Defining and Registering Criminal Offences and Measures - Oapen

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Aims and Methodology of the Study
Against this background, the European Committee on Crime Problems
(CDPC) created in 1993 a Group of Specialists on ‘Trends in crime and criminal
justice: statistics and other quantitative data on crime and criminal justice systems’
(PC-S-ST). The Group was composed of experts from France, Germany, Hungary,
Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Some of them are still active
in the group, 6 while another founding member, although having left the group
several years ago, now acted as a steering board member of the AGIS 134 project
(Chris LEWIS).
During a relatively short period, a great number of theoretical and technical issues
were addressed. These issues included data comparison, offences to be considered
and their definitions, appropriate table formats, statistical routines including
counting rules in the various countries, interpretation of the available data,
infrastructure needed for a full implementation of the European Sourcebook
Project etc.
In 1995, the Group presented the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal
Justice Statistics Draft model 7 to the CDPC. The Draft model presented crime
and criminal justice data for the year 1990 for ten European countries. Extensive
technical comments were added to the tables in order to document the numerous
methodological problems that are involved in international data collections. It was
stated that: ‘Having found a practical and satisfactory way of handling the difficult
problem of varying offence definitions and counting rules, the group reached the
conclusion that a European Sourcebook on crime and criminal justice statistics
[was] indeed feasible.’ 8.
Thus, at its 45th plenary session in June 1996, the CDPC entrusted the Group
of Specialists with the preparation of a compendium of crime and criminal justice
data for the whole of Europe. The final document should represent an enlarged
version of the already existing Model European Sourcebook, covering, if possible,
the total membership of the Council of Europe and presenting crime and criminal
justice data for the years 1990 to 1996. Additional specialists in the collection of
statistical data resulted in the enlargement of the Group and members were given
responsibilities as ‘regional coordinators’. 9
In its work, the group took account of the periodic surveys carried out by the
UN 10 and INTERPOL. 11 These surveys relied on the provision of data by national
sources asked to follow standard definitions. This approach contrasted with the
group’s adopted methodology, where a coordinated network of national corres-
6 Martin KILLIAS, Jörg-Martin JEHLE, Gordon BARCLAY.
7 Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1995.
8 Op. cit., p. 190.
9 Among the new members of the group were Marcelo AEBI and a bit later also Paul SMIT and
Bruno AUBUSSON DE CAVARLAY, who are still with the group.
10 United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (CTS);
see www.unodc.org.
11 INTERPOL International Crime Statistics (now discontinued).