Penal Issues (2006->) mars 2004

IMPOSSIBLE INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS OF STATISTICS ? THE EUROPEAN SOURCEBOOK EXPERIENCE

par Bruno AUBUSSON DE CAVARLAY,

Bruno AUBUSSON de CAVARLAY, research director at the CNRS, works on criminal statistics and the functioning of the criminal justice system.

The first attempts at quantified international comparisons are as old as criminal statistics themselves ; that is, the early 19th century. The discussion of a resolution aimed at harmonizing national criminal statistics was high on the agenda of the first international conference on statistics, organized in 1853 in Brussels under the auspices of the Belgian Central Commission on Statistics headed by Adolphe Quételet. For the national figures of the different European criminal justice systems to be compared, prior agreement was needed on the points of the process at which recording occurred (offences detected, those prosecuted, individuals convicted, sentences pronounced and so on) and above all, on the definition of categories describing the various types of offences. But two schools of thought clashed, already, at that first conference. One called for the imposition of categories drafted by statisticians for their own needs, while the other suggested that detailed information be collected on judiciary practices, respecting peculiar national legal technicalities. A century and a half later, we must admit that these conflicts persist, and the harmonization of statistics on crime is still a distant goal.

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