The question is whether the punishments for police officers and people in positions of power who broke the law — who took, procured or manufactured pervitin, for example — really were what they should have been. It sounds simple only until we notice that we are not comparing one thing. "Up to five years" is not a court's judgment. A suspended sentence is not an acquittal. A ban on activity in a security corps is not a disciplinary interview. And the charging of twenty highway officers from Domašov does not yet have a punishment that can be measured against a statutory range. Only when these four things are separated can one read what the Criminal Code, GIBS and a final judgment actually imposed in the documented cases — and what still does not follow from that about the "right punishment".
1. The headline, the prosecutor and the law speak of a different punishment
Imagine a table after the main hearing. A reader holds a news headline: they sent a police officer to prison, he faced five years, he walked away with a suspended sentence. He is right about the anger the headline feeds. He is not measuring the judgment.
Next to him sits a public prosecutor. He says he proposed a sentence inside the statutory range and that the court is no more bound by the proposal than it is bound by the headline. He is right about his role. The prosecutor's proposal is public only sometimes — in Miroslav Vogel's case the public account caught it: a three-year suspended sentence and a three-year ban on activity, while the headline carried "up to ten years" [16][17].
The judge lays down a third file. The Criminal Code tells him in § 38 that where a less intrusive sanction suffices, he must not impose a harsher one. In § 39 it tells him what to take into account: the nature of the act, the person, rehabilitation, mitigation and aggravation. In § 81 it tells him when he may suspend the execution of a prison sentence. He is right about the law. He is not measuring the public impression of justice [5][7].
The GIBS spokesperson reads a fourth paper: two years with a thirty-month suspension. The headline above the same act writes "to prison". Both cite the same February 2021 in Příbram. They do not say the same sentence [12].
A service official has a fifth paper: the act on the service relationship. A final conviction for an intentional criminal offence means that the member must be dismissed. A suspended sentence is not an exception here. It is still a conviction [8][22].
At first glance this is a dispute about "whether the punishments were what they should have been". In fact each person is defending a different object: a headline, a proposal, a statutory range, a suspension of execution, the end of a service relationship. That is why they can all be partly right and the shared sentence "the police officer walked away for pervitin" still wrong. So the first rule does not read: trust the harshest number. It reads: write which layer of punishment the sentence is meant to prove.
"Up to five years" is not a court's judgment.
— Jiný Kontext
2. Punishment has at least six layers
The word punishment looks like one object. In the news, in the pub and at the family table it is used for the statutory range, the proposal, the judgment, the suspended sentence, the ban and the sacking. In fact it is a bundle of layers that do not add up.
The first layer is the offence definition. Unlawful production and other handling of narcotic and psychotropic substances under § 283 is not abuse of the authority of an official under § 329 and is not accepting a bribe under § 331. A police officer can fulfil one, two, or all three. Adding them up into the word "pervitin" is the start of a mix-up, not the end of a diagnosis [2][3][4].
The second layer is the statutory range. The basic paragraph of § 283 and of § 329 carries, in the public accounts of the cases in this series, an upper limit of five years. A qualified form carries ten, twelve, eighteen — according to the paragraph and according to the year of the wording. "Faced up to" is usually this upper limit as GIBS or the prosecutor described it at the time of indictment. It is not the middle. It is not the median. It is not what "was supposed to fall" [2][3].
The third layer is the public prosecutor's proposal. Where the public account publishes it, it is usually lower than the headline. In Vogel's case the prosecutor asked for a suspended sentence. The court acquitted. The difference between "up to ten years", "I ask for three suspended" and "no punishment, because guilt did not stand" is the whole case, not a nuance [16].
The fourth layer is the pronouncement of a prison sentence and the decision whether execution will be suspended. Conditional suspension under § 81 is possible only for a sentence not exceeding three years, and only if the court reasonably believes that execution is not needed to affect the offender. Three years here are not "little". They are the ceiling of the statutory device [7].
