Resume
The Crime Clearance in Relation to the Registered Crime and the Evaluation of the Police Efficiency
mjr. Mgr. Ing. František Vojtuš, National Criminal Agency of the Presidium of the Police Corps, Faculty of Law of the Comenius University Bratislava, Department of Criminal Law, Criminology and Criminalistics, external postgraduate
The subject of the paper was to point out to the importance of the crime clearance, which is among the severity of the punishment the second factor that is influencing the deterrent effect of the criminal law according to Law & Economics approach. At the same time, there was analysed the relation between the trend of crime clearance and the trend of crime which emerges from expectations of the deterrent effect concept. The theoretical model of this relation was presented and was inspired by the market offences model. Thereafter the relation was subjected to the empirical analysis based on data about clearance and crime trends in the Slovak and Czech Republic in years 1999 – 2017. This period was chosen regarding the data availability and the fact that no marked legislative changes of the Slovak preliminary procedure structure were made during those years.
The state and the dynamics of the clearance were also analysed in connection to particular crime types as they are presented by the police in the Slovak Republic. In conclusion, the concept of crime clearance evaluation and police efficiency was presented, based upon the coefficient of crime elasticity which emerges from the economic concept of elasticity and our presented model. The result has shown that clearance changes are in relation to registered crime changes, especially in the term of the Slovak Republic. However, this analysed relation is not such strong, nevertheless it is statistically significant. Our finding is that other factors than crime clearance evolution had a more significant impact on the crime rate decrease last years. The other finding is that clearance has not been responded elastically to crime changes. Hereby, according to our opinion the crime clearance rate is not a sufficient measure of the evaluation of the police activity efficiency. The reason for the increasing trend of the crime clearance rates has been mainly the result of the registered crime decrease not the law enforcement authorities more efficient clearance of the crime.
Keywords: clearance rate, crime clearance model, empirical analysis, police efficiency.