Abstract:
The first edition of the Compendium of United Nations Standards and Norms
in Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice was published in 1992.
Between the first edition of the Compendium and the present one, new
standards and norms have been developed and five binding legal instruments have
been negotiated and adopted by the international community: the United Nations
Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its three supplementary
protocols (the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons,
Especially Women and Children, the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants
by Land, Sea and Air and the Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Their Parts and Components and Ammunition) and the
United Nations Convention against Corruption. The standards and norms in crime
prevention and criminal justice, developed over the last 60 years have paved the
way to the adoption of those conventions and have provided a starting point for
their negotiation. Now the hope is that those legal instruments will reinforce and
strengthen the value and significance of the standards and norms, by eliciting
the kind of system-wide cooperation that will give full weight to their further
application.
The present edition of the Compendium has been structured according to a
new clustering system articulated as follows: (a) standards and norms related
primarily to persons in custody, non-custodial sanctions and juvenile and restorative
justice; (b) standards and norms related primarily to legal, institutional and practical
arrangements for international cooperation; (c) standards and norms related
primarily to crime prevention and victim issues; and (d) standards and norms
related primarily to good governance, the independence of the judiciary and the
integrity of criminal justice personnel.
