Montenegro Statistical Training

Montenegro Statistical Training Background and Governance

The background to crime • Crime exists in all societies • Mechanisms for dealing with crime also exist in all countries. • There are ways of preventing crime and procedures to deal with offenders who commit crime • A good knowledge of the extent of crime and the way that offenders are dealt with is vital to manage and develop justice agencies

There are many different types of crime • Personal crime involves bodily violence: homicide, serious and minor wounding • Theft involves stealing from persons or organisations: either by stealing cash, stock or possessions or by various types of fraud • Other crime involves offending against regulations: eg traffic, licensing, trade. • Actions that offend against a country’s moral codes are also deemed crimes: eg drug-taking: deviant sexual acts: anti-religious behaviour

Victims of crime • There are many different types of victims • Households & Individuals: Tourists • Firms, including shops and factories: • Government departments: tax authority • One way to count the number of crimes is to carry out a survey of victims. This is called a victimisation survey. • Such a victimisation survey is conducted, on a sample basis, • It is usually carried out through the Central Statistics Office or a special agency set up for the purpose

Surveys and Police Statistics • Numbers of crimes will change as we move from one agency to the next. • A CSO victimisation survey may estimate that 1 million crimes were committed against victims in a year. • Many of these will not be reported to the police for various reasons. • Police collect figures on crimes that are reported to them. • This will be less than the victimisation numbers and could be around 200,000 each year.

Prosecution and Court Statistics • Not all crimes reported to the police result in the case going to the prosecutor • Of the 200,000 crimes the police will decide to pass on perhaps 50,000 to the prosecutor. • The prosecutor will decide there is not enough evidence to prosecute some cases and will only will deal perhaps 25,000. • The powers of the prosecutor to end a case will vary from country to country. He may issue some sanction himself in perhaps 5,000 cases. • The rest, perhaps 20,000, will be sent the court for trial. • The court will pass judgement on perhaps half of these: 10,000 cases.

Statistics collected by agencies • Statistics describe the processes in each agency, show how they interrelate and how resources relate to the flow of work. • Police, Prosecution, Courts, Probation and Prisons maintain extensive registers of offences and offenders • Each agency also has registers of staff employed and resources used to carry out their work • The registers of each agency will include dates of actions and allow delays to be calculated for each case

Governance of Statistics • To improve the value of crime and justice statistics for operations and policy, there is a need for their collection, analysis and publication to be co-ordinated across agencies. • If this is done common classifications, collection procedures and IT systems can be used • Good statistical practice can be shared • Messages produced by the statistics can be shared between agencies • There can be a common approach to analysis • There can be a common approach to publication, which will enhance the usefulness of statistics and their existence can become more widely known to the public.

Role of the Central Statistics Office (MONSTAT) • The Central Statistical Office (MONSTAT) is the place where statistical experience is concentrated in each country. • It therefore should have a central role in the development of crime and justice statistics • MONSTAT can assist • To facilitate discussions on common issues • To share good practice between justice agencies • To develop statistical capacity in the different justice agencies • MONSTAT can chair the Statistics Committee

Need for a Statistics Law • A Statistics Law gives the CSO and agencies the right to collect crime and justice data: • Through surveys of individuals and organisations • Through registers kept by agencies • From agency information systems • Many countries already have such a law • If not such a law needs parliamentary authority and to be negotiated through the CSO. • The Law would ensure necessary and useful statistics on crime and justice can be collected, analysed and published.

Need for a Crime and Justice Statistics Committee • Discussions about common statistics issues should take place in a committee or similar forum • All relevant crime and justice agencies should be represented on this forum • The committee should be properly resourced and chaired at a high enough level for its conclusions to be taken seriously by senior management within the crime and justice agencies • Its role should be closely defined and its progress managed by senior management

Suggestions for routine work of the statistics committee • Committee should meet at least three times a year • Standing items should include reports from each agency of: • Progress on developments in collecting statistics • Progress towards consistency of classifications • Progress on new analyses and publications • Operational/Policy Uses made of statistics • Developments in infrastructure, including new members of staff, improved training, new analysis, new IT. • Minutes and papers of meetings should be placed on statistical web sites to encourage openness

Suggestions for less frequent activities of the statistics committee • Conduct a survey of senior managers, to see what statistics would be useful for policy development but not yet available. • Publicise the codes being used by various agencies to demonstrate differences and encourage harmonization. • Invite a senior official, at Judge or Commissioner level to address the statistics committee on his views on statistics. • Examine statistics on crime and justice from other countries should be examined to encourage the development of good practice. • Co-operate with other countries with similar problems in the same region

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

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 • Disposals need to be recorded consistently across agencies • Justice institutions such as police stations, courts, etc

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

Need to change classifications Classifications need to be changed if: • New laws are passed by the parliament: eg to criminalize human trafficking: piracy: money laundering: drug-taking. • New technologies change crime: eg new crimes which are committed using mobile phones or computers • There are changes in social behaviour: a great increase in tourism: changing employment patterns that cause many young people to flock to large cities • The UN suggests new crimes to monitor • The statistics committee should note laws and technologies that change and be ready to change their offence classifications to reflect these changes.

Statistical Training – Basic Training needs • Statistical staff need to be trained sufficiently for the job they have to do • Training is organised more effectively if provided through MONSTAT. • 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

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 MONSTAT. • 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, eg IT, that are actually available.

Statistical Training – Delivery of Training • There are cost savings if training is co-ordinated centrally, and this is probably best done through MONSTAT • 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 MONSTAT 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

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.

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: eg every month • to be ready quickly, otherwise their value declines rapidly • to be internally consistent and to be consistent with previous data. ( eg 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.

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.

Importance of publicising statistics The key principles of publishing statistics are that: • Consider the data user and what they need to do their job better • Published statistics must be trusted by their readers • They also need to be understood clearly • These principles are not technology or output dependent • Therefore the statistician must be prepared to repeat messages and to explain from first principles what the figures mean

Involving other agencies of governance Different countries will have other agencies involved in crime, security and governance. Where this is relevant the statistics produced within such agencies should also be incorporated within the same broad umbrella of committees and discussions as the main justice agencies and the CSO. 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 • National Crime Research Centre

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, MONSTAT and the justice and security committee is to develop the use of statistics by policy makers in particular.

Montenegro Statistical Training