Defining and Registering Criminal Offences and Measures - Oapen

6
Aims and Methodology of the Study
With the co-operation of the correspondents and thanks to the assistance by
CESDIP 17 staff, errors in the tables published in the 2003 edition were identified.
Since 2001, the Dutch Ministry of Justice has provided the necessary resources
to set up and maintain a website containing all the data published in the 1999
edition of the European Sourcebook (www.europeansourcebook.org) under the
supervision of Paul SMIT. This service has been extended until now. All editions
of the ESB are available for download there. The data included in the Sourcebook
have been used in different scientific publications, mainly two special issues of the
European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 18.
2.2 The Prosecution Project
Based on the experiences of the ESB project, there was a study on the function of
the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in European comparison conducted. The
production of the ESB chapter on public prosecution highlighted a lack of comparable
statistical and legal information. Thus the idea for an in-depth study on
PPS functions was born.
The research was carried out in two waves: The first wave included England
and Wales, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. 19 The second
wave was an expanded follow-up of the initial study. It worked with methodical
instruments refined on the basis of experience gained from the first wave and
covered those countries once more and additionally included Croatia, Hungary,
Spain, Switzerland and Turkey. 20 The project partners were criminal justice system
experts and experienced comparative researchers, e.g. through their membership
of the ESB group and other international committees. 21
Research was funded by the European Commission (JLS/2005/AGIS/126)
and the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung for the first wave and by the Commission again
(JLS/2005/AGIS/139) for the second wave.
The study examined prosecution services in different European countries aiming
to understand their national role and function within the respective criminal
17 Centre d’Études Sociologiques sur le Droit et les Institutions Pénales, Guyancourt, France.
18 Issue 1, vol. 8, 2000, and issues 2-3, vol. 10, 2004.
19 JEHLE / WADE (eds.): Coping with Overloaded Criminal Justice Systems, Heidelberg: Springer
2006.
20 See the articles published in the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, issues 2-3,
vol. 14, 2008.
21 They were: Chris LEWIS for England and Wales, Bruno AUBUSSON DE CAVARLAY for
France, Paul SMIT and Martine BLOM (first wave only) for the Netherlands, Beata
GRUSZCZYŃSKA, Teodor BULENDA, Andrzej KREMPLEWSKI (all first wave only) and
Piotr SOBOTA for Poland, Josef ZILA for Sweden, the German project management and research
team consisting of Beatrix ELSNER, Jörg-Martin JEHLE, Julia PETERS and Marianne
WADE and - joining the group for the second wave - Ksenija TURKOVIC for Croatia, Erika
ROTH for Hungary, Marcelo AEBI and Marc BALCELLS MAGRANS for Spain, Martin
KILLIAS and Gwladys GILLERON for Switzerland and Hakan HAKERI for Turkey.