In 2021, registered crime decreased in all regions of the Czech Republic. Photo credit: Freepik.
Czech Republic, January 12 (BD) – In 2021, the Czech Republic recorded 153,000 crimes, half the number recorded in 2011, according to data from the Czech Statistical Office (CSO).The number of people imprisoned is also decreasing, despite being among the highest in the EU as a share of the population.
In 2021, registered crime decreased in all regions of the Czech Republic. Year-on-year, the number of registered crimes decreased most in percentage terms in the Karlovy Vary Region (by 15.1%), and in absolute terms in Prague (by 2,929 offences). The crime rate in the capital city has long been the highest, with 2,755 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021, while the lowest rate was in the Zlín Region (842 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants).
“Property crime was by far the most frequent type of crime in 2021, with 77,562 offences, accounting for approximately half of all registered crimes,” said Jitka Wichová from the CSO Department of Community Development Statistics. Economic crime recorded the highest year-on-year decline. In 2021, the number of registered crimes in this area decreased by almost a third. Vice crime, on the other hand, was the only type of crime that saw an increase in registered cases (17%) compared to 2020.
Statistics show that in 2021, at least 22,056 victims of crime were registered by the police. Overall, males are slightly more prevalent among victims, rising to 61% in the case of violent crime. On the other hand, in the case of vice crime, the vast majority of victims (88%) were women.
In 2021, 69,749 people were prosecuted and investigated for crimes in the Czech Republic, a decrease of 5,636 (7.5%) year-on-year. Significantly higher rates of inhabitants were prosecuted or investigated in the Ústí nad Labem Region (1,056 per 100,000), while the lowest rate was in the Vysočina Region (494 persons per 100,000). The general character of crime as a predominantly male field is reflected in the Czech Republic; women accounted for just 16% of all those prosecuted and investigated over the last ten years.
The Czech Republic has long been at the top of the European index in terms of the size of the prison population, although the number of prisoners has been slightly decreasing every year since 2016. “There will be 212 prisoners per 100,000 people in the Czech Republic in 2021,” said Wichová. In the same year, the average occupancy rate of Czech prisons fell below 100% for the first time since 2015. According to the latest international data from 2020, the Czech Republic had the third highest number of prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants in the EU, after Lithuania and Slovakia.
