The Use Of Alternative Measures In The Czech Republic

This article deals with Czech legal regulation of alternative measures and their use in practice within the Czech criminal justice system. Attention is focused on procedural alternative measures, i.e. diversions in criminal proceedings, as well as on alternative punishments. The development of Czech criminal law has been strongly influenced by the conception of restorative justice, which was the base for the effort to spread the scope of alternative measures and to reduce the number of the imprisoned. But the introduction of new measures (diversions, community service, house arrest, etc.) was accompanied by some problems regarding their use in practice; some of them were connected with legal regulation, other ones were caused by incorrect use. The article identifies these problems (also through analysis of statistical data) and also describes solutions to the problems.