Za mřížemi: Ekonomická analýza společenských nákladů kriminality v České republice

Crime imposes a burden on society that extends beyond direct fiscal expenditures on criminal justice. Although the international literature offers sophisticated methodologies for quantifying the total social costs of crime, the Czech economic and criminological discourse currently lacks a methodologically robust estimate that incorporates the intangible losses suffered by victims. This thesis tests the central hypothesis that the intangible costs of crime (pain, suffering, and diminished quality of life) represent a greater economic burden on Czech society than direct public expenditures on the criminal justice system. The primary objective is to estimate the total social costs of selected crimes against persons and property (murder, violence, rape, and theft) in the Czech Republic for the year 2023. The output provides a monetary valuation of this economic burden in absolute terms (CZK) and in relative terms as a share of the gross domestic product (GDP). The theoretical framework is grounded in the economics of crime as posited by Becker (1968) and the concept of social costs developed by Pigou (1920) and Coase (1960). The empirical analysis combines a bottom-up approach for tangible costs with the Benefit Transfer method for intangible costs. Tangible costs are stratified into three categories: anticipatory costs (prevention), reactive costs (criminal proceedings), and consequence costs (healthcare and productivity loss). Data regarding crime volume are sourced from the Police of the Czech Republic (2023), incarceration costs from the Prison Service of the Czech Republic and the Probation and Mediation Service, and healthcare costs from the Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic (ÚZIS) and health insurance funds. To quantify intangible costs, the Benefit Transfer method is applied, calibrated to the UK Home Office model (Heeks et al., 2018), and subsequently localized using: (1) purchasing power parity, (2) the income elasticity coefficient of the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) as per Viscusi and Aldy (2003), and (3) Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) derived from the Global Burden of Disease methodology. To overcome the limitations inherent in relying exclusively on police statistics, two scenarios are constructed: a conservative scenario (Scenario A) based on reported crime, and a latent scenario (Scenario B) integrating multipliers from victimization surveys (Svatoš, 2023) that map the actual incidence of crime within the population. This approach enables the quantification of the dark figure of crime, particularly for violent offenses associated with severe intangible harm (e.g., rape and domestic violence). The empirical analysis reveals that the total social costs of the selected criminal offenses in the Czech Republic reached 40.43 billion CZK in 2023, representing a macroeconomic burden equivalent to 0.53% of GDP. The analysis reveals an extreme concentration of this burden, as homicides generate the majority of the total costs despite constituting only a minor fraction of the cases. The central hypothesis, which assumed the predominance of intangible costs over criminal justice expenditures, was rejected for the majority of the examined property and violent crimes. With the exception of homicides, the direct costs of the criminal justice system structurally exceeded the monetized intangible losses suffered by victims. This asymmetry and divergence from foreign benchmarks reflect the punitive nature of the Czech penal system—manifesting in high ex-post expenditures on incarceration—combined with the conservative localization of intangible losses, which accounts for lower domestic spending on mental health care. These findings indicate a need for a critical reassessment of the current allocation of public resources, given that the marginal costs of prolonged incarceration outweigh their marginal benefits. Furthermore, they provide robust empirical justification for redirecting funds from reactive measures toward prevention and targeted support for victims.