What are the temporal and regional limitations of the criminal data?
Data collection took place within the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal in Gent, which included seven courts of first instance:
- Brugge,
- Dendermonde,
- Gent,
- Ieper,
- Kortrijk,
- Oudenaarde and
- Veurne
The judgments of the jurisdiction were collected for the years 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. Moreover, the appeal judgments of 2007 were added when they refer to first instance judgments made between 2003 and 2006.
Further the dataset includes information on the discretionary dismissals and settlements following cases arriving at the public prosecutor’s offices of Gent and Kortrijk in 2005 and on discretionary dismissals and settlements decided by the public prosecutor’s office in Ieper in 2005.