Social and Legal Aspects of Punishment House Arrest.

The aim of the present Bachelor thesis entitled "Social and legal aspects of punishment house arrest", is to describe situation "de lege lata" and the actual progress of its execution and also, to describe the advantages and disadvantages of punishment house arrest and depict the public attitude to the house arrest sentence in the district of České Budějovice, The thesis is devided into two parts: theoretical and practical. The theoretical part describes alternative sentences in general and defines the house arrest sentence. The practical part is based on a study. At the beginning, the aims of the study and three research questions are introduced. The first question: Do the legal arrangements and actual execution of the house arrest sentence correspond to the current European trends? The second question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of the house arrest sentence? The third question: What is the level of lay public's legal awarness of the house arrest sentence? The study is based on a quantitative research strategy. The data were collected by means of questioning via standardized forms and patterned interviews. The form research sample included 150 respondents from České Budějovice, chosen at random. The interview reaserch sample included 4 respondents of the Probation and Mediation Service of the Czech Republic in South Bohemian region. At the beginning, all the respondents were advised on the future progress of the study and on the consequences of the use of acquired data. Also, they were informed that the filling in the forms and the participation in the interview were anonymous. Afterwards, the respondents answered prepared questions. Within the research, the following hypothesis were defined: H1: The legal arrangements of the house arrest sentence are adequate, while the actual execution of the house arrest does not equal the current European trends. The lay public's legal awarness of the house arrest sentence is very poor. H2: Compared to the prison sentence, the advantages of the house arrest sentence outweigh its disadvantages. H3: The lay public's legal awarness of the house arrest sentence is very poor. The chosen hypothesis have been confirmed. The results of the study have shown that the lay public's awarness of the legal aspects were not sufficiant and its attitude towards this kind of sentence was rather positive. Most of the respondents obtained a high school degree completed with the final exam ("maturita") and claimed to have been informed about the house arrest sentence via televison. Nevertheless, they suffer from a certain lack of information in the field of legal aspects. Compared to the prison sentence, the house arrest sentence seems to manifest more advantages than disadvantages. In the same time, the Czech legal arrangements of the house arrest sentence is adequate while the actual execution of the house arrest sentence doesn't correspond to the current European trends. This thesis can contribute to the better public knowledge of the house arrest sentence. Also, it could be used as an auxiliary manual for the high school students, e.g. in the filed of social-legal studies. Eventually, it could serve as a source of information for the Probation and Mediation Service of the Czech Republic