Martin Killias: The poor go to prison: Possible pitfalls of replacing short prison sentences by monetary penalties

Katedra sociologie FF UK zve na veřejnou přednášku prof. Martina Killiase (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland) s názvem „The poor go to prison: Possible pitfalls of replacing short prison sentences by monetary penalties“.

In 2007, a new Swiss Penal Code became legally effective in which short prison sentences were to a large extent replaced by income-based day-fines. In addition, fines (as fixed sums ranging from 1 to 10,000 Swiss francs) became more widely available as additional sanctions to custodial or day-fine sentences. Both fines and day-fines are to be converted into custody if they remain unpaid. Several thousand defendants are concerned by such a conversion every year, but virtually no data and no information has been collected on this phenomenon up to now. In order to fill this gap, the Department of Justice of the Canton of Zurich commissioned an evaluation on how often, under what circumstances and against whom (i.e. what type of defendants) monetary penalties are converted into custody. The results show that the majority of defendants serving monetary penalties in prison are confronted with multiple problems of integration. A second group are defendants who were sentenced to substantial amounts of fines or day-fines that they or people from their networks are unable to pay. (Authors of this research: Martin Killias & Lorenz Biberstein, University of St. Gallen)

Bio

Martin Killias obtained his doctorate in law from Zurich University (Switzerland), followed by a master‘s degree in sociology and social psychology. After three semesters spent at the University of Albany School of Criminal Justice, he served for 25 years as Professor of criminology and criminal law at the University of Lausanne School of Criminal Sciences. In 2006, he joined the Zurich Law Faculty as a full Professor of criminal law, criminal procedure, and criminology. Since 2013, he has been teaching the same subjects at the St. Gallen University Law School. Beyond teaching, Martin Killias also served part-time as a judge at the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland (1984–2008). Martin Killias has been known mainly for his strong involvement in comparative and experimental criminology. He has been one of the leading initiators of the International Crime Victimization Surveys, the International Self-Reported Delinquency Study, Business Crime Surveys, and the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, as well as of several experimental studies on the effects of different sanctions. He has a strong commitment to rigorous evaluations of new sanctions and correctional programs that he pursues as a co-chair of the Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Group. He has authored and/or co-authored 12 books and 250 articles (mostly for peer-reviewed journals), and edited and/or co-edited 11 books.