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Round Тable on “Methodology and organization of Police Statistics”
On October 15th 2007 in Sofia a Round table on “Methodology and organization of Police Statistics” took place. This event was organized in the framework of the Phare Twinning project “Further strengthening Police Investigation capacity (Crime Statistics, Undercover Operations and investigative techniques and forensics)”. The Bulgarian Ministry of Interior implements this project in partnership with the National Police of the French Republic and the State Service for Forensic Investigations of the Land Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
In the work at the Round table took part key experts of the project as well as officials at managerial level in the units responsible for crime statistics and research within the Central Directorate “Criminal Police”, France, the Criminal Police Directorate of the Land Baden-Württemberg, Germany, the Federal Police of the Belgian Kingdom, and the National Criminal information Service of the Austrian Republic.
Bulgaria was represented by officials from the Ministry of Interior, the Supreme Cassation Prosecution Office, the National Investigation Service, the National Statistics Institute and several NGOs.
The participants at the Round table exchanged knowledge, experience, ideas, and different practices for collection, processing and reporting of crime statistics data. They discussed methodologies for statistical processing of the data concerning the status of crime.
The main points during the discussions were the questions how to improve the organization of statistical data collection, how to further develop the methodology for their processing and how to create optimal conditions for extending the decision-making possibilities.
In the course of the discussions the experts discovered similarities in the approaches used both in the “old” Member States and in Bulgaria concerning the usage of Penal Codes normative texts as a basis for accounting crime, the utilization of Automated Information Systems, and the application of techniques for aggregation and extraction in detail of data from the statistical output.
An opinion was reached that the Police Statistics Methods used in Bulgaria provide a reliable picture on the status of the reported crime, it is comparable to the methods presented by the Round table representatives of the old Member States, and its application allows comparability with analogical statistics data used in the EU Member States.
During the discussion the Round table participants also considered the question about ensuring the quality of the data entered and used in the course of the processing. Although in the different countries there are different organizational approaches, the experts united on their opinion on the efficacy of the complex measures applied, which ensure a high level of reliability and adequacy of the processes monitoring.
The Bulgarian participants presented methods for data processing and accounting about crimes committed by organized criminal groups. During the discussion a positive opinion was expressed about the methods developed and the approach adopted for integration of data on organized criminal groups into the big statistical picture of crime.
The discussion on crime statistics provided the Round table participants with the opportunity to conclude that regardless of the differences in the Member States’ regulatory and institutional frameworks, the methods applied are similar and the approaches towards work with statistical information on crime are identical, and this way the provision of reliable statistical information for the purposes of crime combating is possible.
Updated on at Wednesday, October 17, 2007
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