Justice
Measuring progress toward safety and justice: A global guide to the design of performance indicators across the justice sector
Indicators to measure progress towards security
Authors:
Publisher:
Vera Institute of Justice, 2003
This guide describes the process of choosing appropriate indicators for measuring progress towards safety and justice. It is written for managers responsible for improving the delivery of safety, security, and access to justice in any part of the world. It should also be useful to a wide variety of government officials and to anyone interested in pursuing a disciplined course of institutional reform in the safety and justice sector.
The guide does not prescribe the use of particular indicators for measuring progress toward safety and justice. The choice of appropriate indicators must be the result of a process undertaken in each country and programme. The guide describes that process, explaining the principles that should inform the choice of indicators, and provides examples of possible indicators.
Part one of this guide defines what is meant by indicators and describes the design process. The chapters that follow describe the role of indicators in measuring progress:
- in the sector as a whole
- within specific state institutions, particularly those dealing with criminal justice such as the police, courts, and prisons
- among the wide variety of non-state justice institutions
- a brief definition of the particular sector-wide strategy or outcomes of interest related to the specific institution
- a description of traditional indicators used to measure performance on this topic or in this institution;
- some examples of policy goals or outcomes that would require different indicators
- a table of indicators that might be used to measure progress toward these policy goals and the possible data sources that might be used to construct the indicators
- a description of the strengths and weaknesses of the suggested indicators
