Strengthening Administrative Data for Better Criminal Justice

From May 13 to 17, the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) was held. The CCPCJ is the main UN normative body for crime prevention and criminal justice. It seeks to improve international action to combat national and transnational crime.

As part of the side events, the session “Statistics Matter: Strengthening Administrative Data in the Criminal Justice System” was held on May 16. The session discussed the UNODC’s latest Guidelines for the Production of Crime Statistics and showcased the use of administrative data to produce policy-relevant knowledge.

The panelists included:

• Martjin Kind, UNODC, spoke on the importance of the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS) and its guiding role in the production of the latest UNODC guidelines;
• Shelley Hyland, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), United States, who spoke on the BJS’s national experience in generating data on justice issues;
• Adrián Franco, Vice President of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), Mexico, highlighted INEGI’s experience in using administrative records to generate national government censuses and commented on the work that will be carried out within the framework of the ECLAC CEPAL Police Statistics Working Group; and
• Ali Younes, Head of the UNODC-NAUSS Interregional Center of Excellence, spoke on the Center’s objectives and the importance of collecting and analyzing administrative records to produce reliable and comprehensive data.

The event helped to reaffirm the importance and need for more Member States to join the task of collecting and using administrative data to improve criminal justice systems, as well as the significance of UNODC continuing to provide technical assistance to Member States to develop and implement their national crime statistics information strategies that result in more comparable and granular data.