing scholarship and a lack of attention to sentencing principles.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50501 - Law

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA21-19485S" target="_blank" >GA21-19485S: Suspended prison sentences in post-communist Europe: The unexplored behemoth</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

CRIMINAL LAW FORUM

ISSN

1046-8374

e-ISSN

1572-9850

Volume of the periodical

36

Issue of the periodical within the volume

3-4

Country of publishing house

NL - THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS

Number of pages

34

Pages from-to

515-548

UT code for WoS article

001527644900001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

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