European Commission - Eurostat

F4: Income and living conditions; Quality of life

European Commission - Eurostat

Unit ESTAT.F.4: Income and living conditions; Quality of life

L-2920 Luxembourg

The figures from 2008 onwards on court processes are based on the joint Eurostat-UNODC data collection. It is available at country level for European Union Member States, EFTA countries, EU Candidate countries, and EU Potential Candidates.

 The statistics include:

• Legal cases (criminal, civil and/or commercial, administrative, others) processed by legal status of the court process (brought to court/resolved/pending),
• Persons brought before criminal courts by legal status (convicted persons / acquitted).

Crimes are classified by the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS).

Regions are classified by Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS).

Legal status is classified according to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime definitions.

Crime and criminal justice

CASES PROCESSED BY THE COURTS

Civil/Commercial Cases

Definition:  Any cases processed under national civil/commercial law.

First instance courts 

Definition:  Refers to the initial trial courts where legal proceedings are first heard

The tables below shows if the data comply with the definition : First instance courts and Civil/Commercial Cases

 : not applicable/not provided 

 ^ reported in previous year 

 Romania: Excludes: Minors and family, Labor litigations, Intellectual property, Social insurance, Maritime and River litigations that are counted in ‘Other cases’.

Litigious Civil/Commercial Cases 

Definition:"Litigious Civil/Commercial Cases"  are for instance litigious divorce cases or disputes regarding contracts. In some countries commercial cases are addressed by special commercial courts, whilst in other countries these cases are handled by ordinary (civil) courts. Bankruptcy proceedings must be understood as litigious proceedings. Despite the organisational differences between countries in this respect, all the information concerning civil and commercial cases should be included in the same figures.

Non-litigious Civil/Commercial Cases

Definition: "Non-litigious Civil/Commercial Cases" includes uncontested payment orders, request for a change of name, divorce cases with mutual consent (for some legal systems), enforcement non-litigious cases, etc. If courts deal with such cases, please indicate the different case categories included."

The tables below shows if the data comply with the definition :Litigious Civil/Commercial Cases and Non-litigious Civil/Commercial Cases

 :not applicable/not provided 

  ^ reported in previous year 

Criminal Cases

Definition:  Any cases processed under national criminal law

Administrative Cases

Definition: Any cases processed under national administrative law.

Other Cases

Definition: Any other cases processed under national law.

The tables below shows if the data comply with the definition :Criminal Cases, Administrative Cases and Other Cases 

 : not applicable/not provided 

 ^ reported in previous year 

New cases initiated/submitted 

Definition: "New cases initiated/submitted" refers to the number of  proceedings initiated in court during the reporting period that were not already under consideration by the court in the previous reporting period.

Adjudicated cases

Definition: "Adjudicated cases" refers to the total number of proceedings finalised/disposed of by a court decision during the reporting period, whether through a decision on the merit, a withdrawal of the claim, a settlement or a rejection on formal grounds, and whether this decision is later upheld or not.

Pending cases

Definition: “Pending cases” refers to the total number of proceedings that are not finalised/disposed of as of 31 December.

The tables below shows if the data comply with the definition :New cases initiated/submitted, Adjudicated cases and Pending cases

 : not applicable/not provided 

  ^ reported in previous year 

(i) SI: The reference date used for cases pending is 1st of September

Cases Brought to Court

Definition:  Number of proceedings initiated in court during the reporting period that were not already under consideration by the court in the previous reporting period.

Cases Resolved

Definition: Number of proceedings finalised/disposed of by a court decision during the reporting period, whether through a decision on the merit, a withdrawal of the claim, a settlement or a rejection on formal grounds, and whether this decision is later upheld or not.

Cases Pending

Definition:  Number of proceedings that are not finalized/disposed of as of 31 December.

Comments by countries -Persons acquitted 

DE: Source: Federal Statistical Office: Criminal Court Conviction Statistics (Gerichtliche Strafverfolgungsstatistik). The data refer to the year of final conviction, not to the year of committing the crime.

EE: Excl. legal persons.

BG:Source:  The Bulgarian National Statistical Institute data.

PL: Persons acquitted in the first instance. The increase in 2021 compared to 2020 was caused by COVID19, where less criminal proceedings were completed, due to the limitation.