The fifth layer is punishments beside imprisonment: a ban on activity, a fine, forfeiture of a thing. The law says expressly that permission to suspend does not apply to the execution of the other punishments imposed alongside it. So a ban on work in the corps is not executed "only if the suspended sentence collapses". It is executed now [7].
The sixth layer is the service relationship and the public headline. The act on the service relationship dismisses a member after a final intentional conviction. Meanwhile the headline may write "to prison" even though execution was suspended. Both layers are real. Neither of them is the other [8][12].
This layering is not an academic detail. It decides whether a sentence about leniency belongs in the file at all. If we are talking about a statutory range, we cannot turn it into the punishment imposed. If we are talking about a suspended sentence, we cannot turn it into zero. If we are talking about a prosecution, we cannot turn it into the proportionality of a judgment that does not yet exist.
3. The best reading is the one whose mix-up you can bear
An article about the punishment of a police officer usually breaks into one of five mistakes. Either the upper limit of the statutory range becomes a promise the court "did not keep". Or the suspended sentence becomes an acquittal. Or the probationary period becomes the length of the sentence. Or a GIBS prosecution becomes guilt. Or the 76 prosecuted members of the Police of the Czech Republic for the year 2024 become a map of a corps on pervitin.
The table is not a ranking of severity. It is a map of the mix-ups the text has to bear before it assembles a verdict on justice.
| Type of failure | What it looks like | How to test | What limits the harm |
|---|---|---|---|
| Statutory range as judgment | "He should have got five years, he got two" | Separate the upper limit from the term imposed | Read the paragraph of the offence definition, not the headline |
| Suspended sentence as zero | "He walked away" | Ask whether guilt stood and whether § 81 applies | Describe the suspension, the ban and the service relationship |
| Probationary period as imprisonment | "He got four years" | Distinguish the term of the sentence from the probationary period | Do not quote an "X-year suspended sentence" until the account states both |
| Prosecution as guilt | Domašov = 20 culprits | Stage: charge / indictment / final | Do not assess the proportionality of a punishment that is not there |
| 76 as prevalence | "The corps takes pervitin" | What does GIBS 2024 even count | Do not add up prosecutions, drugs and establishment posts |
That also changes the question of the series. We are not asking which judge was hard enough. We are asking which description of punishment the law can bear. A family that reads "to prison" may be right about disappointment. It is not right about the judgment if GIBS, in the same sentence, says a conditional suspension [12].
4. "Faced up to" is the ceiling of the range, not the expected sentence
The sentence "faced up to five years" is almost a chorus in the public accounts of this series. Příbram. Rychnov. Pankrác. In Jakubec's case "up to ten". In Vogel's case again "up to ten", even though the prosecutor asked for three suspended. In the foreign-police database-check case "up to ten" for accepting a bribe — at the stage of prosecution [12][13][14][16][18][19].
The law promises nothing here. The basic paragraph of § 283 punishes with imprisonment of one year to five years or with a fine. The basic paragraph of § 329 punishes with one year to five years or with a ban on activity. That is the span in which the act moves if it was not charged in a qualified form. The upper limit is a ceiling. The lower limit is a floor. The court moves between them under § 39, according to mitigation and aggravation, according to whether there is concurrence, and according to whether guilt stands at all [2][3][5][6].
As an aggravating circumstance the law expressly knows breach of a special duty and abuse of employment, position or function. A uniform is not mitigation here. It is a circumstance the court must take into account — beside a confession, a first sentence, remorse and the life so far, which the law knows as mitigation. A dispute about the "right punishment" is often a dispute about which of these two lists the reader treats as the only one [6].
From that it does not follow that five years is right and two are wrong. It follows that the sentence "faced up to" measures the ceiling of a description, not the middle of justice. Anyone who turns it into a promise the court broke is not judging the judgment. He is judging a journalistic shortcut.
With qualified forms the difference is harder. Ten years in Jakubec's case and in Vogel's case is a different legal position from five years in Příbram. Adding up "faced ten" across cases as proof of soft justice means adding up different ceilings. Ceilings do not add up.
