Statistické listy trestní soudů: Ověření jejich spolehlivostispolehlivosti
Official criminal court data: An examination of their reliability

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines criminal court data collected by the Czechcourts and the Ministry of Justice, including information about proceedings,decisions, offenses, offenders, and sanctions. First, the dataset’scomposition, historical development, advantages and disadvantages arediscussed to elucidate the purposes for which the data can be used. The nextpart of the paper presents the verification results of this dataset.A representative sample of 444 offenders was selected and the courtdecisions for these cases were then requested and compared with thecriminal court data. For most of the variables, the criminal court datasetmatched the information in the court decision s. Systemic problems(especially regarding prior convictions) were only detected in a smallnumber of variables. Finally, the study’s implications for the public,researchers and the Czech Ministry of Justice are discussed.

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