RO: Source: Superior Council of Magistracy.

Comments by countries -Persons convicted

BE: The persons convicted of minor road traffic offences, misdemeanours and other petty offences are included

EE: Natural persons (source: database OSA). The same person could appear repeatedly in different court cases in the same year.

NL: Data exclude legal entities. Total includes persons with an unknown age. 

RO: Source: Superior Council of Magistracy.

FI: Unknown age 2.

Comments by countries related with table :Legal cases processed in first instance courts by legal status of the court process (Crime_crt_case) 

BG: Data on cases cannot be distributed by litigious and non-litigious.

 RO: Source: Superior Council of Magistracy

BE: Number of cases (INPUT): Civil/Commercial

"Since 2022, the College of Courts and Tribunals has focused on improving entity activity data relating to case processing times and measuring the stock of pending cases. In this regard, the statistical service began in October 2022 a major cleaning of the number of pending cases by inviting entities to check those still open in the College's internal databases (""Cleaning stock"" project). With the exception of courses, all entities are affected by this project. The courts of appeal and labor are involved in a parallel College project relating to the definition of the concept of judicial backlog. Despite the fact that the verification must be carried out directly in the field (in addition to daily work) and given the limited resources of the team of statisticians (4 analysts for 11 different statistical projects), this project should end at the end of 2023.To support this verification, the statistical service also developed dashboards for each type of entity with its own resources. This monitoring tool already contains a certain amount of data useful to management committees, such as the number of new cases and closed cases. These are today broken down by different factors: the nature of the case, the types of decisions, the geographical aspect and the temporal aspect (by month, by year) and, recently for certain entities, by chamber. The statistical service intends to continue these developments and introduce other factors in the coming months, such as breakdown by fixation and audience.This large-scale business audit and the parallel development of new measures has the primary objective of increasing the quality of basic statistical measures but also of supporting the headquarters management committees in the preparation of management autonomy, in course currently. Thus, from 2024, these measurements will be considered to be more objective and reliable than until then and will therefore be communicated (a.o.) in publications such as that of the CEPEJ."

Number of cases (INPUT): Criminal         

Protectional cases of the juvenile courts are now counted here rather than in civil (other)

Number of cases (OUTPUT): Criminal     

Adjudicated cases of the juvenile courts are not available, due to a lack of uniform practices in closing cases .

DE: Number of cases (INPUT): Civil/Commercial

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik über die Zivilgerichtsbarkeit und Statistik über die Familiengerichtsbarkeit

Number of cases (INPUT): Criminal         

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik in Straf- und Bußgeldsachen (Strafverfahren)

Number of cases (INPUT): Administrative            

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik über die Verwaltungsgerichtsbarkeit (Hauptverfahren)

Number of cases (INPUT): Other

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik über die Sozialgerichtsbarkeit (Klageverfahren); Statistik über die Arbeitsgerichtsbarkeit (Urteilsverfahren); Statistik über die Finananzgerichtsbarkeit (Klageverfahren)

Number of cases (OUTPUT): Civil/Commercial   

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik über die Zivilgerichtsbarkeit und Statistik über die Familiengerichtsbarkeit

Number of cases (OUTPUT): Criminal     

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik in Straf- und Bußgeldsachen (Strafverfahren)

Number of cases (OUTPUT): Administrative        

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik über die Verwaltungsgerichtsbarkeit (Hauptverfahren)

Number of cases (OUTPUT): Other

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik über die Sozialgerichtsbarkeit (Klageverfahren); Statistik über die Arbeitsgerichtsbarkeit (Urteilsverfahren); Statistik über die Finananzgerichtsbarkeit (Klageverfahren)

Number of cases (BACKLOG): Civil/Commercial

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik über die Zivilgerichtsbarkeit und Statistik über die Familiengerichtsbarkeit

Number of cases (BACKLOG): Criminal

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik in Straf- und Bußgeldsachen (Strafverfahren)

Number of cases (BACKLOG): Administrative

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik über die Verwaltungsgerichtsbarkeit (Hauptverfahren)

Number of cases (BACKLOG): Other

Source: Federal Statistical Office: Statistik über die Sozialgerichtsbarkeit (Klageverfahren); Statistik über die Arbeitsgerichtsbarkeit (Urteilsverfahren); Statistik über die Finananzgerichtsbarkeit (Klageverfahren)

EE: Number of cases (INPUT,OUTPUT): Other

Cases concerning misdemeanours.

