Book Description

Recent crime and criminal justice system trends in the countries of Europe and North America are reported, based on data in the sixth through the ninth United Nations Surveys on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (CTS). The CTS is the main source of worldwide data on national recorded crime rates and criminal justice system operations. Data for the years 1995-2004 were obtained from official agencies in Canada, the U.S. and more than 30 countries in Europe, and were analyzed by a working group of international experts. The biggest strength of this dataset is that it allows the study of crime and criminal justice systems over a full ten-year period. Two of the major trends across Europe and North America in this period were: (1) On average, the number of criminal justice personnel and the resources of the national criminal justice systems remained stable. (2) The numbers of recorded assaults, robberies, drug-related offenses and frauds increased, while the numbers of thefts, auto thefts and burglary suspects decreased. The following 11 chapters provide extensive analyses of and statistical data on multinational trends: Introduction by Kauko Aromaa; Trends in Criminal Justice System Resources 1995-2004 by Beata Gruszczynska and Ineke Haen Marshall; Trends of Recorded Crime by Kauko Aromaa and Markku Heiskanen; Persons Brought into Initial Contact with the Police by Markku Heiskanen; Prosecution and Courts by Paul Smit; Juvenile Justice and the United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and Criminal Justice Systems by Steven Malby; Trends in Prison Population 1995-2004 by Roy Walmsley; An Empirical Approach to Country Clustering by Paul Smit, Ineke Haen Marshall andMirjam van Gammeren; Measu