Fourth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (1986-1990)

In 1950, the Secretariat prepared a report which analysed criminal justice statistics data made available by 31 countries, more than 50 per cent of the total membership of the United Nations at that time. Since 1977, the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch has regularly carried out periodical world surveys of crime trends. Starting with the first survey of crime trends, which covered the years 1970 to 1975, a considerable body of international crime and criminal justice information has been accumulated through 1990, the final year of the Fourth Survey. 

Figure I.  Replies to three United Nations surveys of crime trends

Information up to and including the Third Survey, through 1985, is currently available to the international criminal justice community in the form of conventional reports, as well as in two electronic formats, on computer diskettes and as a database of UNCJIN. Upon completion of the Fourth Survey, government officials and criminal justice professionals will have at their disposal a 21-year data series (1970-1990) on trends in crime and justice in the world. At the time of writing, 82 countries and areas had submitted replies to the Fourth Survey through the Statistical Division of the Secretariat or to the Branch directly.

The previous survey data, as well as the Fourth Survey data, allow for multiple types of analysis, of both a research and a policy-oriented nature. Such flexibility was demonstrated by the institutes cooperating within the United Nations crime prevention and criminal justice programme in the production of comparative cross-cultural reports, which include criminal justice profiles for individual countries. In addition to a set of computer diskettes, 20 reports were published in one form or another within the framework of the United Nations crime prevention and criminal justice programme. They are all available free of charge upon request to the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch.

The Fourth Survey data will offer a new opportunity to analyse and update the picture of crime and justice in the world - an increasingly important work priority for the Branch. In continuing to fulfil that priority, the Branch has already initiated preparations for the Fifth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (1990-1992). Together with UNICRI, the Branch has begun preparations for the publication of the first report on crime and justice in the world. That report, scheduled for publication in 1995 to coincide with the Ninth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, will draw on the periodical surveys of crime trends and international victim surveys.

Should you like to join and contribute to the work of the informal group of "friends of the survey", specialists interested in analysis and promotion of the results of the periodical surveys of crime trends, please send your letter or Email message to: 

  Chief, Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch
  United Nations Office at Vienna
  P.O. Box 500
  A-1400 Vienna, Austria
  Fax: +(43-1) 2092599 or +(43-1) 23 21 56
  UNCJIN id: tcn4016
  Email: evetere@unvienna.iaea.or.at