MT: Number of cases (INPUT): Administrative

Applications/'Rikorsi' for Year 2022 filed in the Administrative Review Tribunal.

Number of cases (INPUT): Other Applications/'Talbiet' for Year 2022 filed in the Small Claims Tribunal.

Number of cases (OUTPUT): Administrative         Applications/'Rikorsi' for Year 2022 decided in the Administrative Review Tribunal.

Number of cases (OUTPUT): Other          Applications/'Talbiet' for Year 2022 decided in the Small Claims Tribunal.

Number of cases (BACKLOG): Administrative       Applications/'Rikorsi' for Year 2022 pending (excluding Sine Die) in the Administrative Review Tribunal.

Number of cases (BACKLOG): Other        Applications/'Talbiet' for Year 2022 (excluding Sine Die)in the Small Claims Tribunal.

PT: Number of cases (INPUT): Civil/Commercial

This category includes the case flow of civil justice, labour justice and juvenile justice. It does not include civil and labour enforcement cases. The total number of civil/commercial cases were revised, because in the last exercise of the CEPEJ Report, CEPEJ determined that the total number of existing debt collection procedures in Portugal should be kept out of the total. The reason for that is explained by the fact that on 1 September 2013, the new Code of Civil Procedure entered into force, establishing a new regime for the enforcement action in Portugal, based on a new paradigm, which states that the processes that run in court must stand out clearly - those who are dependent on the commission of an act of the judge or the secretary - from those who run out of court. This new model, which enables a new way of organizing tasks, of work monitoring and of differentiating responsibilities is provided for in Article 551, paragraph 5 of the new Code of Civil Procedure. This new system follows more closely the current model in other countries and, without prejudice to the specificities of each planning and method of statistical production, will facilitate the future approach to a comparison of the Portuguese system with that of other countries.

Number of cases (INPUT): Criminal

From a statistical point of view, this new model has not yet however been reflected in numbers, as work is still ongoing aimed at demarcating the procedures that are in court, wainting for na act, from those that are being handled by other entities. Since is not yet possible to provide figures that reflect the amount of work taken on by the courts as referred above, the data does not include civil and labour enforcement cases. The number of enforcement cases for the year 2022 are: 108036 incoming cases. this numbers correspond to the total number of existing procedures in Portugal in 2022, following the existing model prior to the entry into force of the said legal diploma.

Number of cases (INPUT): Administrative

This category includes the administrative ant tax cases. The number of Initiated cases that corresponds only to tax cases in the year 2019 was 17875 , the year 2020 was 44453 , the year 2021 was 13053  and the year 2022 was 11619. For the 2020 data of administrative data, only 20307 new cases and 25979 completed cases corresponded to real movements of the beginning and end of cases. The remaining 48857 cases refer to cases that were internally transferred between units, namely due to the establishment of specialised courts in September 2020, or that were subject to changes in the subject matter. In the years 2019, 2021 and 2022 the number of cases that were internally transferred between units were, respectively, of 302, 1569 and 729. Number of cases (INPUT): Other       

This category includes appeal offence proceeding cases and other cases of the criminal area, labour criminal  justice cases and military justice cases.

Number of cases (OUTPUT): Civil/Commercial

From a statistical point of view, this new model has not yet however been reflected in numbers, as work is still ongoing aimed at demarcating the procedures that are in court, waiting for an act, from those that are being handled by other entities. Since is not yet possible to provide figures that affect the amount of work taken on by the courts as referred above, the data does not include civil and labour enforcement cases. The number of enforcement cases for the year 2022 are: 140946 adjudicated cases. This numbers correspond to the total number of existing procedures in Portugal in 2022, following the existing model prior to the entry into force of the said legal diploma.

