Report on the Security Situation in the Czech Republic in 1998
(in comparison with 1997)


4. Summary - security risks in 1999

(in terms of internal security and public order)

The conditions for maintaining internal security worsened in all parts of the world. Unregulated, politically volatile and disputed regions have emerged. Thanks to modern technology and the collapse of the bipolar world, room for illegal activities has expanded faster than the legal and organisational system can ensure internal security. Internal social problems are being transferred abroad.

In 1998 there was a further increase in the number of crimes ascertained, by 5.5 %. Crime trends since 1993, when the number of crimes ascertained culminated, testifies to a sustained increase in overall crime53. The number of crimes ascertained has risen in all crime categories monitored - crime against property, economic crime, moral and violent crime, while their proportions in the total number of crimes ascertained has not changed significantly. For an objective assessment of the level of crime and the feeling of safety among citizens,54 it is necessary to use, in addition to crime data, the results of regular victimological research, as is common practice abroad. The trend from 1997 continued with the largest increase in overall crime recorded in Prague and the highest percentage increase in Central Bohemia, which thus became one of the four regions most at risk in the Czech Republic. This trend was also apparent in crimes ascertained per 10 000 citizens, where Central Bohemia is in second place, behind Prague. Prague displays the highest percentage of foreigners among total offenders of all regions in the Czech Republic, while Central Bohemia recorded the highest percentage increase in foreigners prosecuted. This raises questions over crime being forced out of Prague and into Central Bohemia.

For an evaluation of police work, a positive factor is the increase in the number of crimes cleared up and the overall detection rate, which came to 43.5 %. For certain kinds of crime (especially violent crime, moral and economic crime), the detection rate was 80-90 %.

Damage ascertained from total crime displays a negative trend, particularly for damage ascertained from economic crime and the fall in damage insurance. In terms of long-term trends, the proportion of damage caused by registered economic crime to total damage due to crime has risen sharply. While the 1990 figure was 8.9 %, it was 62.7 % in 1998.

In the long-term, there has been a marked increase in the number of economic crimes ascertained, up 95.5 % on 1993. Economic crime includes in particular criminal activity in the state’s fiscal interests, connected with the infiltration of state administration structures and the subsequent control of economic processes, with the aim of legalising the proceeds of crime. The Czech Police recorded an increase in offences connected with economic discipline and economic competition, breaching duties in managing assets and fraud. Tax evasion, which significantly upsets the country’s economic stability, remains a problem and displays high latency. Corruption is one of the most serious security risks. Corrupt behaviour by organised crime structures in the Czech Republic is mainly apparent in politics, the social field and in the economy, and in essence affects all parts of society. In recent years the majority of cases of suspicion of corrupt behaviour have related to various kinds of bribery. Intellectual property is a serious problem in view of the steadily rising number of infringements of intellectual property rights, which is especially associated with the option of acquiring good quality illegal imitations and copies very easily and quickly. Compliance with intellectual property rights is an essential condition for decisions by foreign companies operating in the Euro-Atlantic region on locating investments into modern technology in the Czech Republic. The state’s inability to eliminate risks conditioning the trends and structure of crime are most apparent in the area of restricting the factors which enable serious economic crime. A warning signal is that economic crime accounts for almost 63 % of total damage from crime.

The constant proportion of violent crime in overall crime does not mean there has been a reduction in the number of such crimes ascertained. A negative trend is the steady increase in the number of violent crimes ascertained, the highest since 1990. The most serious violent crime is murder, with an increase of 35 crimes on 1993. Of murders cleared up, murders from personal disputes and robbery with murder dominate, with qualified preparation, brutality and hired assassinations ascertained.

Moral crime remains latent, despite a rise in the number of crimes of soliciting, women trafficking and sexual abuse ascertained. Prostitution remains a problem and is directly related to the offence of soliciting. The increase in the number of cases of sexual abuse and maltreatment of wards ascertained, where detection is very difficult and crimes tend to be reported only exceptionally, is influenced by the greater degree to which the public is informed and to increasing confidence in the work of the police. A serious problem is the distribution of child pornography, especially on the Internet. There is no doubt that crime against children and young people is one of the most serious problems. The consequences for injured parties are very serious and not infrequently irreparable.

In crimes against property, the number of common thefts is the highest since 1990. There has been a rapid increase in the number of thefts from cars; fall in car theft in 1998 does not imply a stable trend. Over the long term, there has been a reduction in the number of burglaries ascertained, with 1998 recording the lowest figure since 1991. Of such crimes, flat burglaries are the lowest since 1990 and burglaries in recreational buildings are the lowest since 1992. This reduction has been influenced by preventative measures and increasing protection by citizens of their property. Crimes against property are still very negatively perceived by the public, with a sizeable impact on the evaluation of police work.

