Examples of reports providing an overview of the criminal justice system 1) “Review of the Criminal Justice System”, LSMS, OSCE Mission in Kosovo (2000, 2001, 2005, and 2006) 2) “OSCE Trial Monitoring Report on the Implementation of the New Criminal Procedure Code in the Courts of Bosnia and Herzegovina”, OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina (2004) 3) “Final Report, Countrywide Observation of the Implementation of Fair Trial Standards in Domestic Courts and the Assessment of the Functioning of the Judiciary”, coalition All for Fair Trials, a domestic observer group of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (2004) 4) “Ensuring Fair Trials Through Monitoring”, OSCE Centre in Dushanbe (2005) 5) “Fair Trial Development Project, Interim Report”, OSCE Presence in Albania (2004) 6) “Report from the trial monitoring project in Kazakhstan 2005-2006”, ODIHR and OSCE Centre in Almaty (2007) 7) “6-Month Analytic Report, Preliminary Findings on the Experience of Going to Court in Moldova”, OSCE Mission to Moldova (2007). Comprehensive reports should seek not only to identify problems with the application of laws, but should seek to identify the source of such problems. This may include providing analysis of the scope and components of a problem to assess whether the practice at issue is caused by legislative/statutory, structural, resource, budgetary, and/ or other systemic or specific reasons. Such analysis may also involve a quantitative or statistical element to put a problem into perspective. However, for a report to be considered a monitoring report (and not a legal review), the findings and conclusions must be based upon the practices monitored in specific cases. Reports providing a broad system overview tend to be the most complex and demanding both in monitoring methodology and in report-writing. However, they are also an excellent place to start for programmes that intend to establish a long-term approach to monitoring. This is the case because they provide a good starting point by identifying fundamental issues involving the functioning of the entire system. As such, they broadly engage and support the work of all institutions and actors involved in the criminal justice system. This not only raises the profile of the programme among the greatest number of actors, but strongly identifies the programme with a systemic, rule-of-law approach to justice reform. Such identification may be important later as a programme focuses on narrower issues where legal actors may not have such commonality of interest. 8.1.2 Thematic reports related to the functioning of specific aspects of the justice system Thematic reports focus on specific aspects of the judicial system in an effort to support rule-of-law reform and enhance the protection of fair-trial standards in these specific areas. As such, thematic reports are variants of comprehensive system reports in that they concern the functioning of the criminal justice system and its ability to deliver justice fairly and effectively. In turn, thematic reports will focus on local practices and Trial-Monitoring: A Reference Manual for Practitioners 105