Domestic abuse: statistics recorded by the police in Scotland - 2010/11 and 2011/12

4. Notes on statistics used in this bulletin

4.1 Background

A statistical collection on domestic abuse (previously referred to as domestic violence) was recommended in the Report of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary "Hitting Home - A Report on the Police Response to Domestic Violence 1997":

Recommendation 1

'That the standard definition of domestic violence to be developed by The Scottish Office in consultation with forces includes sub-categories of: - crimes of personal violence (non-sexual and sexual); other crimes (such as breach of the peace, threats, and vandalism); and abuse which does not amount to crime; and that the definition be adopted by all forces as soon as it is agreed'.

Recommendation 2

'That all forces record domestic incidents so that they can be reviewed individually and in total, using the sub-categories referred to in recommendation 1'.

These recommendations were progressed through the Domestic Violence Working Group of the Scottish Criminal Statistics Committee involving ACPOS (Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland) nominated representatives who agreed the following definition of domestic abuse:

'Any form of physical, sexual or mental and emotional abuse [that] might amount to criminal conduct and which takes place within the context of a relationship. The relationship will be between partners (married, cohabiting, civil partnership or otherwise) or ex-partners. The abuse can be committed in the home or elsewhere'.

4.2 Returns

The statistical return from which the figures in this bulletin are taken is a simple count of the numbers of incidents of domestic abuse recorded by the police using the definition of domestic abuse as shown above. Following current terminology, these incidents are now referred to as incidents of domestic abuse. Returns from the eight Scottish police forces are included in this bulletin

Under the code of practice for official statistics, the estimated costs of responding to statistical surveys and data collections are to be published.

The estimated cost of compliance for supplying and validating the data for this bulletin is £3,800

Details of the calculation methodology are available on the Scottish Government Crime and Justice website at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/costcalculation

4.3 Recording of crimes and offences

Contraventions of Scottish criminal law are divided for statistical purposes into crimes and offences. The term "crime" is generally used for the more serious criminal acts; the less serious are termed "offences", although the term "offence" may also be used in relation to serious breaches of criminal law. The distinction is made only for working purposes and the "seriousness" of the offence is generally related to the maximum sentence that can be imposed.

The detailed classification of crimes and offences used by the Scottish Government to collect criminal statistics contains about 475 codes. These are grouped in the bulletin as shown in section 5.

Note that for the purposes of the statistical tables, only the most serious crime or offence related to each incident is used.

4.4 Recording issues

• Incident Count:

In 2001, Tayside Police introduced a new method of compiling the statistical information required for this bulletin and launched a joint initiative with Barnardo's Scotland which is believed to have encouraged victims of domestic abuse to report incidents.

During 2003-04, Strathclyde Police rolled out a new Vulnerable Person Database (VPD) which collects information about domestic, racist and homophobic incidents. This also involved the back-record conversion of paper records from September 2002. In the long term, this will lead to more dynamic, accurate and timely data.

• Repeat Victimisation

Police forces can only identify a repeat victim if he/she has previously been entered onto their database. The longer the database has been in existence the more likely it is that a repeat victim will be recognised as such. Police forces have maintained their databases over different periods of time and the proportion of identified repeat victims will vary accordingly.

The data collection is based on the number of incidents and it is not possible to identify individual victims. It is therefore possible for a victim of repeat incidents over the financial year period to be included several times within the statistics. In the case of tables 10a and 10b (incidents broken down by number of previous incidents) in particular, it is possible that a victim of repeat incidents may appear across several columns as the number of incidents increases.

• Transgender victims and perpetrators

A separate code for Transgender was used in the data collection for the first time in 2009-10. Due to the small numbers of transgender victims and perpetrators, these are included in detailed tables as 'Unknown' for disclosure purposes. The total number of transgender victims can be found in table 5.

• Where information is unknown

Police forces were not able to record complete or certain types of information in all incidents. The percentage of incidents of domestic abuse where information was not recorded is shown in the following table:

Percentage

	2010-11		2011-12
	Recorded	Not Recorded	Recorded	Not Recorded
Crimes and offences	100.00	-	100.00	-
Gender of victim	99.66	0.34	95.90	4.10
Gender of perpetrator	99.54	0.46	95.79	4.21
Gender of victim and perpetrator	99.23	0.77	95.63	4.37
No. of previous incidents against victim	92.10	7.90	90.59	9.41
Age of victim	99.83	0.17	95.95	4.05
Age of perpetrator	99.72	0.28	95.87	4.13
Location of incident	99.82	0.18	99.84	0.16
Relationship between victim and perpetrator	99.67	0.33	95.76	4.24
Action taken by police	99.85	0.15	99.82	0.18
TOTAL	98.94	1.18	96.52	3.87

Please note however, that in April 2011-12, Tayside made a change to the way domestic incidents are recorded which has resulted in an increase in the number of incidents with unknown details. See note 4.5.