5. A suspended sentence is not an acquittal. It is a suspension of execution
A suspended sentence is poorly named in Czech. It sounds like "almost nothing". The law sounds different.
The court first imposes a prison sentence. Only then, and only if the term does not exceed three years, may it suspend execution. Suspension is not a cancellation of guilt. It is a hypothesis about rehabilitation: that execution is not needed to affect the offender so that he leads an orderly life. The probationary period is one year to five years, not shorter than the suspended sentence itself. Anyone who does not lead an orderly life in the probationary period may have the court order the sentence executed [7].
That is the first distinction a headline about a suspended sentence loses. The second is harder. Permission to suspend does not apply to the other punishments imposed beside imprisonment. A fine is paid. A ban on activity runs. Forfeiture of a thing is executed. The third distinction is a service one: a final intentional conviction is a ground for which a member must be dismissed. The Supreme Administrative Court in 2016 confirmed that this holds even where the conviction is later treated as if the person had not been convicted, because it was an amnesty. The legal fiction "as if he had not been" in the criminal sense does not throw the service relationship wide open [7][8][22].
So the point is not that "he got a suspended sentence, so nothing". It is that guilt stood, a punishment was measured, execution of imprisonment was suspended, the accessory punishments run, the service relationship ends in a case of intent.
Three years as the ceiling of suspension are a practical test of the whole series. Příbram: two. Rychnov: eighteen months. Jakubec: three — so at the edge of the statutory device. Pankrác, the first guard: twenty months. The second: one year. All publicly described prison sentences on this map fit inside § 81. That is not proof that justice "always gives a suspended sentence". It is proof that in these cases the court chose a term for which the law allows suspension. If it had wanted execution, it could either have declined to suspend a sentence of up to three years, or — if the act would bear it — have gone above three years, where § 81 gives no suspension [7][12][13][14][18].
From that it does not follow that immediate execution was mandatory. It follows that the question "why not to prison" has an answer in the law: because at a term of up to three years the court may hold that execution is not needed, and in these matters it did.
6. A ban on activity and dismissal from the corps are not a footnote to the headline
Public anger concentrates on bars, because bars can be seen. The law on an official often punishes otherwise: it takes the key.
For Jakubec the District Court in Kroměříž, beside a three-year sentence with a five-year suspension, pronounced a ten-year ban on activity in the security corps. Rychnov: five years. The Pardubice commissioner according to Novinky: four years with the Police of the Czech Republic, municipal and city police and the security corps. The Pankrác guard: five years with the corps, plus a one-year driving ban, because they caught him behind the wheel under the influence in November. The second guard: three years. These are not footnotes. For a person whose power stood on a service relationship, a ban on activity is a punishment of that power [14][15][18].
Dismissal from the service relationship is a still harder layer, because it is not in the discretion of the court in the criminal case. It is in the act on the service relationship. Anyone finally convicted of an intentional criminal offence must be dismissed. The public account sometimes says this in human language — Jakubec "was dismissed from the police because of the case" — and sometimes does not say it at all. The absence of a sentence in the newspapers is not the absence of a law [8][14].
Here a second mix-up of the question "were the punishments what they should have been" arises. The reader measures months of bars. The law also measures whether the person may return to authority. Ten years of ban in Jakubec's case is longer than the suspended three years and longer than the five-year probationary period. Anyone who says he "only got a suspended sentence" left out the longest number in the judgment [14].
7. Seventy-six prosecuted persons are not a map of the corps
Before the punishments in individual cases start to be read as a diagnosis of the corps, a map is needed that GIBS for the year 2024 can actually carry.
