Defining and Registering Criminal Offences and Measures - Oapen

Aims and Methodology of the Study 17
missing. Also, some questionnaires have not been filled to full completeness.
Therefore, some cells in the tables featured in the report had to be set to “…”
(i.e.: missing). Missing values have also been used in case that a certain concept
does not apply. Therefore, missing values in the cells are not only due to nonresponse
or invalid responses, but might also mean “not applicable”.
Overall data quality is very good due to the use of experienced national correspondents
and the efficient ESB data validation system, with regional coordinators
getting back to the correspondents in the case a question or problem occurs.
6. Future developments
The 4 th edition of the ESB itself was not part of the AGIS 134 report. However,
the data collection instrument developed in the course of the project was not only
used for this feasibility study that aimed at definitions and data availability. It was
used for the collection of national statistical data for the 4 th edition of the ESB as
well; the questionnaire included longitudinal tables asking for data for the years
2003 - 2007 and other tables restricted to the year 2006 (for details, see above).
The parts not referred to in detail in this report have not been changed compared
with previous editions. However, some changes discussed here affected the data
collection instrument on all levels of the criminal justice process. This is mainly
true for the new and reformed offence definitions. Newly introduced offence
groups and subgroups led to much longer tables with much more data for all levels
of the criminal justice system (see above).
The 4 th edition ESB 29 is publicized parallel to this book. For the medium and
long term future of the ESB project many interesting areas of research remain.
First of all, the idea of the abovementioned joined project of CEP and ESB on
alternative sanctions should be developed and realized. This is an area that is still
in need of in-depth research in European comparison. The results of such a study
might then be used to improve and extend the convictions and corrections chapters
of the ESB questionnaire.
Another task that will be important for the future of the group is to optimize
the relation between the different data collection instruments that aim at collecting
data on the reality of criminality across Europe. Especially, the possibilities of
cooperation with UNODC CTS and Eurostat should be explored more thoroughly
(for drug crimes, there are even five data collections covering Europe: UN CTS,
UN ARQ, 30 EMCDDA, 31 Eurostat and ESB). It might be an aim to combine the
efforts of the different crime studies in order to avoid duplicate or multiple data
29 AEBI et. al: European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics – 2010, 4th edition,
Den Haag: Boom 2010.
30 ARQ= Annual Reports Questionnaire, used for the World Drug Report.
31 European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon.