Crime Rate/Criminal Acts in the City of Zagreb from 1887 until 1912. Based on the Report of the City Council
Crime Rate/Criminal Acts in the City of Zagreb from 1887 until 1912. Based on the Report of the City Council

Author(s): Zoran Grijak, Milan Vrbanus
Subject(s): History of Law, Criminal Law, Criminology, 19th Century, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919), Penal Policy
Published by: Hrvatski institut za povijest
Keywords: Zagreb; Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia; structure of criminal offenses and misdemeanours; perpetrators according to gender; police service; efficiency of the repressive apparatus; Janka - Šilović;
Summary/Abstract: The following paper analyzes the structure of crimes committed in the city of Zagreb from 1887 until 1912 based on the annual Reports of the City Council of the Free and Royal City of Zagreb. The abovementioned reports provide a detailed insight into the structure and number of criminal offenses and misdemeanours, as well as the type of these misdemeanours, offenses, and other criminal acts reported to the police authorities according to the Criminal Law of the Kingdoms of Croatia and Slavonia. In the course of the authors’ analysis of the collected data on criminal and minor offenses, quantitative methods were applied which in turn provided valuable insights into the trends pertaining to their number during the observed period. With the use of quantitative methods, it has been established that there were no major effects of the increase in population on the trends of the number of criminal and minor offenses, which means that rapid urbanization of the city did not have a significant impact on the rise of law-breaking. Further analysis of the gender of the perpetrators of criminal offenses and misdemeanours has confirmed existing observations on the inferior position of women in society of that period as a contributing factor to their smaller representation among perpetrators of most felonies. Furthermore, with the use of quantitative methods, a decrease in efficiency of the Police Service in terms of discovering most of the felonies has been determined, even though a high degree of efficiency was still maintained in detecting certain categories of felonies.

• Details
• Contents