Despite a slight fall in the number of juvenile offenders, crime by this group has risen steadily over the long-term. The increase in murders committed by juveniles is alarming, and for certain kinds of crime (above all violent crime and theft from cars) there is an approximation of the number of crimes committed by children and juveniles. In the crime structure, crimes against property continue to dominate, with a high incidence, and are committed mostly in groups and often involve burglary. This is followed by violent crimes, often involving considerable brutality. Drug crimes are also on the increase. Racially motivated crimes are often committed by juveniles or persons close to that age group. In evaluating juvenile crime, it is necessary to take account of the fact that the data only comes from the proportion of crimes cleared up. Juvenile crime is mainly influenced by dysfunctional families, truancy and the use of alcohol - a range of negative factors usually has a cumulative effect. Prevention for this kind of crime is quite fundamental and the most important requirement, but there is discussion on certain measures aimed at stricter punishment (e.g. reducing the age limit for criminal liability) or, if the current legislation is retained, on supplementing it with an extended range of alternative measures (e.g. paying a certain amount of money for benevolent works, either one-off or in instalments, charitable work in free time, participation in education programmes, etc.).

Trends for the number of traffic accidents are a serious problem throughout society, as are their consequences for life and health. The number of fatalities remains considerably high in the Czech Republic - 60 % more than the European average, despite a relatively large reduction in 1998.

In 1998, legislative work on a new Official Secrets Act was completed and in the second half of the year the National Security Office was established as the central body for this area. The year in question was characterised by efforts by all bodies concerned to improve the official secrets protection system under the existing legislative, institutional and organisational arrangements.

Migration, which is a problem throughout the world, was characterised in the year monitored by a moderate fall in the number of persons cleared at border crossings, increased interest from foreigners in permanent residence in the Czech Republic and the highest number of persons apprehended by the Czech Police for illegally crossing national borders since the Czech Republic came into being. There is an increasing number of foreigners resident illegally. The data so far and the direction of illegal migration confirm that the Czech Republic remains largely a transit country en route to Western Europe. Illegal migration brings with it the abuse of asylum proceedings and supports the increase in crime, including organised crime, in all countries. A range of measures adopted at the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999 should make the regime on national borders stricter throughout the Czech Republic. For example, the documents adopted stipulate who should take care of Czech borders and how, and how to combat conveyers and groups of illegal refugees. The modernisation of the visa process entails e.g. printing machine-readable zones (symbols) in Czech visas, which will enable the movements of foreigners in the country to be controlled automatically. It also entails adopting and applying the Schengen standards for legislation, the organisational structure and the discharge of duty.

Activities by criminal organisations in the Czech Republic, representing a serious threat to fundamental values - democracy, human rights and the rule of law, follow trends for international organised crime. The 1997 trend continued, when in view of the Czech Republic’s accession to NATO and the EU, increasing interest was registered among criminal organisations in penetrating Western Europe via the Czech Republic. Activities by criminal organisations are extensive and varied - violent crime, vehicle theft, smuggling and crimes against property. Organisations from the former USSR have a dominant position in the Czech Republic, and other criminal organisations come mainly from the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, together with Italian criminal groups and criminal groups from South-East Asia (especially China and Vietnam).

A substantial part of the world is threatened by terrorism of a political and religious nature. Increased attention was therefore paid to terrorism, although last year the Czech Republic remained in essence exempt from this phenomenon (with explosions in Ostrava, Přerov and Prague probable exceptions). No international terrorist organisations were operating openly in our country. Future developments will depend on the internal political and economic situation and the international situation. Attacks on foreign persons and buildings cannot be ruled out. There is an increasing number of attacks on vehicles, buildings and persons making use of explosives. For the most part, they have involved settling accounts, extortion and intimidation. Radio Free Europe’s broadcasts to Iran and Iraq remain a possible risk factor, nor can individual acts by radical members of the younger generation of Arab immigrants be ruled out.

In 1998 the Czech Republic was chosen by organisers of the international narcotics trade as a “safe country”, in particular for the overly liberal conditions for allowing legal residence in our country, the simplicity of establishing cover companies with relatively low operating costs, the practically risk-free laundering of drug money, low punishments for drug offences and the high probability of protecting assets acquired from drug deals prior to forfeiture. In less than 8 years, an open drug scene has been formed in the Czech Republic, with a steady clientele of heroin users, the wave of “rave drugs” has boomed, drug use has expanded to all regions of the country, communities of users of heroin substitutes have practically disappeared and drug traffickers are resident here. The crimes of the illegal production and distribution of psychotropic substances and poisons are becoming more apparent. We envisage a further increase in the number of heroin addicts, the violent settling of disputes over territories and spheres of influence and the operation of large laboratories for producing synthetic drugs. A positive factor is the change in the judiciary’s attitude to punishing drug traffickers and producers, with important changes the amendment the Criminal Code and the Misdemeanours Act, according which the possession of drugs for own use is also punishable, and the adoption of Act No. 167/1998 Coll., on addictive substances and changes to several other acts governing addictive substances, preparations and precursors.

