The questionnaire for the Eleventh "United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems" (UN-CTS), covering the period 2007 -2008, is presented for the first time in Excel format, with a view to assisting respondents in providing the requested information. On the basis of experts' recommendations, the questionnaire was revised in a way that maintains continuity with the past, but streamlined to include key information of particular interest to the international community. Attention was given to further improving and clarifying definitions, collecting data on context and metadata, as well as increasing collaboration with other Institutions carrying out international collections of data on crime and criminal justice issues.
The UN-CTS deals with information, primarily statistical, on the main components of the criminal justice system (police, prosecution, courts and prisons). The questionnaire is available to download in Excel format in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish .
The UN-CTS questionnaire is composed of a core questionnaire and a Module. The core questionnaire includes a set of key crime and criminal justice statistics. The Module consists of two parts, A. and B., dealing with selected crime issues.
In the Eleventh UN-CTS, Module A. deals with Trafficking in Persons and Module B. with Protection against Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Property, which is the topic of the thematic debate of the 19th Session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, to be held in 2010. Tables with questions relevant to parts A. and B. of the Module are attached at the end of the section for each law enforcement/criminal justice agency responsible for providing relevant data.
Respondents completing the tables have been provided with the following instructions:
(a) If figures provided in one table differ significantly from one year to the next, the discrepancy should be explained in the space for comments to the table;
(b) If it is not possible to provide data as classified or defined in a table, an attempt should be made to adjust the data as far as possible and to describe the steps involved in the space for comments to the table;
(c) If data are not yet available for the requested year, provisional data or estimates may be inserted and noted accordingly;
(d) It will be assumed that tables/parts of tables left blank refer to information that is not available, unless specified in the relevant space for comments;
(e) In most cases, the calendar year should be used as the reporting period. Where some other annual period is used, such as a fiscal year not corresponding to the calendar year, that fact should be noted;
(f) Statistics on such matters as criminal justice personnel, court action and the prison population should include data from all levels of government, that is, from the national, state and local authorities.
(g) Tables include, where applicable, data provided by countries as responses to the Ninth and Tenth Surveys. Should these data need to be corrected, or should countries who did not respond wish to supply data for previous years, please change/fill as appropriate and provide information on changes in the relevant space for comments.
Information for Member States
UNODC would like to thank all contributing States and their corresponding agencies for their cooperation in the production of statistics.
Any queries relating to the UN-CTS may be addressed to cts@unodc.org.