4.5 Reporting practice

Reporting of domestic abuse

The statistics reported in this bulletin do not reveal the incidence of all domestic abuse committed since not all incidents are reported to the police. In conjunction with the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS), the statistics help to measure the extent and impact of domestic abuse in Scotland (see note 4.12). A number of reasons have been found for such under reporting. For example, victims experience fear and shame as common effects of domestic abuse. In addition, under reporting may also be caused by a perpetrator physically preventing a victim reporting the domestic abuse.

Recording practices

The statistics provided from this data return have highlighted the different ways in which police forces record information. In particular, police practice in deciding when the behaviour justifies the recording of a crime or offence may differ. For example, some forces have ruled that no crime or offence should be recorded if no further action is to be taken e.g. because the victim does not wish any action to be taken. Other forces may record this as a crime or offence.

These differences clearly influence the proportion of incidents which lead to the recording of a crime or offence. In 2010-11, this ranged from 98% in Tayside, to 31% in Dumfries & Galloway. Tayside's figures show a marked change in this regard from the figures published for 2004-05. This is because during 2004 Tayside was returning crimes with crime codes not recognised by Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services. This recording issue has now been resolved.

Change of recording practice in Tayside

In 2011-12, the proportion of incidents which lead to a crime or offence being recorded in Tayside decreased and is more in line with other police forces. Tayside Police historically recorded instances of Domestic Abuse as substantive crimes with a Domestic Aggravator in every case purely as a means of having a method by which to record and manage investigations.

In order to achieve more accurate recording, in April 2011 the Domestic Concern Report was introduced and is now used when there is no substantive crime, such as Breach of the Peace which was the most common one, involved. In such cases the complainer is listed as the Procurator Fiscal and so the gender etc of the victim is not identifiable. This Has resulted in a high number of unknown returns. The victim will be listed as a witness on any such report and Domestic Abuse Officers manage these cases in exactly the same way as those where a substantive crime is involved. This process has resulted in a drop in incidents with a recorded crime of Breach of the Peace.

Crimes and offences referred to the Procurator Fiscal

Differences in the recording of crimes and offences also influence the proportion of recorded crimes and offences which are referred to the procurator fiscal. There was much less variation between police forces in the proportion of all incidents of domestic abuse which led to a referral to the procurator fiscal.

It should be noted that these recording practices are under continuing review with the aim of achieving consistency across Scotland. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland (HMICS) published a report in May 2012, assessing the consistency of recording across police forces. The report is available via the HMICS website: http://www.hmics.org/publications/crime-audit-2011-national-overview-report

4.6 Changes in methodology

2009-10 was the first year in which data was submitted based on the date the incident was recorded. Prior to this, data was returned based on the number of incidents which occurred during that time period. As historic data has never been revised, any incidents which occurred in a different time period to the date in which the incident was recorded, will have been excluded from the returns.

For example, if an incident occurred during 2007-08 but was reported during 2008-09, it would have been excluded from 2008-09 (since the date committed is not in the relevant time period), but it would also have been missed out of the 2007-08 data as the submitted data would not have been updated. Hence, the incident would never be reported in the statistics.

The number of incidents in the bulletins from 2009-10 onwards, is therefore based on the date the incident was recorded. This should give a truer reflection of police activity relating to domestic abuse incidents. By reporting on the date the incidents were committed, we get a snapshot account of the number of domestic abuse incidents occurring within a particular period. However, by analysing the data based on the date recorded, we can see the trend in reporting incidents of domestic abuse to the police. Hence, if there was an increase in the number of victims who found the courage to report incidents of domestic abuse to the police, this should be reflected in the statistics.

It was estimated that less than 1% of incidents recorded within a particular year are 'historic' incidents, i.e. occurred within a previous time period. By not updating the data which was collected for all years prior to 2009-10, it is estimated that there was an undercount in the total number of incidents but this should not be more than 3%. 2009-10 is the first year in which there should be no undercount in the number of incidents of domestic abuse recorded by the police.

There was an increase of 15% in the number of incidents recorded between 2002-03 and 2003-04 in Scotland. This is driven by Strathclyde who introduced a new Vulnerable Persons Database (VPD) during 2003-04. The introduction of this system, along with improved recording practices, is likely to be the main reason for this increase.

