NCJ Number
152998
Date Published
1994
Length
26 pages
Annotation
Between 1974 and 1985, the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch conducted three worldwide surveys of crime, designed to create reliable international crime statistics that could be used in developing strategies for crime prevention in the context of socioeconomic development.
Abstract
While the percentage of United Nations members who responded to the surveys increased for each subsequent survey, this independent study was initiated to ascertain why many countries failed to participate in worldwide crime surveys, who was keeping statistics in those countries, and at what point in the criminal justice system crime was being measured. This report analyzed the participation of all countries and jurisdictions in any and all of the U.N. surveys, and found that the common denominator for nonresponding countries was profound poverty and a lack of expertise necessary for assembling crime and criminal justice information. These results point to the obligation of the U.N. to provide training for specialists from countries which do not yet have the capacity to measure crime.