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.
