Keywords: criminal proceedings, the summary procedure, experts opinions

The endeavour to simplify criminal proceedings belongs, in the long term, in the Czech Republic and a number of other countries to the most significant trends of development of procedural criminal law as well as the criminal justice system as a whole. The institute of shortened preliminary proceeding and the following simplified procedure held before a single judge (hereafter collectively “summary proceedings“) was established by the amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure, effective from 1 January 2002. The subject of a research by the Institute of Criminology and Social Prevention (ICSP) was legal regulation of summary procedure and its application in practice in the Czech penal process.

The paper presents some results of research conducted in the years 2012 and 2013, especially part dealing with experts´ opinions. The survey was carried out among 175 judges, public prosecutors and police officers. Preferred attitudes to solving the high incidence of trivial crime as well as benefits of summary procedure and obstacles to its effective application will be presented. Get to know the views of whether summary proceedings are different from the standard criminal proceedings on issues such as individual preventive effect, ensuring the rights of the defense, and more. The report also provides insights into the evaluation of the mutual cooperation of authorities involved in criminal proceedings including a short comparison with previous analogous research conducted by the Institute in 2007.

Simona Diblikova
Institute of Criminology and Social Prevention, Prague, Czech Republic