Ekonomický deník on 10 December 2025 cited the inspection's annual report for the government. In all, GIBS prosecuted 129 persons, or notified them of suspicion in shortened preparatory proceedings. That is a drop of 55 persons against the previous year. Among them were 76 police members (a drop of 22), 20 members of the Prison Service, 3 customs officers, 7 police employees, 3 employees of the prison service and 20 civilians. Employees of the customs administration and legal persons did not figure among those prosecuted. Prague 28, the South Moravian Region 17, Vysočina 11, the Hradec Králové Region 3. For the police, intent in 58 cases, negligence in 18. Criminal activity on duty or in working hours was committed by 36 police officers and 8 members of the prison service. Abuse of position was connected with 29 prosecuted police officers and 8 members of the prison service. In corruption, 13 new cases and 26 prosecuted persons, of whom 8 police members [10].
That is prosecution. It is not guilt. It is not a map of pervitin. 29 abuses of position are not 29 labs. Anyone who turns 76 into the sentence "the police take pervitin" is adding a GIBS unit to the unit of article 21 on prevalence in the population. Those two do not add up.
Beside punishment the inspection conducted 1,257 files in inquiry; in 258 cases it referred the matter to discipline. It recorded 9,400 submissions outside crime and inquiry. Discipline is not punishment. A submission is not a crime [1][10].
The Police of the Czech Republic published 46,163 service posts as of 20 September 2024. That is an establishment table, not a count of bodies; fill-rate for the year 2024 is missing from the same information. From 76 and from 46,163 one therefore cannot make a percentage of the "dirty" [21].
The forms of corruption the daily lists from the report are kept separate by the series: database checks, files, smuggling into a prison, a bribe in traffic. Pervitin is one of the substances in individual cases. It is not the denominator of the annual report [10].
8. Příbram: the headline sent him to prison, the judgment suspended execution
VitVit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. The court building. It is not the scene of the act.
The District Court in Příbram decided in October 2020; after appeal the Regional Court in Prague on 3 February 2021 finally convicted a police officer of the Territorial Department Příbram to a prison sentence of two years with a conditional suspension for a probationary period of thirty months. GIBS said this in March through spokesperson Ivana Nguyenová. iDNES built over this information a headline that the court sent the police officer to prison for two years for producing pervitin [12][23].
The point is not that one of the sources is lying about the term. It is that two years are in the judgment, prison in execution is not, until the suspension collapses. The headline measured the term and stuck prison bars onto it. GIBS measured the term and the suspension. A reader who asks whether the punishment "was what it should have been" often reads the headline. The law reads GIBS.
The act as the inspection described it: the man manufactured drugs when he ran out of money to buy them; several times in January and February 2020; with another person they went to Poland for tens of packs of medicines with pseudoephedrine. Originally he faced up to five years. Two other people were charged with him; the inspection did not publish their punishments. This text does not describe a production procedure. It describes that the court recognised production and imposed two years with a suspension [12].
Was that "little"? The basic statutory range of § 283 gives room from one year to five years. Two years are inside it. The suspension is lawful, because two are under three. The thirty-month probationary period is longer than the sentence, as § 82 requires. The public account does not say what the prosecutor proposed. It does not say whether the court, in the reasons, weighed a confession, a first sentence, remorse, or on the contrary abuse of position. Without the reasons one cannot say the court "should have gone to five". One can say that the headline and the judgment parted, and that this parting is itself an answer to the question why the public reads punishments as soft [2][7][12].
9. Rychnov: two acts, one aggregate under the ceiling of a suspended sentence
Krvesaj, Wikimedia Commons, public domain. The court building. It is not a map of patrols.
The District Court in Rychnov nad Kněžnou found a former police officer of the Territorial Department guilty of unlawful production and other handling of narcotic and psychotropic substances and of abuse of the authority of an official. Punishment: eighteen months of imprisonment with a conditional suspension for four years, a fine of 60 thousand koruna, a ban on activity in the security corps for five years, forfeiture of a thing. Final on 21 February 2022. GIBS published this in April. He faced up to five years [13].