Number of cases (OUTPUT): Administrative        

This category includes the administrative ant tax cases. The number of adjudicated cases that corresponds only to tax cases in the year 2019 was 18366, the year 2020 was 48949, the year 2021 was 15067  and the year 2022 was 14888. For the 2020 data of administrative data, only 20307 new cases and 25979 completed cases corresponded to real movements of the beginning and end of cases. The remaining 48857 cases refer to cases that were internally transferred between units, namely due to the establishment of specialised courts in September 2020, or that were subject to changes in the subject matter. In the years 2019, 2021 and 2022 the number of cases that were internally transferred between units were, respectively, of 302, 1569 and 729. Number of cases (OUTPUT): Other   

This category includes appeal offence proceeding cases and other cases of the criminal area, labour criminal  justice cases and military justice cases.

Number of cases (BACKLOG): Administrative      

This category includes the administrative and tax cases. The number of pending cases that corresponds only to tax cases in the year 2019 was 44599, the year 2020 was 40103, the year 2021 was 38089  and the year 2022 was 34820.

Number of cases (BACKLOG): Other       

This category includes appeal offence proceeding cases and other cases of the criminal area, labour criminal  justice cases and military justice cases.

RO: Number of cases (INPUT,OUTPUT): Civil/Commercial ,Criminal and Administrative   Source: Superior Council of Magistracy. 

NO: Number of cases (INPUT,OUTPUT): Civil/Commercial

Available from https://www.domstol.no/no/domstoladministrasjonen/publikasjoner-og-veiledere/statistikk/

Number of cases (OUTPUT): Criminal     

Only includes final and legally enforceable penal sanctions (except for waiver of sentencing) decided ny City and district court (i.e. convictions). Other criminal cases, such as decisions on use of pre-trial custody or other coercive measures, or fulfilment/continuation of already given penal sanctions, are not included. Neither are convictions taken to courts of appeal. See https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/sq/10076084

Number of cases (BACKLOG): Civil/Commercial

Available from https://www.domstol.no/no/domstoladministrasjonen/publikasjoner-og-veiledere/statistikk/ 

ME: Number of cases (INPUT): Administrative

In 2022, many more cases were received than in 2021. Some parties abuse the filing of lawsuits in cases due to the unrealized right to free access to information to obtain the costs of the proceedings. It is about overwhelming the administration with requests that cannot be answered within the stipulated time, while at the same time the law does not provide anything to prevent such behaviour from unduly burdening the courts.

Number of cases (BACKLOG): Administrative      

The increase in the number of pending cases was mostly influenced by the increased inflow of cases in compared to the previous period, and then by the decrease in the number of judges.

LT: Number of cases (INPUT, OUTPUT): Administrative

The change between 2021 ND 2022 was caused by an increase in the number of administrative cases due to the issuance of a court order, when the administrators of the waste system, due to the increase in the number of debtors, go to court with requests for debt recovery of the local fee for the collection and management of municipal waste. 

RS: Number of cases (INPUT, OUTPUT) Civil/Commercial, Administrative

Significant changes between 2021 and 2022

Drawing a parallel regarding the influx of cases in civil matters and bearing in mind that you stated that a decreasing trend in the influx of civil cases was observed in the last two years in all basic courts, we inform you that it was observed that a smaller number of lawsuits were filed after November 2021. years. Namely, the Supreme Court of Cassation in Belgrade on September 16, 2021. brought an amendment to the Legal position on the permissibility of contracting loan costs from 2018, according to which banks are not obliged to separately prove the structure and amount of loan processing costs that they charge to clients. From 2018 until the adoption of the aforementioned amendment, numerous cases were ruled in favour of the plaintiffs, i.e. natural persons, and after the amendment was adopted, the plaintiffs massively waived their lawsuits and claims and withdrew them, which led to the completion of such cases, as well as an influx there were no new cases on that claim, bearing in mind the legal position of the Supreme Court of Cassation.

TR: Number of cases (INPUT): Civil/Commercial, Criminal

Files reversal by the Supreme Court  and Regional Courts of Justice were not included.

Number of cases (INPUT,OUTPUT,BACKLOG): Administrative       "

It includes administrative courts and tax courts."

