Prague, July 17 (CTK) – The number of women in Czech prisons has been steeply rising in the past few years by some 20 percent annually, though men still prevail there, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes today.
Women are most often convicted of theft and fraud.
At present, there are some 21,000 men and almost 1700 women behind bars in the Czech Republic with a population of 10.5 million, while four years ago, there were some 900 female prisoners.
Consequently, the number of women in Czech prisons rose by 81 percent and of men merely by 30 percent in the past four years.
The lower number of prisoners a few years ago was primarily caused by a broad amnesty granted by president Vaclav Klaus in January 2013 at the end of his last term in office. Some 600 women were released from prisons then, MfD writes.
However, since then the number of female prisoners has been on the rise.
One of the reasons might be that women have now more opportunities to commit property crime, frauds and even corruption, police psychologist Ludmila Cirtkova said, commenting on the statistics.
“Women have started catching up with men (in crime). While in the past, they did not fill such positions, now they need not sit at home and they work in the same professions as men, which in general widens their opportunities,” Cirtkova pointed out.
Moreover, “the loss of limits” and “a certain decline in moral values” are the factors that are strongly present among men and women, she added.
Both men and women most frequently end up in prison for theft. Women are often convicted of unauthorised possession of a payment card, fraud and obstructing the enforcement of an official decision.
On the contrary, women commit much fewer violent crimes, such as robbery and murder, than men. The major difference lies in rape. Last year, 538 men and four women were in prison for rape, MfD writes.
“Men have long been much more frequent perpetrators but also victims of violence,” Cirtkova said, referring to violence committed in public space.
Women are the usual victims of domestic violence.
Czech prisons lack sufficient capacities for the rising number of convicts. Most facilities cannot meet the ideal standard of four square metres per inmate and they must make do with three square metres only, MfD writes.
This is why the Prison Service tries to extend the accommodation capacities in the existing facilities, its spokeswoman Gabriela Pohlova said .
Until recently, the only purely female prison in the country was in Svetla nad Sazavou, east Bohemia.
However, a new prison for women was opened in Drahonice, north Bohemia, at the beginning of July. This used to be a prison for men and then it served as a refugee centre.
Besides, convicted women serve their sentences in the prisons in Ostrava, Opava, both north Moravia, and in Prague-Ryzyne, MfD adds.
hol/t/rtj
