Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Background and governance Part 2 Crime, Justice & Security Statistics Produced in Collaboration between World Bank Institute and the Development Data Group (DECDG)

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Need for Common Classifications Common classifications are important but each country will need to decide on the priority to be given to them. The following questions will assess the priority of common classifications: –What problems does the lack of common classifications cause? –What could be done better if classifications were the same? –How much would it cost (training, new forms, new programmes) to move towards common classifications? –How long would it take to achieve common classifications? 2

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Specific classifications needed Geographical data needs to be consistent with regional boundaries so that crime rates can be calculated and other social data compared Types of offence need to be consistent across agencies ( see next slide) Age grouping needs to be consistent across all agencies The results of judicial decisions need to be recorded consistently across agencies Justice institutions such as police stations, courts 3

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Offence Classifications & counting rules The usual grouping of offence types is on the following lines: Violence (Homicide, Robbery, Wounding) Burglary (House, Business) Theft (from person, house, business, of vehicle, stock, etc) Sex crimes (Rape, assault, other) Fraud (face to face, computer fraud) Criminal Damage Traffic (serious, less serious, administrative) Public Order Offences ( riot, affray, drunkenness) Other As important as common offence classifications is the need to have consistent counting rules, issued centrally, obeyed by all and modified from time to time. 4

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Need to change classifications Classifications need to be changed if: New laws are passed by the parliament New technologies change crime There are changes in social behaviour New police stations, prisons or courts get built The UN suggests new crimes to monitor (see Module 9) The statistics committee should note laws and technologies that change and be ready to change their offence classifications to reflect these changes. 5

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Statistical Training – Basic Training needs Statistical staff need to be trained sufficiently for the job Those whose main job is to collect data need only basic training. This involves being trained to use counting rules, complete regular returns, enter data to EXCEL in some cases, or to sample data from manual registers. 6

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Statistics Training: Advanced More advanced training is needed for those pull together data from different geographical areas, to produce trends, charts and commentary. More sophisticated analysis will occasionally be useful and best provided by the CSO. This would involve correlation, forecasting, and integrating data from different agencies. Care must always be taken to ensure training is appropriate to the work that is being carried out and resources, e.g. IT, that are actually available. 7

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Statistical Training – Delivery of Training There are cost savings if training is co-ordinated centrally, and this is probably best done through Central Statistical Office Use should be made of any good local facilities Police, judiciary or prison training establishments Colleges that offer statistical training Regional centres teaching statistics more widely With CSO help, dedicated courses could be set up that concentrate on the areas of justice and crime statistics that have been set out in the previous slides 8

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Building IT capacity It is also necessary to build IT capacity. The main mistake is trying to build too sophisticated systems The idea should be to ‘Keep it Simple’ For hardware, current laptop computers are perfectly adequate, in storage and software capacity to cope with local data collections and their transmission to a central collation point. Local data collectors need only a general familiarity with software such as WORD, EXCEL and POWERPOINT. Good statistics can be collected without a complex management Information system. 9

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Statistical Integrity Statistics need to be fit for purpose: to have the following characteristics to satisfy good Statistical Integrity: they need: to be collected at the appropriate frequency: e.g. every month to be ready quickly, otherwise their value declines rapidly to be internally consistent and to be consistent with previous data. ( e.g. police data need to be consistent with prison data) Data collection procedures and revisions to these or to previous figures need to be open To be accessible to the public and the media. 10

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Avoiding political interference Justice Statistics should be free from political interference, this means: Statistics should be released to everybody at the same time to avoid political misuse of the figures or their suppression There is a need for a list of contact point where people can ask further questions about the statistics A policy is needed for more detailed release on request: eg to academics for research including making data anonymous. If this is not the case, it is important to work towards this and build agreements that work towards statistical independence. 11

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Importance of publicising statistics The key principles of publishing statistics are that: 1.One should consider the data user and what they need to do their job better 2.Published statistics must be trusted by their readers 3.They also need to be understood clearly 4.These principles are not technology or output dependent 5.Therefore the statistician must be prepared to repeat messages and to explain from first principles what the figures mean 12

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Involving other agencies of governance Different countries will have other agencies involved in crime, security and governance. Taking Kenya as an example, the following agencies have taken part in the statistics discussions Anti-Corruption Commission Immigration authorities Children’s department Election commission Law reform group (GJLOS) National Crime Research Centre The importance of such statistics is discussed in Module 8. 13

Copyright 2010, The World Bank Group. All Rights Reserved. Importance of using statistics for operations and policy Justice Statistics in many countries are often under used, because their importance for operations and for policy have never been fully understood Until more use is made of statistics for policy/operations it is likely that resources for them will always be limited Thus, the most important aim of statisticians, CSO and the justice and security committee is to develop the use of statistics by policy makers in particular. Module 10 will deal with this topic in detail and give many examples of potential uses. 14