European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics - 2003

Abstract

In 1993, the Council of Europe charged a Committee of Experts with the preparation of a feasibility study concerning collection of crime and criminal justice data for Europe. There were reservations regarding the comparability of legal systems, offence definitions and data collection procedures between different countries but it was recognised that, despite similar problems (such as offence definitions and data collection procedures which may vary between U.S. States as they do between European countries), the American Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics provides information on all the U.S. States. The members of the Council of Europe’s experts’ committee decided to carry out a feasibility study by collecting data on offences and offenders recorded by the police, prosecutions, convictions and corrections through members of that Committee who had access to the data in 10 particular countries. The report was received favourably and in 1995, the Council of Europe decided to enlarge the Committee in order to include other parts of Europe. The first official edition of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics was published by the Council of Europe in 1999. It covered 36 countries and was reliant upon national correspondents in each country. After the first edition, the Council of Europe was no longer able to sustain the costs of the project. The UK Home Office, the Dutch Ministry of Justice Research and Documentation Centre (WODC) and the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs (through the University of Lausanne) appreciated the value of having such a network of national correspondents and were reluctant to lose it. Consequently, they agreed to share the financial and other resource implications in order to produce a second edition. A smaller Committee of Experts reviewed the first edition in an attempt to improve the comparability of the figures wherever feasible. In particular, changes were made to the prosecutions chapter after a study of the prosecutorial systems throughout Europe. Data on offences recorded by the police is now available for countries (particularly in Central and Eastern Europe) for which no such data were included in the first edition because of concerns about their reliability.5 In addition, there is now extensive data on correctional statistics and on the use of “alternative sanctions” throughout Europe.