About

HEUNI is the European regional institute in the United Nations Criminal Justice and Crime Prevention programme network. HEUNI functions under the auspices of the Finnish Ministry of Justice as an independent research and policy-making institute.

Our vision is to identify evidence-based criminal justice and crime prevention practices in Europe, and share these within Europe and beyond, in order to advance more effective, rational and humane criminal justice systems.

Our greatest strength is our capacity to develop multidisciplinary research methodologies and utilize them in order to explore new criminological phenomena.

HEUNI’s expertise also encompasses the collection and analysis of data on criminal justice systems, and the development and piloting of victimization surveys and indicators. HEUNI has extensive experience in the development of guidelines and training modules for policy makers and criminal justice practitioners.

HEUNI has
■ Developed guidelines to prevent abusive recruitment, exploitative employment and trafficking of migrant workers

■ Developed and tested victimization surveys

■ Developed comparative research projects and trained multinational research teams

■ Developed training for private sector representatives on the recognition and identification of human trafficking

■ Developed methodology of using journals as a data source for co-creating a counselling method for GBV victims