European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics

The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics offers a comparative perspective on European criminal justice systems. Its fifth edition has been published in 2014. The Sourcebook project is more than a mere compilation of statistical data. It also provides a wealth of metadata on the different criminal justice systems, on offence definitions and statistical counting rules. A sixth, once again expanded and methodologically refined survey wave is in the planning stage.

Facing transnational crime problems, criminology cannot restrict itself to a national perspective. Projects like the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics further the international and comparative orientation of criminology.

The European Sourcebook is created and overseen by an international group of experts, which can rely on a network of national correspondents in (almost) all member states of the Council of Europe. In 2011, the association "European Sourcebook of Criminal Justice e.V." with registered office in Göttingen was founded. All current and former members of the experts group belong to this association. At present, the board of the association consists of Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jörg-Martin Jehle, Prof. Dr. Beata Gruszczyńska (University of Warsaw) and Paul Smit (WODC, the Netherlands).

During the fourth and fifth survey wave of the Sourcebook, research projects on specific comparative criminological questions were carried out, funded by the European Commission. The main project results can be found in Jehle/Harrendorf (eds., 2010), Defining and Registering Criminal Offences and Measures, Standards for a European Comparison, Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen and Heiskanen/Aebi/van der Brugge/Jehle (eds., 2014), Recording Community Sanctions and Measures and Assessing Attrition, A Methodological Study on Comparative Data in Europe, Helsinki: HEUNI.