Structure of imprisonment in the Czech Republic 1966-2012 in the light of Prison Service data

The Prison Service of the Czech Republic has been collecting e-data about imprisoned persons and presenting particular descriptive statistics in its annual reports since 1996. However, essential underlying information and complex relations analyses are not worked out in depth. The Institute of Criminology and Social Prevention offers particular narrowly focused analysis, but has never prepared a comprehensive description based on Czech prison data and models derived from it. As the country is about to prepare a prison service reform, complex statistical and microeconomic models are required. One of the reasons why advanced modelling could not be conducted was the absence of an appropriately adapted dataset. This article describes the steps from a dataset provided by the Prison Service of the Czech Republic to a fi nal database which allows performing advanced analyses. The aim of this paper is also to describe the properties of the database and to report the total number and structure of cases of imprisonment in the CR between 1996 and 2012.