Two acts that do not add up into one word pervitin. Off duty, at least three times from October 2020 to May 2021, he procured for a civilian each time three to three and a half grams of pervitin for roughly ten thousand koruna. On duty, from December 2020 to May 2021, he gave two people without a driving licence information about patrols. At his home they found cannabis, to which the forfeiture applies. The civilian was to use the pervitin, or to distribute it further — GIBS leaves it in this pair. This text does not turn that into a recipe or a map of the market [13].
An aggregate sentence of eighteen months for both misdemeanours is under the ceiling of a suspended sentence. A four-year probationary period is long against eighteen months. A five-year ban is longer than the prison sentence. The fine is executed under § 81(2). Anyone who says "he only got a suspended sentence" must add to the sentence 60 thousand, five years of ban and the fact that leaking patrols is a different protected interest from gram weight. The court punished both with one aggregate. The public often hears only the drug [7][13].
Was the aggregate "what it should have been"? The account does not contain the prosecutor's proposal or the full reasons. It contains that guilt stood in both offence definitions and that the term stayed in the band where the law allows suspension. That is documented. The sentence "for the patrols and for the pervitin he should have gone to prison" is a politics of punishment. It is not a citation of the file.
10. Jakubec: three years on a five-year probationary period is the ceiling of section 81
Lukáš Jakubec, a former employee of the district station in Bystřice pod Hostýnem, received from the District Court in Kroměříž three years of imprisonment with a five-year suspension and a ten-year ban on activity in the security corps. The public prosecutor and the accused waived appeal. The judgment is final. He faced up to ten years. He confessed in part. At the main hearing he changed his testimony [14].
Three years are the ceiling above which § 81 will not let a suspension through. The court therefore chose the highest term that can still be suspended. The point is not that "always a suspended sentence at the bottom". It is that if it wanted a suspended sentence, it could not go to four unsuspended. If it wanted execution, it could have left the three unsuspended, or — if the act and the paragraph would bear it — have gone higher, where there is no suspension. It chose the edge of the statutory device and with it the longest ordinary probationary period and the longest ban on this map [7][14].
Judge Hana Machalová said according to ČT that it contributed to the suspended sentence that Jakubec had not been punished before. He had debased the police in the eyes of the public. At first the distribution of pervitin may have helped clarification. Later he made a "trade" of the drugs. That is a public statement of reasons which Příbram and Rychnov did not get in the accounts. It gives the reader what the question "what it should have been" needs: the court weighed mitigation (a first sentence) and aggravation (a trade in uniform) and said why it did not go to execution [14][6].
His wife Lucie: a one-year sentence with a two-year suspension for handing over pervitin in at least one case. She faced up to five years. She refused to testify. That too is final. Her statutory range is not the range of an official. Adding them into one bowl "a family on pervitin" is a different sentence from the one the file can bear [14].
The defence "to penetrate the milieu" is a thesis this series carries into the part on the informant. Here one distinction is enough: the court partly accepted that sentence as a beginning and refused it as an end. The punishment is therefore not a punishment for having an informant. It is a punishment for the fact that, according to the court, a trade was made of the informant and, on top of that, a bribe of 30 thousand for not dealing with a burglary. Part of the sum was paid according to the judgment. Jakubec denied that at the hearing [14].
Waiving appeal means that the judgment did not go to an appellate court. The question whether it "should have been harsher" therefore had no second instance. That is not proof that the punishment was right. It is proof that none of the parties wanted it reviewed.
11. Pardubice: acquittal, then guilt, then an appeal on points of law
A former chief commissioner of the anti-drug department in the Pardubice Region left the appellate regional court, according to Novinky, with a four-year suspended sentence, a fine of 40 thousand koruna and a four-year ban on work with the Police of the Czech Republic, municipal and city police and the security corps. The appellate court confirmed the district court's second verdict. At the first one the district acquitted the indictment on the ground that the act had not happened. The accused filed an appeal on points of law with the Supreme Court [15].
Here the question "was the punishment what it should have been" breaks three times. First: the first instance said the act had not happened. That is not a mild punishment. That is no punishment, because no guilt. Second: the appellate instance assembled guilt and imposed a punishment. Third: an appeal on points of law means that as of the day of the account the judgment is not yet the end of the file. A series that turned Novinky into "he got four and that is little" would be lying about the stage [15].
The second mix-up is the word suspended sentence. Journalism often writes "a four-year suspended sentence" and does not say whether four years mark the term of the prison sentence or the probationary period. In § 81 the law does not allow suspension above three years of term. If four years were the term of imprisonment, the account would be describing something the basic conditional suspension cannot bear — or it would be another statutory device the text does not name. If four years are the probationary period, the term of imprisonment is missing from the account. This article therefore does not cite the number four as a proved term. It cites it as a journalistic shortcut that clouds exactly the question the reader is asking [7][15].
The core of the act, as the presiding judge Aleš Holík described it according to Novinky, is not a dose in the commissioner's pocket. It is an intervention in the system and the covering of a source: he actively failed to document, he warned, he advised how to testify in a tax matter. The defence sounded like operational tactics. The court said he expected advantages and that the source gave the impression he could go on offending. That is § 329 and a regime of records. It is not article 21 on prevalence. It is not Příbram on a lab [15].
Until the Supreme Court decides publicly, a sentence about the proportionality of the punishment is premature. Prematurity here is a finding, not an excuse.
12. Vogel: the right punishment was none. The prosecutor still asked for a suspended sentence
Miroslav Vogel, a senior counsellor of the National Drug Headquarters, was indicted for abuse of authority, favouring, endangering classified information and for extorting the informant Petr Ryžák. Ryžák claimed he manufactured and sold pervitin on Vogel's instruction. The Municipal Court in Prague acquitted on 11 December 2014. Judge Petr Hovorka called the witness unreliable: he began to testify in custody, the motive was in his own criminal proceedings, there were no wiretaps and documents, and some of the indictment's claims even proved, according to the court, to be acts that had not happened. The High Court in Prague confirmed on 12 March 2015. Final on 21 May 2015 [16].
Prosecutor Michal Moravský himself proposed acquittal on the extortion. He insisted on the rest and asked for a three-year suspended sentence and a three-year ban on activity. The headline carried up to ten years. The court imposed zero, because guilt did not stand. Anyone who asks whether the punishment "was what it should have been" must first bear this sentence: the right punishment on an acquittal is no punishment. The suspended sentence the prosecutor asked for would have been a punishment without guilt. The court did not give it [16].
The state later apologised for an unlawful criminal prosecution and the Ministry of Justice awarded 295 thousand koruna. iROZHLAS in February 2017 cited the apology of the head of the damages department. Vogel did not return to his original leading post at NPC. A further claim in the order of millions the account later tied to the limitation of the rest. That is not "he walked away thanks to the uniform". It is the bill for an indictment that fell at the evidence [17].
A series without this part would be dishonest. The tabloid sentence "a police officer covered a lab" is exactly the kind of act a reader wants punished most harshly. Here it did not survive the evidence. The question of the mildness of punishment in Vogel's case therefore has no object. The question of the price of a charge has an object.
13. Pankrác: twenty months against "up to five years"
ŠJů, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. The compound, not a smuggling procedure.
The Municipal Public Prosecutor's Office in Prague described the act of the first guard of Pankrác Remand Prison as follows: from January to the beginning of November 2023 he enabled persons in remand and serving a sentence access to addictive substances, he secured the substances from persons the prisoners named, and he carried them inside. He handed some over, he kept some as a reward. Thirteen times successfully, four times an attempt, plus 200 tablets with anabolic and other hormonal effect. The final punishment according to Novinky: twenty months of imprisonment with a three-year suspension, a five-year ban on activity in the security corps, a one-year driving ban — because they caught him behind the wheel under the influence in November. He faced up to five years [18].
The second guard: two attempts at smuggling. A one-year sentence with a two-year suspension, a three-year ban on activity. The same account, the same "up to five years" [18].
