Defining and Registering Criminal Offences and Measures - Oapen

Aims and Methodology of the Study 3
citizens, females, minors, persons held in institutions for drug-addict offenders, mentally ill offenders
held in psychiatric institutions or hospitals, offenders serving their sentence under electronic
surveillance and persons held in facilities under the responsibility of any other Ministry. For the
first time it was tried to collect data on the effective length of term served by convicted
prisoners.
The data collection instrument developed in the course of this project was not
only used for this feasibility study. Based on the results of data collection, including
longitudinal tables asking for data for the years 2003 - 2007 and other tables
restricted to the year 2006, the 4th edition ESB has been written and compiled.
This will be publicized parallel to this book. 3 For the medium and long term future
of the ESB project many interesting areas of research remain, especially with
respect to probation, community sanctions and measures and juvenile criminal
law. The ESB group is willing to face these tasks and wants to continue its work in
the years to come.
2. Methodological background
The project on “European Standards for Defining and Registering Crime Types,
Public Prosecution Service Disposals, Court Sentences and Improving Correction
Statistics” builds upon work done so far in the ESB context as well as in AGIS
2005 funded projects. The latest edition of the Sourcebook was divided into five
sections providing basic police, prosecution, conviction and correctional statistics,
survey data as well as common offence definitions and demographic data in the
appendices. This project aimed at enhancing and improving the ESB study in the
ways described above. The prosecution chapter was redesigned based upon the
findings of AGIS 2005 projects 126 4 and 139 5 to include significantly more information,
profiting from the definitions provided by these smaller projects.
2.1 The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics
The assessment of trends in crime and criminal justice has been a permanent concern
of the Council of Europe and other international organizations. Due to ongoing
developments in Greater Europe and the ensuing enlargement of the membership
of the Council of Europe, the necessity for such periodic assessment and
comparison in the above mentioned areas had become even more apparent.
3 AEBI et. al: European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics – 2010, 4th edition,
Den Haag: Boom 2010.
4 JEHLE / WADE (eds.): Coping with Overloaded Criminal Justice Systems, Heidelberg: Springer
2006.
5 European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, issues 2-3, vol. 14, 2008: Special Issue: Prosecution
and Diversion within Criminal Justice Systems in Europe, guest edited by WADE /
JEHLE.