JUSTIS Project Working Papers Review of Need: Indicators of Public Confidence in Criminal Justice for Policy Assessment

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.