Criminal detention and alternatives: fundamental rights aspects in EU cross-border transfers The Sustainable Development Goals and measuring access to justice The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Among the 17 SDGs, goal 16 is concerned with “peace, justice and strong institutions”. Global efforts are made to measure the various targets contributing to the goals. For goal 16 there are 12 targets, one of which (16.3) relates to access to justice: “Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all”. This in turn has two indicators that will be populated with data in the years to come, and benchmarks will be set as to what should be achieved by 2030. The first of the two indicators concerns the proportion of victims of violent crimes who reported their victimisation to some form of official complaint mechanism. The other one (16.3.2) deals with “unsentenced detainees as proportion of overall prison population”. While the benchmark for the level to be achieved for this indicator is yet to be determined, it will encourage a reasonably low rate of pre-trial detainees (unsentenced) compared to the overall number of detainees. Source: UN, Sustainable development knowledge platform; UN, Economic and Social Council, E/CN.3/2016/2/Rev.1, 19 February 2016, p. 62 Chapter 4 deals with alternatives to detention and in that context also explores international human rights standards. 3.1. Extent of detention Improved methodology for collecting data on alternatives to detention The extent of detention in Europe is fairly well documented, with data being collected from national public sources, such as prison administrations, government ministries or statistical offices, often through questionnaires. There are some methodological concerns that compromise the comparability of the data across countries, including national definitions of categories that do not clearly distinguish, for instance, between detention and alternatives to detention. Still, the larger picture that emerges is relatively reliable and comparable. The main collectors of this data are the following (with some details on coverage): The European Institute for Criminal Prevention and Control (HEUNI) conducted a project that sought to improve and complement existing standards for defining and categorising community sanctions and measures as well as assessing attrition. A final report was published in 2014. • UNODC, with data from 2003 to 2015, including disaggregation by pre- and post-trial, gender and children (juvenile);133 • The Council of Europe’s Annual Penal Statistics (SPACE, Statistiques Pénales Annuelles du Conseil 133 UNODC (2013). 54 de l’Europe), with data from 1983 to 2015, include two main strands:134 a. SPACE I, on number of detentions (pre- and posttrial), includes data disaggregated by type of crime but also number of places available in penal institutions, surface area per inmate, age structure of post-trial detainees, number of children, female percentage, percentage of foreign inmates (EU and non-EU), length of sentences, escapes, deaths, costs, as well as the number of penitentiary staff; b. SPACE II, on number of sanctions that are not strictly detention (non-custodial or semi-custodial sanctions and measures – so-called alternatives to prison), includes information on administrative structure of probation services, but does not include data on children (juveniles); • Eurostat-UNODC joint data collection on crime and criminal justice statistics from 2008–2013;135 • The European Institute for Criminal Prevention and Control (HEUNI), European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics (currently fifth edition), with data from 2007 to 2011, deals with detention in addition to crime statistics during criminal investigations;136 • Institute for Criminal Policy Research, University of London, World Prison Brief (WPB), contains two strands:137 a. World Pre-trial/Remand Imprisonment List (latest data, second edition, 2014), with data from 2014 b. World Prison Population List (latest data, eleventh edition, 2016). Source: European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations (2014), Recording Community Sanctions and Measures and Assessing Attrition. A Methodological Study on Comparative Data in Europe, Helsinki Figure 4 shows the change in the total number of persons in detention in the 28 EU Member States between 2008 and 2014. 134 Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics (SPACE), hosted by the University of Lausanne (UNIL). The EU provides funding to the Council of Europe in support of this data collection. 135 European Commission, Eurostat (2015). 136 The European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control (HEUNI) (2014). 137 World Prison Brief (WPB).