Abstract:
The research project JUSTIS (Scientific Indicators of Confidence in Justice:
Tools for Policy Assessment), which is funded primarily by the European
Commission from the 7th Framework Programme for Research, is designed to
provide EU institutions and Member States with new indicators for assessing
public confidence in justice. The project is based on the assumption that an
effective justice system must assess itself not only against the narrow criteria of
crime control, but against broader criteria relating to people’s trust in justice and
their sense of security. Nine partners from seven countries participate in the JUSTIS project. The
countries are Bulgaria, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania and the United
Kingdom. This report contains three parts. The first part covers the review of importance
of public confidence as a tool for policy assessment in the countries participating
in JUSTIS. The review was carried out by interviewing experts such as
scientists, criminal justice managers and government officials from all countries
represented in the project. The papers prepared by project partners were
compiled as a joint report by Dimitar Markov from the Center for the Study of
Democracy in Bulgaria.
The second part of this report contains reviews on literature and current
indicators of confidence in justice and fear of crime. Each partner participating
in JUSTIS prepared a review on their own country, and these are published here
as such. The content and scope of these reviews vary, and therefore they should
be considered as working papers. The UK team also prepared a review on the
situation in the United States which is published here. onfidence on a supra-national level. This part assesses the measurement of
confidence in justice in international initiatives such as the International Crime
Victimisation Survey and the European Social Survey. Different partners
participated in compiling the information but the main part of work for this
review was carried out by Maria Yordanova, Miriana Ilcheva and Dimitar
Markov from the Center for the Study of Democracy in Bulgaria.