The extremist scene in the Czech Republic does not differ greatly from the extremist spectrum in neighbouring countries, where extreme right and extreme left groups are registered, as are anti-establishment organisations officially operating in political life. The primary risk factor is the degree of organisation and the emergence of groups on the basis of shared extremist ideologies. The security of the state and its citizens is threatened by the propagation and support of extremist ideologies and related movements. Extremists use every opportunity for openly anti-establishment manifestations and actively try to create such situations. Crimes with an extremist subtext committed in the Czech Republic mainly concerned breaches of the peace, actual bodily harm, violence against groups of citizens and individuals, the defamation of nation, race and convictions, and supporting and promoting movements aimed at suppressing citizens’ rights and freedoms. For offences by skinheads, a significant move was noted towards concealed offences - the number of direct open attacks was lower. The victims of such crimes were mainly members of the Romany minority, coloured foreigners and persons of different opinions. The situation was negatively affected by the dissemination of racist, neo-nazi and anti-Semitic opinions and related literature on the Internet.

In recent decades, there has been a sharp rise in crime in the majority of industrialised and developing countries (crime is one of the sociopathic phenomena in society), which is put in the context of the processes of industrialisation and migration, together with demographic changes. With increasing modernisation, crime has become more professional and new kinds of crime have emerged. Determining the causes and conditions of crime is very difficult and is principally the focus of criminology, which relates to other disciplines, above all sociology, psychology, pedagogy, statistics and criminal law. The causes can be explained in two ways; the first stresses the importance of biological factors (heredity, bodily constitution, personality structure), the second the importance of factors of a social nature: the background environment (family, peers, media, etc.) and economic, social and cultural conditions.55 Crime trends are related to the level of social control, which has fallen with increasing urbanisation and a higher population density.

Deficiencies in the law are closely linked to rising crime. Despite amendments to laws (especially Act No. 140/1961 Coll., the Criminal Code and Act No. 283/1991 Coll., on the Police), which should serve as an effective instrument for the state to react to the increase in all kinds of organised crime and the vast increase in overall crime, the most critical area remains the existing legislation on criminal preparation proceedings, where their extent, the high degree of formality, the duplication required by procedures and the time-consuming nature of trial acts has long ceased to correspond to current crime trends. The absence or inconsistency of controls in general have played a negative role. Another important connection between crime trends and the police’s ability to restrict negative criminal trends are financial arrangements for the Ministry of the Interior, where the finances provided to the police in recent years have allowed it merely to survive, without any more substantial developments in technology or expertise.

The measures adopted so far have not reduced crime, nor has it been possible to restrict negative phenomena in the area of internal security. The failure of the state’s regulatory role has been particularly apparent in the rapid increase in economic crime, the on-going upwards trend for violent crime, the expansion of all kinds of organised crime and the radicalisation of extremist forces. Increased attention will therefore be paid to the most serious problem in public order and internal security - the Czech Republic’s preparations to accede to and apply the Schengen agreements. Further priorities will include the drafting of a new Czech Police Act, Foreign Residence Act and Asylum Act, the drafting of a Witness Protection Act, an act which modifies the Criminal Code and related laws and the implementation of the tasks from the conceptions adopted for corruption and extremism, and tasks under the National Programme for preparing the Czech Republic for EU membership. International police cooperation is becoming more important, with the priorities focused on combating rising international organised crime, the drafting and implementation of an act on crisis management and the integrated rescue system and the transformation of civil defence. Greater attention will be devoted to improving the police’s image in the eyes of the public, which means that alongside its repressive role, its caring role will also be stressed. Measures in conceptual work, legislation, international and inter-ministerial cooperation, from the broadest prevention to current tasks for the Ministry of the Interior, and in the work of the Czech Police, the efficiency of which lies in their interconnections, are the basis for government internal security policy. The fundamental objective is to restrict crime and increase the safety of citizens.

On the basis of information on trends for crime, individual kinds of crime and issues in areas related to internal order and security, the following security risks can be declared for the future, i.e. areas were maximum attention must be devoted:

Murder and burglary. Corruption. Fraud. Tax evasion. Intellectual property crime. Crime by young people. Crime with an extremist subtext. Car theft and theft from cars. Illegal migration. Crime by criminal organisations. Terrorism. Unlawful conduct in the area of narcotic and psychotropic substances. Infringements of road safety principles.

It is however necessary to emphasise that in the fight against crime, it is necessary to establish effective protection against the real and oppressive threat presented by everyday crime, which means focusing measures against crime in all its aspects, whether corruption, serious economic crime, pick-pocketing, car theft, robbery, burglary or infringements of traffic regulations, together with the lack of respect for the law, and to make thorough use of all valid laws to punish offenders in all the different kinds of crime.


Copyright © 1999 Ministerstvo vnitra České republiky
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