 The Effects of a Simpler Criminal Procedure on Criminal Case Outcomes: Evidence from Czech District-level DataCERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague Abstract: The paper estimates the effects of a simpler criminal procedure on case durations and the probabilities that the defendant is charged and convicted. The identification strategy exploits a policy reform in the Czech Republic as a quasi-natural experiment. The reform allowed petty offenses to be prosecuted via a simplified (fast-track) procedure but its actual implementation varied substantially across districts. The fast-track procedure reduced the average duration of the police/prosecutor phase of the criminal procedure by 27 days on average for the petty offenses. It increased the probability that the suspect is charged by 6 percentage points. The fast-track procedure released resources that could potentially be spent on prosecuting serious crimes; I therefore investigate for spillover effects. I find only weak evidence of such spillover effects on the probability that the suspect is charged and no evidence of spillover effects on other case outcomes. Keywords: criminal procedure; law enforcement (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cer:papers:wp528 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague Contact information at EDIRC. |
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