WHAT IS JUSTIS?
JUSTIS is a project designed to provide EU institutions and Member States with new evidence-based indicators of public trust in justice. The aim of the project is to develop and pilot survey-based indicators of:
• the public’s confidence in the institutions of justice
• the public sense of personal security.
The project is grounded on the assumptions that the effectiveness of justice systems depends significantly on the legitimacy that they command from the public, and that the drivers of institutional legitimacy include public beliefs about the quality of justice and public perceptions of safety and security. JUSTIS will develop accessible tools for presenting and interpreting the indicators. The project will not simply develop scientifically credible indicators, however. It also aims to build some consensus across Member States about the importance of assessing crime policy against criteria of public trust in justice.
One of the challenges of this project is to develop indicators that work well in each member state, whilst remaining comparable across countries. Contexts differ, and this means that measures have to be tailored – to some extent – for each country, to reflect the organisation of justice in that jurisdiction. There are similar linguistic problems. There are often no exact translations in one country for terms that are commonplace in another. For example, the ‘police’ may have different meanings in different countries. ‘Trust’ and ‘legitimacy’ may also play out differently depending on the context and the country. The translation of these terms and issues into six different languages without losing the original meaning is significant a challenge for JUSTIS project.
JUSTIS project is co-funded by the European Community’s FP7 2007-2013, under grant agreement nr 217311. The project started in March 2008 and will last for three years. Activities in the JUSTIS project are divided in eight work packages. All nine partners have responsibilities in all work packages and all but two partners are leaders of a work package. Project participants include:
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
University of Sheffield, UK
King’s College London, UK
European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations, Finland
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
Center for the Study of Democracy, Bulgaria
Centre for Political Communications Research of the Institute for Political Sciences, Hungary
Centre for Crime Prevention in Lithuania
Department of Criminal Sciences, University of Parma, Italy
The project is coordinated by Professor Mike Hough from King’s College London.
CURRENT ACTIVITIES
The second work package of the project is currently under way. The objective of WP2 is to review the need for European-wide social indicators of public confidence in justice for policy assessment. At the moment, each project partner is collecting and reviewing the relevant research literature on the themes of confidence/trust and fear/anxiety/insecurity in their own country. In addition, the perceived need for confidence indicators amongst scientists, criminal justice managers and government officials is being mapped out in each country, through the use of surveys and in-depth interviews. Our aim is to identify whether any viable sets of indicators of confidence in justice have been used, what are the concepts that underpin the system, and what kind of expectations different professional groups have for new confidence indicators.
We are planning the first international conference on the JUSTIS project to coincide with the completion of WP2. The conference will be take place in spring 2009, and we plan to assemble leading academics in the field, and others with an interest.
PRESENTATIONS ON JUSTIS
Presentations about the JUSTIS project have already been given in two international conferences. Dr Jonathan Jackson from the London School of Economics gave a presentation at the World Congress of Criminology in Barcelona in July 2008. Director Kauko Aromaa from the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control presented a paper about JUSTIS at the Stockholm Criminology Symposium in June 2008.
Future presentations on JUSTIS include one by Professor Mike Hough at the European Society of Criminology conference in Edinburgh in September 2008 and Dr Stephen Farrall’s presentation at a seminar on Confidence in Policing at Newcastle University (UK) in November 2008.
EXTERNAL EXPERT GROUP
A group of external experts has been set up to support the work of the JUSTIS project. The External Expert Group will set the standards for high level scientific results in the project and will validate the outcomes against those standards. Besides bringing their own experiences and visions into the project, these experts will export JUSTIS findings and results to their own countries and professional fields. The EEG consists of one or two members per consortium member, providing a core membership of 15 people, including the EEG chairman. The core EEG members have been selected on the basis of technical knowledge or influencing ability. Professor Julian Roberts has agreed to chair the EEG.
HOW TO STAY INFORMED
The JUSTIS website is primarily targeted at European research professionals and policymakers. The website has a public section for visitors and a private section for project partners to share the latest news. The aim of the website is to keep everyone interested in the JUSTIS project up-to-date with the progress of the project. Starting from September 2008, an online newsletter will be released every two months both in the JUSTIS website and by email. The European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control (HEUNI) is responsible for the dissemination, and all questions related to the newsletter can be sent to Anniina Jokinen (anniina.jokinen@om.fi) or Elina Ruuskanen (elina.ruuskanen@om.fi).
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