NCJ Number
156157
Editor(s)
K Kangaspunta
Date Published
1995
Length
150 pages
Annotation
This report is based on responses from most European and North American countries to the Fourth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and the Operation of Criminal Justice Systems (1986-1990).
Abstract
The introductory section discusses the survey; presents definitions and classifications; discusses the impact of errors and nonresponse from some countries; and provides an overview of the European and North American criminal justice systems. The second section presents results of the cross-national analyses in terms of crime and reporting, recording, handling of pretrial suspects, adjudication, enforcement of sanctions, and criminal justice system resources. The final section explores the dynamics of criminal justice by sketching out some simple changes and relationships between crime and justice variables. These relationships describe how the systems of official recognition of crime, and the official processing of offenders operates, rather than how crime itself changes. This analysis attempts to calculate not only changes in the amount of reported crime, but also the strength of the filtering process in different countries. 41 tables, 8 figures, and 20 notes