Power behind a wall is a different key from a patrol on the road. Smuggling into a prison is exactly the form the GIBS report for the year 2024 ranks among the most frequent corruption patterns. The series therefore does not hold it as "another police officer on pervitin". It holds it as a key to a guarded space. The part the guard kept is § 283 in the pocket of an official. The smuggling is abuse of authority and obstruction. The anabolics are a further act. An aggregate of twenty months with a suspension again sits inside § 81. A five-year ban again outlives the suspended sentence [10][18][7].
Were twenty months "little" against thirteen smugglings? The account does not contain the prosecutor's proposal. It contains an upper limit of five years, which is the ceiling of the basic paragraph, and a term that is a third to a half of this ceiling, plus a ban and a driving ban. The sentence "he should have sat because it was a prison" is intelligible. It is not a citation of § 39. The law allows suspension here too. The court used it. Anyone who wants to say it was unlawfully mild needs reasons that Novinky do not carry. Anyone who wants to say it was lawful has § 81. Between unlawfulness and dislike sits the whole article.
14. Database checks and Domašov: where there is no guilt, there is nothing to compare with a statutory range
On 11 November 2024 GIBS described the prosecution of a member of the Directorate of the Foreign Police Service: in five cases more than 180 persons in a year, on a single day 174 database checks, the period September 2020 to September 2021. In two cases, for 4,000 Kč, seven database checks for a civilian, handed over through a colleague. Prosecution: accepting a bribe, abuse of authority, unauthorised access to a system. The colleague and the civilian as well. They face up to ten, or six, years. That is a charge. It is not a judgment [19].
GIBS and the Regional Public Prosecutor's Office in Brno in 2026 are prosecuting twenty police officers of the Domašov highway department. All twenty for abuse of the authority of an official; ten of them also for accepting a bribe. The statutory ranges in the account: one to five years, for the bribe three to ten. No one in custody. Some filed a complaint against the charge. A service official released them from the performance of duty. The act is from 2022. There is no pervitin in the account. There is no verdict as of the date of this research [20].
The question "were the punishments what they should have been" has no object in these two cases. The question whether the public can wait has an object. The series deliberately does not make them "the tenth dirty police officer". It makes them a measure: the proportionality of a punishment is not counted from a headline and from a statutory range. It is counted from a judgment. Where there is no judgment, what remains is only a ceiling, which again is not a punishment.
15. Section 283 is not section 329 and is not discipline
Three regimes melt together in the debate about "a police officer on pervitin", because the public sentence wants them as one.
§ 283 punishes handling of a substance: production, sale, procuring for another. Příbram, part of Rychnov, Jakubec, part of Pankrác. The unit is the substance and the act with it. A uniform is an aggravating circumstance and sometimes concurrence, not an element of the offence definition [2][6].
§ 329 punishes an official who, with intent to harm or to obtain an unauthorised advantage, exercises authority contrary to a regulation, exceeds it, or fails to fulfil a duty. The Rychnov patrols, the Pardubice system, the database checks, Domašov, part of Pankrác. The unit is the key. The substance may be missing [3].
§ 331 punishes a bribe. Jakubec, part of the database checks, part of Domašov. The unit is a counter-value for arranging matters of general interest, for an official in a stricter statutory range [4].
Discipline before a service official is a fourth regime. 258 files referred to discipline in 2024 are not 258 punishments. 9,400 submissions are not 9,400 crimes. GIBS was created by Act No. 341/2011 Coll. so that criminal offences of members of the Police of the Czech Republic, the Prison Service, customs officers and its own inspection would not be investigated by the same institution that commits them. Municipal police is not in this regime. Anyone who turns GIBS into "a police that watches itself" misses the law that placed it beside them for that very reason [1][10][9].
