Recidivism in Estonia

In 2009 and 2010 the Estonian Ministry of Justice conducted a study on recidivism. We will publish a whole set of materials on this website soon.

Recidivism in Estonia (in English from page 154)

Definition of recidivism in the study

In this study recidivism means the commission of a new criminal off ence and its indicator is interrogation of a person as a suspect after release from prison, conviction in the court or termination of proceedings. In view of the presumption of innocence this approach is not legally correct – we cannot claim that a person has committed a criminal offence until a judgement of conviction has been enforced with respect to the person. Therefore, it has to be remembered that if the commission of a new criminal off ence is discussed in this study, this does not refer to a legal assessment; instead this is a simplification made in the interests of comprehensibility of text. In case of the recidivism of convicted off enders we mean people whom the court did not impose any actual prison sentence, i.e. people who had the possibility to commit new criminal offences while at large.