• More details in methodological rules are available in metadata attached to Crime and Criminal Justice (crim)  

There are three different statistical units:

• Offence: reported criminal act
• Case: criminal trial, and other types of court hearings
• People, depending on the stype of statistics: employees, victims, offenders, suspects, prosecuted, convicted, prisoners

The following list shows the statistical unit for court processes database table:

For administrative data, the statistical population for each statistic is the complete register (all the relevant records). The group of individuals depends on the type of unit (see 3.5).

For people, all relevant ages and nationalities are usually counted.

European Union Member States, EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, EU Candidate countries Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Turkey, Serbia,Bosnia and Herzegovina  and the EU Potential, Kosovo.

Details on jurisdictions excluded are provided as follows:

BE: The data from the youth prosecutor's office of Eupen are not included

FR: Police data does not include French overseas territories (French Polynesia, French Southern and Antarctic Territories, New Caledonia, Saint Barthélémy, St. Pierre and Miquelon, Wallis and Futuna Islands)

CY: Prosecution and Courts data covers cover only the Government-controlled-area of Cyprus

DK: Greenland excluded

NL: in Police data, Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius and Sint Maarten are not covered

NO: in Police data, offences reported to the Norwegian police committed abroad are included. Offences reported to The Norwegian Bureau for the Investigation of Police Affairs are not included.

MK: Courts data are only from the Basic Court Skopje

RS: Police, Prosecution and Courts data excludes Region Kosovo and Metohija

The current tables are available  from 2008 onwards.

Publications 2008 – 2021 used 2008 as base year.

• Absolute number.
• Rate by 100.000 population size.

 Population size defined as resident population January 1^st according to Eurostat database population figures.

Crime offences - the standard reference period is the calendar year.

Criminal Justice Personnel – the standard reference date is 31 December.

Prison figures - the reference date for held persons is 31 December, except for the following countries:

DK - Denmark: 1st September

DE - Germany: 30th November and 31st March

SI - Slovenia: 31st January

SE - Sweden: 1st October

NO - Norway: 1st January

CH – Switzerland: 31st of January of the following year.

Collection of crime statistics is not mandatory, but it is envisaged by the  resolution 1984/48 of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, dated 25 May 1984.With The Hague programme adopted in 2004, the European Council stressed the lack of comparable data at EU level on crime. It explicitly gave a mandate to Eurostat to “establish European instruments for collecting, analysing and comparing information on crime and victimisation and their respective trends in Member States”. The Commission established the Action Plan 2006-2010 to develop a comprehensive and coherent EU strategy to measure crime and criminal justice. The first data collection with the reference year 2005 was organised in 2007 and figures on crime were then published by Eurostat. The 2009 Stockholm Programme reiterated the need for “Adequate, Reliable and Comparable statistics” on crime and criminal activities. In 2012, an Action Plan covering the 2011-2015 period underlined the strategies to be adopted in order to improve the collection of crime statistics. In 2013, a mid-term review was drafted. The data collection on Cybercrime is made mandatory by EU directive 2013/40 and is carried out by Eurostat on behalf of the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs.

National crime data are collected jointly with UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) through the Crime Trends Survey Questionnaire.  Data on trafficking in human beings is collected by Eurostat and the UNODC Global report on Trafficking in Person questionnaire is also automatically filled with the same data. The validation of the data for both data collections is carried out by Eurostat.

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

Not applicable.

In general, data are released approximately 16 months after the reference year.

Release calendar - Eurostat (europa.eu)

In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat's website (see item 10 - 'Accessibility and clarity') respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.

Annual.

Ad hoc news releases 1-2 times per year.

The Statistics Explained pages on the Eurostat website give information on general trends in crime and criminal justice:

Crime statistics - Statistics Explained (europa.eu)

Police, court and prison personnel statistics - Statistics Explained (europa.eu)

Tables are available on-line in Eurostat webpage  Crime Database and are updated annually. 

Not applicable.

Statistics Explained articles.

Each country determines the methodology and is responsible for its documentation and  which authority or statistical office that should collect, check, and send data and documentation.