The practical consequence for punishments: concurrence of § 283 and § 329 (Rychnov) is not the same as bare § 283 (Příbram in the public account of production) and is not the same as bare § 329 (Domašov at the stage of prosecution). Comparing terms across these lines as proof that "for pervitin in uniform one gets a suspended sentence" means comparing different protected interests. The law does not add them into one statutory range. It adds them into an aggregate in a concrete judgment.
What needs to be tested
Before a sentence about punishment leaves the table, five marks on paper are enough. The stage. The offence definition and the paragraph. The term of imprisonment and whether § 81. The accessory punishments. Whether the headline says the same as GIBS or the judgment. Anyone who leaves out the fifth mark is measuring iDNES against the law and wondering that it does not fit [12].
16. Three tests before you say the punishment was mild
The opening question has three honest answers and one dishonest one.
Three tests before a sentence about leniency
The first test is the stage. In Vogel's case the answer is: there should have been no punishment, because guilt fell. In the database checks case and Domašov: one cannot yet measure by a punishment. In Pardubice: an appeal on points of law. Anyone who rates these three lines as "soft justice" is rating an absence.
The second test is the legal corridor, not an impression. All final prison sentences on this map for which the account states a term lie between one and three years and were suspended. That is the corridor of § 81, not proof that five years were mandatory. Beside the corridor run bans from three to ten years and fines that do not survive the suspension as zero. Anyone who measures only bars is measuring the narrowest part of the judgment [7].
The third test is the reasons. In Jakubec's case the account carries them: a first sentence, a trade, debasement of the corps, waiver of appeal. In Příbram it carries the clash of headline and GIBS. In Rychnov it carries the concurrence of substance and patrols. In Pankrác it carries the number of smugglings and the driving ban. Where the reasons are missing, the sentence "the court should have gone to the upper limit" is speculation about § 39. Speculation may be political. It must not pose as a citation of the file [5][14].
The dishonest answer is the one that assembles one anger from the upper limit of a statutory range, from the headline "to prison" and from 76 prosecuted persons. The anger may stay. The unit must not.
Before a comparison with a "civilian" dealer there is a fourth distinction this text does not wrap in a false equality. An official carries § 329 and § 42 aggravating circumstances and carries a service dismissal that a civilian does not have. At the same time, in concrete judgments, he carries the mitigation of a first sentence that a civilian recidivist does not have. A comparison "for the same thing a civilian would go to prison" therefore needs the same: the same paragraph, the same extent, the same recidivism, the same concurrence. Without that it is a mood, not an audit.
17. The question is not whether they deserved it. It is which layer of punishment you are reading
The public question with which this text began sounds just. A person in a position of power who cooks, procures or smuggles pervitin, or who opens a database for a bribe, has broken something other than a neighbour in a panel block. The law knows that. It has § 329, § 331, the aggravating circumstance of abuse of position and mandatory dismissal.
The hidden cost is not that punishments are missing. In Příbram, Rychnov, Kroměříž and at Pankrác the punishments are there and they are final. The hidden cost is when one curve of leniency is assembled from them: the headline promised prison, the statutory range promised five or ten, the judgment gave two with a suspension, so justice failed. In fact the headline promised a thing that the judgment in Příbram did not expressly postpone into bars, but suspended in execution. The statutory range promised a ceiling, not a middle. The judgment gave a term in the corridor where the law allows suspension, and with it a ban that does not survive the suspension as zero. In Vogel's case the ceiling of ten years survived only as the shadow of an indictment that fell. In Domašov the ceiling does not yet have a judgment.
The right question is therefore not whether they deserved it. It is: which layer of punishment you are reading just now, which ceiling you have confused with a judgment, and which dislike — bars, a ban, a sacking, an apology by the state — you are willing to bear when it turns out that you added wrongly.
A suspended sentence is not an acquittal. It is the suspension of a punishment that has already been imposed.
— Jiný Kontext
Related texts in this series
This part is the frame of the series on power and law. The following texts take individual cases as one distinction, not as another mugshot. Article 21 on pervitin in the population is not added in here: there the unit is prevalence, here the authority of an official and a judgment of punishment.