Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union

On 18 and 19 November 2010, the Department of Criminal Policy will be organising a conference on the topic of ‘quality of justice’. The aim of this conference is to address the aspect of quality management in the justice sector. To this end, a number of ‘best practices’ from abroad will be presented and experiences and techniques from Belgium throughout the criminal justice system will be highlighted. The conference will end with a debate between various actors from the field.

On 18 and 19 November 2010 Department of Criminal Justice Policy (DCJP) will be holding a conference on the topic of ‘quality of justice’. After all, in recent years, the debate on the implementation of a quality model in the justice sector has grown increasingly intense and high-profile. At different levels of the judicial chain, numerous useful experiences can already be highlighted in the area of quality management. All of these initiatives are designed to achieve a better-quality organisation of justice that is capable of restoring and reinforcing the diminished confidence of citizens in the courts.

In recent years, the DCJP has invested in encouraging, elaborating and following up quality management tools. In this way, for example, the integral quality assurance model of the public prosecutor’s office was developed on behalf of the DCJP and its implementation in various pilot public prosecutor’s offices was co-supported by the DCJP. Given its mission to inform and offer proposals to policy makers and stakeholders of the criminal justice policy for better coordinating the criminal justice chain, the DCJP is well-placed to take this initiative.

The aim is, through this conference, to address the aspect of quality management in the justice sector. To this end, a number of ‘best practices’ from other countries will be presented (day 1) and experiences and techniques from throughout the criminal justice chain in Belgium will be highlighted (day 2). The conference will end with a debate between various actors from the field about how quality management can be given concrete shape and can lead to a more efficient and effective justice system.