INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATION OF CRIME FOR …

Statistical Commission Forty-sixth session 3 ? 6 March 2015 Item 3(c) of the provisional agenda Crime statistics

Background document Available in English only

INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATION OF CRIME FOR STATISTICAL PURPOSES (ICCS)

VERSION 1.0

February 2015 Prepared by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

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INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATION OF CRIME FOR STATISTICAL PURPOSES (ICCS)

VERSION 1.0

Copyright ? 2015, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

Acknowledgments

The development of the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes was coordinated by the UNODC Research and Trend Analysis Branch (RAB), Division of Policy Analysis and Public Affairs (DPA), under the supervision of Jean-Luc Lemahieu, Director of DPA, Angela Me, Chief of RAB, and Chlo? Carpentier, Chief of RAB Statistics and Surveys Section.

Core team Research coordination and report preparation Enrico Bisogno Michael Jandl Lucia Motolinia Carballo Felix Reiterer Atsuki Takahashi

Graphic design and layout: Suzanne Kunnen Kristina Kuttnig

Editing: Jonathan Gibbons

The International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS) was developed using the "Principles and framework for an international classification of crimes for statistical purposes" produced by the UNECE-UNODC Joint Task Force on Crime Classification and endorsed by the Conference of European Statisticians in 2012. The ICCS was produced on the basis of the plan to finalize by 2015 an international classification of crime for statistical purposes, as approved by the Statistical Commission in its decision 44/110 and by the Economic and Social Council in its resolution 2013/37.

Gratitude is expressed to all Member States, international organizations and individual experts who contributed to the development of the ICCS. The continuous support of the UNODC-INEGI Center of Excellence on Statistics on Governance, Public Safety, Victimization and Justice is gratefully acknowledged, as is the contribution of Steven Malby who developed the initial concept of the classification. UNODC would also like to thank the United Nations Statistics Division and the members of its Expert Group on International Statistical Classifications for their valuable comments and contributions during the peer-review process.

This publication may be reproduced in whole or in part and in any form for educational or non-profit purposes without special permission from the copyright holder, provided acknowledgement of the source is made.

Suggested citation: UNODC, International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes, Version 1.0

Comments on the report are welcome and can be sent to: Statistics and Surveys Section Research and Trend Analysis Branch Division for Policy Analysis and Public Affairs United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime P.O. Box 500 1400 Vienna Austria E-mail: iccs@ Tel.: (+43) 1 26060 0

Disclaimer

The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of UNODC, Member States or contributory organizations, nor does it imply any endorsement.

This document has not been formally edited. The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

? United Nations, February 2015. All rights reserved, worldwide.

Information on uniform resource locators and links to Internet sites contained in the present publication are provided for the convenience of the reader and are correct at the time of issue. The United Nations takes no responsibility for the continued accuracy of that information or for the content of any external website.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE ? INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................. 7 I. OVERVIEW ...........................................................................................................................................................7 The nature and purpose of the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes..............................7 The need for an international classification of crime............................................................................................7 The challenge of developing an international classification of crime for a nationally defined event...................8 The process of building the international classification of crime..........................................................................9 II. PRINCIPLES USED IN THE ICCS................................................................................................................................10 The definition of crime for the purposes of the ICCS ...........................................................................................10 The unit of classification of the ICCS ...................................................................................................................10 The application of the principles of statistical classification...............................................................................11 The criteria used to build the ICCS ......................................................................................................................12 Disaggregating variables as additional descriptors of criminal offences ...........................................................14 Intentional homicide as a special case................................................................................................................16 III. APPLICATION OF THE ICCS ....................................................................................................................................18 Classifying offences for the purpose of the ICCS .................................................................................................18 The use of legal inclusions and exclusions in the ICCS.........................................................................................19 Additional disaggregating variables ...................................................................................................................19 The relationship to other international classifications........................................................................................21

PART TWO ? BROAD AND DETAILED STRUCTURE ................................................................................................ 23 ANNEX 1: DATA COMPARABILITY, REPORTING RATES AND COUNTING RULES...........................................................................106 Defining and classifying crime ..........................................................................................................................106 Reporting and detecting crime .........................................................................................................................106 Recording and counting crime ..........................................................................................................................106 ANNEX 2 ..................................................................................................................................................................108

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Part One ? Introduction

I. Overview

The nature and purpose of the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes

The International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS) is a classification of criminal offences which is based on internationally agreed concepts, definitions and principles in order to enhance the consistency and international comparability of crime statistics, and improve analytical capabilities at both the national and international levels.1

The ICCS provides a framework for the systematic production and comparison of statistical data across different criminal justice institutions and jurisdictions. This means that the ICCS is applicable to all forms of crime data, whatever the stage of the criminal justice process (police, prosecution, conviction, imprisonment) at which they are collected, as well as to data collected in crime victimization surveys.

At the international level, the ICCS improves the comparability of crime data between countries. Standardized concepts and definitions allow for the systematic collection, analysis and dissemination of data, and also respond to the demand for in-depth research and analysis of transnational crime. At the national level, the ICCS can be used as a model to provide structure and organize statistical data that are often produced according to legal rather than analytical categories. Moreover, the ICCS can harmonize data across domestic criminal justice institutions (police, prosecutions, courts, prisons) and across different data sources (administrative records and statistical surveys).2 Likewise, the ICCS can be used as a tool to standardize data from sub-national entities that may have different statistical systems or legal frameworks.

The need for an international classification of crime

Reliable crime statistics are critical for measuring changes in crime levels, monitoring state responses to crime, evaluating policies and understanding the various facets of crime in different contexts. Often, raw data from different stages of the criminal justice process are available, but the purposeful collection and organization of these data into statistical form is required to produce valuable information for use in decision-making. The comparison of crime statistics across time, between countries or with other available statistics is particularly difficult due to the lack of standardized concepts and the absence of an internationally agreed statistical framework to make such comparisons possible.3

1 The terms "crime" and "criminal offence" are used interchangeably in this document. 2 United Nations Economic and Social Council. Statistical Commission. Report of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on a road map to improve the quality and availability of crime statistics at the national and international levels (19 December 2012). E/CN.3/2013/11. 3 Other factors affecting the comparability of crime statistics refer to the fact that only a varying proportion of criminal offences are reported and recorded by public authorities and to the use of different practices to produce statistical counts of crimes. For a review see Annex 1 (see also: United Nations Economic and Social Council. Statistical Commission. Report of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico on crime statistics. E/CN.3/2012/3).

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