research and direct work with government and criminal justice officials is clearly needed to assess how these systems operate in practice across the OSCE region, and how they can be successfully reformed. The quantitative measurement of criminal justice actors’ performance should be shifted away from the activities of criminal justice actors (e.g. arrests and prosecutions), which do not reflect accurately the numbers of crimes being committed, on public safety and on public satisfaction with the police. 72. In a Western European participating State, the last remaining police performance targets were formally abolished in 2010.160 Despite this, a review in 2015 revealed some forces were continuing to use targets. The review highlighted that the use of targets encouraged police to underreport or misreport crimes, and to pressure suspects into confessing to other crimes they had not committed.161 In the United Kingdom more broadly, police performance is independently assessed by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS). The HMICFRS commissions a survey each year on public perceptions of policing. In 2018, the survey was conducted with over 17.000 members of the public, and this constitutes a promising practice example on how to assess police performance without quota or performance target systems.162 Prosecutors 73. It is not just police who can be pressured to fulfil performance quotas. Pressures to secure convictions inevitably affect the impartiality of prosecutors, who may face personal consequences if quotas are not met, such as job loss or pay cuts. One example from Eastern Europe shows that, conviction rates are used as the central indicator to assess the performance not just of police, but also of prosecutors.163 Unlike the police, who have numerical targets to reach, prosecutors are expected to obtain convictions in court, and are penalized if defendants are acquitted.164 This practice seems to persist despite the fact that the former Disciplinary Statute of the Prosecutor’s Office from 1992 that stated that an acquittal is one of the grounds for evaluating a prosecutor’s performance and initiating an investigation into their performance that could lead to disciplinary proceedings has been 160 HM Government, “Police reform: Theresa May’s speech to the National Policing Conference” referring to England and Wales, (June 2010). 161 Chief Superintendent Irene Curtis, “The use of targets in policing”, (August 2015), pp 12–13. 162 HMICFRS, “Public perceptions of policing in England and Wales 2018”, (January 2019). 163 Questionnaire response Ukraine Without Torture (2019). 164 Ibid. 48