Prague, March 6 (CTK) – Most people in the Czech Republic would like punishment of criminals, including adolescents, to be stricter and they support the reintroduction of the death penalty, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes yesterday, citing a poll conducted by the Median agency.
People call for stricter punishment, even though they feel safe in the country, the paper writes.
“People believe that society should enforce order and they feel that the rules are too loose at present,” sociologist Daniel Prokop, from Median, said.
The respondents were asked whether they would impose death penalties on four murderers and one innocent person, or rather release these five persons. The biggest group, 45 percent, would execute all five, 25 percent would release them all, and 30 percent was unable to make a decision, MfD writes.
Two thirds of Czechs, especially people over 50 years old, believe that punishments should be markedly stricter and only one out of ten opposed this idea. Moreover, they would like to lower the age of criminal liability to 13, from the present 15.
Fifty-three percent of people supported the reintroduction of the death penalty. However, the support for the death penalty has been decreasing in the long term, the paper writes.
The death penalty was abolished in the country in 1990 and its reintroduction would be against the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.
It has never been proved that the death penalty has a preventative effect, Miroslav Scheinost, director of the Institute of Criminology and Social Prevention, said.
“In general, no considerable decrease in serious crimes in countries that apply the death penalty, even if exceptionally, has been observed,” he told MfD.
“It seems to me that the death penalty does not have a deterrent effect. It is imposed on the perpetrators of the gravest crimes, especially murders. When people commit them in the heat of passion, they do not take punishment into account. If people prepare the murder, they expect that they will not be revealed and they try to proceed in a way to go unpunished. In contract murders, the risk of punishment is a part of the price,” Scheinost said.
The respondents were also asked about the main purpose of prisons. Most of them (42 percent) said a prison should correct the criminal, 30 percent said it should isolate the criminal from society, and 25 percent said it should first of all be a form of punishment.
In mid-February, there were 22,688 inmates in the 35 Czech prisons.
The Median poll was conducted on 1,073 people in late January and early February.