•  More details (as listed below) in methodological rules are available in metadata attached to  Crime and Criminal Justice (crim)  

Geographical coverage 
Methodological rules – Stage of data collection 
Methodological rules – Counting unit 
Methodological rules – Use of Principal Offence Rule
Methodological rules – Counting of persons for multiple (serial) offences of the same type
Methodological rules – Counting the same person multiple times in the same year
Methodological rules – Adult and juvenile age thresholds

• • Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics - Methodological guide for users This publication is an update of a previous guide supporting the methodological approach to crime and criminal justice statistics. The overall purpose is to provide information on the statistical processing of data, such as data validation, data quality assessment, and calculation of indicators. It addresses the issue of comparability by providing the key elements to be taken into account in the comparison. Finally, it explains the products disseminated on Eurostat's website.
  • EU guidelines for the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes — 2017 edition  This booklet presents the structure of the ICCS, its classification principles and its relations to existing classifications, to facilitate the implementation of the ICCS. It provides a brief overview of concrete organizational and technical tasks for a successful implementation of the ICCS at the national level, which should engage all crime data users and data providers. In addition, an implementation strategy through the creation of a correspondence table, a tabulation of all offence categories in the ICCS linked to all offences on the national level, is briefly described.
  • Monitoring EU crime policies using the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS)-2018 edition This publication describes how the specific criminal offences defined in the legislation passed at EU level should be mapped to the ICCS. For these offences, a common approach towards the alignment with the ICCS needs to be developed, where possible, to ensure that all EU Member States treat these offences consistently when applying the ICCS at national level. Each chapter provides explanations on how to align the relevant offences defined at EU level with ICCS categories by suggesting possible mapping scenarios, providing correspondence tables or pointing out inconsistencies between ICCS definitions and definitions in EU legislation.
  • Guidelines for the production of statistical data by the police These guidelines by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for the production of statistical data are aimed at providing advice to police departments on the collection, production and dissemination of high-quality statistical data that can assist them in performing and monitoring their core functions, improving the measurement of access to justice and promoting the implementation of ICCS.
  • Guidelines for the production of statistical data by the Prosecution Service and the Courts These guidelines by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for the production of statistical data are aimed at supporting the prosecution service and the courts in the collection, production and dissemination of high-quality statistics based on administrative data relating to crime and criminal justice. 

Previous quality reports:

Summary quality report on the 2016 data collection

Summary quality report on the 2015 data collection

Data are provided to Eurostat by a contact designated by each country. Notably, this contact can be another authority than the national statistical office. Each country determine its own procedures for gathering data from several different authorities (  see metadata attached to  Crime and Criminal Justice (crim) ).

No assessment has been made.

The need to provide information on the development of crime in the European Union was recognized in The Hague Programme adopted by the European Council in 2004. The system is being enhanced and extended as part of the implementation of the 2009 Stockholm programme: an open and secure Europe serving and protecting citizens, as outlined in the Commission Communication of 18 January 2012, Measuring crime in the EU: Statistics Action Plan 2011-2015. The need to provide information on cybercrime in the European Union is mandatory under Article 14 of the Directive - 2013/40 - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu).

No user satisfaction survey has been done .

Data is missing for some countries, for some or all years, in nearly all tables, for all types of statistics.

Principally, courts statistics indicates the registration and handling of cases by courts.

Relative to the administrative data used, the accuracy is largely unknown.

After an investigation is completed a decision is taken on whether or not to pass the case on for prosecution.

Court statistics reflect the number of cases processed by the courts and First Instance decisions. However, conviction decisions may be changed at a later stage following a successful appeal.

Not applicable - data are from administrative records.

Data from administrative records are likely to contain some random errors (mistakes) as well as systematic errors (bias).

 Data collected from the criminal justice system sum up offences, cases or persons recorded over the course of a year, usually from the 1st of January to the 31st of December of the reference year (some jurisdictions however use different reference dates). The data for the reference year Y are requested to be provided by the 15th of September of year Y+1. After the validation checks have been applied to the data, the countries are consulted again to revise any inconsistencies or to provide additional reference metadata.

Data for the reference year 2022 was published in April 2024.

In 2024, this lag was reduced by three months compared to 2021. 2019 data were disseminated on 21st July 2021, 2020 data on 8th June 2022, 2021 data on 11th May 2023 and 2022 data on April 2024. 

