The Home Office deals with the police, lower courts, the probation and aftercare service, prisons, and with the development of criminal and penal policy generally. The home secretary has statutory authority to carry out and commission research. Most criminological research is conducted in universities. In the United Kingdom the tradition of research in the social sciences is empirical and positivist. Around the early 1970s emphasis shifted from crime and criminals to analysis of the institutions of criminal justice. New features of the pragmatic orientation include: a growth in police research; crime prevention; law and order issues; and the development of comparative research. Government capabilities have maintained a considerable output of solid work despite economic restraint and intellectual criticism. If government influence pervades research priorities, the power is liberally exercised. It would prove helpful if some rival power source could be established to offer an alternative focus for the intellectual consideration of research strategies with some means for their tactical implementation. The Council of Europe's involvement in the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders is discharged through the European Committee on Crime Problems. Most of the Committee's work is in the form of critical research reviews, drawn for a wide range of activity in different countries.