Authors Index Volume 9

Authors Index

Authors Index Volume 9     

The Prosecution Service Function within the Swiss Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system of Basel is described as a cantonal example for Switzerland. Special attention is paid to the Prosecution Service Function within this framework and its relationship to police and courts. The article not only refers to legal provisions but to the factual handling of criminal cases as well.     

Who should supervise students during self-report interviews? A controlled experiment on response behavior in online questionnaires

Objectives  

This study tests whether juveniles’ responses on sensitive topics such as self-reported delinquency, victimization, and substance use are comparable when teachers versus external persons supervise students while filling out online questionnaires.     

The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics: A New Tool in Assessing Crime and Policy Issues in Comparative and Empirical Perspective

Theories which suggest a relationship between crime or criminal justice variables on the one hand, and variables related to criminal justice policies on the other hand, cannot be tested without reference to historic or comparative data. Since international comparisons offer the most powerful test of such theories, policy-related research in Europe has suffered, so far, from a lack of valid comparative data. Whether crime data from different countries are comparable, has always been subject to controversies. In the case of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice, a network of specialists was established under the auspices of the Council of Europe in order to assess the validity of the data. Although some problems in cross-country level comparisons could not be settled, the European Sourcebook offers comparative data on 36 Member States of the Council of Europe on a variety of subjects (offences and offenders known to the police; prosecution, convictions, sentences, and corrections; survey data; and indications on manpower and budgets of police forces, prosecutors, and corrections).     

How important are interview methods and questionnaire designs in research on self-reported juvenile delinquency? An experimental comparison of Internet vs paper-and-pencil questionnaires and different definitions of the reference period

There has been relatively little change over recent decades in the methods used in research on self-reported delinquency. Face-to-face interviews and self-administered interviews in the classroom are still the predominant alternatives envisaged. New methods have been brought into the picture by recent computer technology, the Internet, and an increasing availability of computer equipment and Internet access in schools. In the autumn of 2004, a controlled experiment was conducted with 1,203 students in Lausanne (Switzerland), where “paper-and-pencil” questionnaires were compared with computer-assisted interviews through the Internet. The experiment included a test of two different definitions of the (same) reference period. After the introductory question (“Did you ever...”), students were asked how many times they had done it (or experienced it), if ever, “over the last 12 months” or “since the October 2003 vacation”. Few significant differences were found between the results obtained by the two methods and for the two definitions of the reference period, in the answers concerning victimisation, self-reported delinquency, drug use, failure to respond (missing data). Students were found to be more motivated to respond through the Internet, take less time for filling out the questionnaire, and were apparently more confident of privacy, while the school principals were less reluctant to allow classes to be interviewed through the Internet. The Internet method also involves considerable cost reductions, which is a critical advantage if self-reported delinquency surveys are to become a routinely applied method of evaluation, particularly so in countries with limited resources. On balance, the Internet may be instrumental in making research on self-reported delinquency far more feasible in situations where limited resources so far have prevented its implementation.

The Criminal Justice Approach: Case Examples

The article presents a special form of a European comparative synopsis. For this case examples have been chosen ranging from administrative or minor (criminal) offences to increasingly serious offences and offenders. In this way it can be comparatively demonstrated how the criminal justice systems studied handle specific cases and whether they do so in a similar or different way.     

Crime Trends in Europe from 1990 to 1996: How Europe Illustrates the Limits of the American Experience

In the Council of Europe's European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, crime and other relevant data are assembled for 36 European countries and the years 1990 to 1996. The data show that crime trends differed from those in the United States. Particularly drug and violent offences continued to increase until the end of the period under consideration (1996). Most of the theoretical explanations of crime trends currently in vogue in the United States seem of little help in understanding current European trends. Generally the most valid approaches seem to be routine-activities and situational explanations.