Improving criminal justice statistics : national and international perspectives

Since the beginnings of criminal statistics in the early 19th century their use as instruments for measuring the true amount of crime has been controversial. Nevertheless, they are still important up to the present day. These data are used to justify policies, to decide on measures of crime prevention and crime control and to make statements about the working of the criminal justice system. With the world closing up and Europe growing together, not only economic or social comparisons are needed, but there also exists a demand to compare the developments of criminality as well as the criminal policies and the criminal justice systems of different countries. A workshop organized by the editors and titled "Improving Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics - National and International Perspectives", which took place on the 11th International Congress on Criminology in Budapest in August 1993, brought together international experts to discuss the topic. The editors asked the contributors to answer the following questions in regard to their respective national situation: (1) Are there any statistics covering the whole area of police and criminal justice in the respective countries? (2) Are there any partial statistics, and if so, how are they connected? Are they compatible?(3) What can be said about reliability and value of data of statistics? (4) What will be the future developments regarding survey modes and computerization of data collection and evaluation? How can the availability of the data be improved? (5) How far can official statistics in future be replaced or complemented by victim surveys and microcensus? (6) Is it possible to establish international comparability/compatability of national statistics? This volume contains most of the papers presented at the conference and revised for this publication as well as some complementary contributions by other authors. After an introductory chapter, which describes the initial position and the present difficulties of the national criminal statistics and of their international comparability, the situation in several West and East European countries is shown. This is supplemented by reports from Africa as an example of developing countries and from Canada as an example of a non-European developed country. A concluding chapter discusses problems of international comparability and of concrete initiatives to carry out such comparisons