Comparability is affected by many factors, such as differences in:

• Legal system and criminal justice system
• Legislation, criminal law and legal definitions
• Organisation and efficiency of police, prosecution, courts and prisons
• Recording stage, input-,  process- or output data
• Recording system, reporting system, and production system
• Relation between national crime definition and international statistical definition
• Statistical unit and statistical population
• Statistical definition, reference time, counting methods and calculation methods
• Reporting rate for the crime

See the list of factors in 15.1. Changes in any of the factors can affect the comparability over time.

Not examined.

The internal coherence of the data is checked with basic validation rules (see section 18.4. Data validation). Figures for categories may not add up to the total, because information for some categories is missing.

The crime statistics collected by Eurostat are based on existing data compiled by national administrative sources. Also, the joint data collection between Eurostat and UNODC avoids duplication of data collections and unnecessary response burden for the data providers. The two data collection questionnaires (one for UNODC, one for specific EU needs) are structured in the same way to facilitate the completion of the questionnaires. In addition, Eurostat provides guidance notes and a helpdesk facility to support the national contact points when completing the questionnaires.

Revisions to the data are possible at any time, but only based on new data received from national contact.

Revisions are incorporated into the database after being confirmed by national contact.

Data source: courts

The source data type is records in administrative registers.

Annual.

Since 2014, Eurostat annually collects data on crime and criminal justice jointly with the UNODC. Eurostat is responsible of the collection for 38 jurisdictions (41 jurisdiction until 2019 data collection). Two separate questionnaires are sent to the Eurostat contact point in each jurisdiction. The UNODC questionnaire includes 7 sheets to be filled in and is complemented by the Eurostat questionnaire that comprises 3 sheets containing questions required by the European Commission for its specific policy areas. The two parts are harmonized, double requested avoided and consistency checked when applicable. Moreover, countries are requested to fill in a metadata file containing 9 sheets. Because of the diversity of the collected data, various actors are usually involved in the collection of data for each jurisdiction. Each national contact point is responsible for distributing the questionnaire to the appropriate data producers in the jurisdiction. The national contact point is then responsible for returning a completed and consolidated response to Eurostat. The files are sent to Eurostat by a common procedure, the electronic Data file Administration and Management Information System.

As soon as the survey questionnaires are received through the Eurostat electronic Data files Administration and Management Information System (eDAMIS), the data provided are checked through a set of validation rules. The validation rules consist of checks for completeness of data, internal consistency of the data, consistency over time, compliance with counting rules and ICCS and coherence with different data sources in the questionnaire or other relevant data sources. As regards to the consistency of the data, Eurostat systematically checks if the following basic rules are respected:

• The sum of the subtotals (men and women, adults and juveniles, nationals, and foreigners) should be equal to the total.
• Large revisions of data require confirmation and explanations from countries
• Large variation from one year to the next require confirmation and explanations from
• countries
• empty values, use of 0 and notes

The contact points are contacted to resolve or comment on any issues revealed by the data checking and/or to add any missing data or metadata. The data are deemed validated when all the issues addressed by Eurostat have been resolved or explained by the contact points. All information about definitions, divergencies, technical and legal changes provided by countries are disseminated in metadata.

Validation through attrition rates is also used to validate the data. The attrition rate describes the percentage rate at which the number of criminal cases decreases within the criminal justice system during the process, especially from the first contact with police to the level of convictions. The numbers of persons suspected, prosecuted, and convicted are expected to decrease but they should remain into a realistic range. The figures refer to suspects, prosecuted and convicted persons in the same calendar year. Although collect data do not allow to follow the individual outcomes for each person, they provide an estimate of the reduction process along the justice system.

EU ratio per hundred inhabitants, according to responding countries, are published for the following indicators:

• victims, suspected persons and convicted persons (total, males, females) of intentional homicide, rape and sexual assault in the crim_hom_soff dataset;
• victims of intentional homicide by family and relatives or intimate partner (total, males, females) in the crim_hom_vrel dataset

The percentage of the unsentenced detainees is calculated, for reporting countries and EU totals in crim_pris_tri dataset, as percentage of the number of prisoners with pre-trial legal status divided by the sum of the number of prisoners with pre-trial legal status and of the number of prisoners with sentence passed.

No adjustments are made.

None.