4.7 Legislation

As well as common law, some of the main legislation applicable to domestic abuse is as follows:

• Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 (Section 31 of this Act introduced the concept of "domestic interdicts" into the 1981 Act, which applies to unmarried cohabitants (either opposite-sex or same-sex). Domestic interdicts have much the same effect in relation to cohabitants as matrimonial interdicts have for married couples as is defined in section 10 of this Act, which amends section 14 of the 1981 Act to extend the scope of matrimonial interdicts to include not only a matrimonial home, but also any other home owned by the applicant, the applicant's place of work and the school attended by any child in the applicant's care).
• Protection from Abuse (Scotland) Act 2001
• Criminal Justice Act 1998
• Crime and Disorder Act 1998
• Protection from Harassment Act 1997
• Family Law Act 1996
• Matrimonial Homes (Family Law) (Scotland) Act 1981

New legislation introduced since the publication of the last statistical bulletin

On 6 October 2010, section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 was implemented. This introduced a new statutory offence of 'Threatening or abusive behaviour'. Unlike the common law offence of Breach of the peace, where case law has decreed that it is necessary to show a 'public element' to the conduct, there is no requirement in the new legislation to demonstrate the offending behaviour was in a public place.

Section 39 of the 2010 Act introduced, on 13 December 2010, the new offence of "Stalking". Formerly conduct which constitutes this new offence would also have been recorded under the common law offence of Breach of the peace.

The Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 came into force on 1 December 2010. The Act was passed following widespread media and academic criticism of the previous law in Scotland surrounding rape and other sexual offences, particularly the gender specific nature of the common law offence of rape.

The Act replaces a number of common law crimes including Rape, Clandestine injury to women and Sodomy with new statutory sexual offences. The Act provides a statutory description of consent, which is defined as free agreement and provides a non-exhaustive list of factual circumstances during which consent will be deemed to be absent.

The Act created a number of new 'protective' offences, which criminalise sexual activity with children and mentally disordered persons. There are separate offences concerning young children (under 13 years) and older children (13-15 years).

The new legislation will only apply to offences committed from 1 December 2010. Any offences committed prior to this date will be recorded using the previous legislation.

The new legislation resulted in some increases in Sexual offences. However, it is likely that the effect will be to change the distribution of these crimes among the subcategories. For example, some crimes previously categorised as Lewd and libidinous practices will now be classified as Sexual assault.

The introduction of the new legislation resulted in some crimes that would previously have been classified as either Breach of the peace etc. or Other miscellaneous offences being classified as Sexual offences. Most of these are now classed as Other sexual offences. However, it is not possible to quantify the number of crimes that this change affects.

Any Sexual offence which occurred prior to 1 December 2010 will be recorded in line with the appropriate legislation in place at that time. If the conduct occurred both prior to and after 1 December 2010 the appropriate offences under the old and new legislation are recorded. Caution should therefore be taken when comparing Sexual offences with previous years.

4.8 Definition of serious assault

In Scotland, assault is a common law offence. In order to distinguish between serious and common assaults, police forces use a common definition of what a serious assault is.

"An assault or attack in which the victim sustains injury resulting in detention in hospital as an inpatient, for the treatment of that injury, or any of the following injuries whether or not detained in hospital;

Fractures (the breaking or cracking of a bone. Note - nose is cartilage not bone, so a 'broken nose' should not be classified unless it meets one of the other criteria)

Internal injuries

Severe concussion

Lacerations requiring sutures which may lead to impairment or disfigurement

Any other injury which may lead to impairment or disfigurement."

Please note that slight changes to the definition of serious assault were made in April 2011. Loss of consciousness is no longer included in the definition of what constitutes a serious assault.

4.9 Crimes and offences cleared up

The definition of 'cleared up' was revised with effect from 1 April 1996. Previously, a crime or offence was regarded as being cleared up if one or more offenders was apprehended, cited, warned or traced for it. This was revised as follows:

A crime or offence is regarded as cleared up where there exists a sufficiency of evidence under Scots law, to justify consideration of criminal proceedings notwithstanding that a report is not submitted to the procurator fiscal because either

(i) by standing agreement with the procurator fiscal, the police warn the accused due to the minor nature of the offence, or

(ii) reporting is inappropriate due to the non-age of the accused, death of the accused or other similar circumstances.

For some types of crimes and offences the case is cleared up immediately because the offender is caught in the act e.g. motoring offences. In Scots law, the confession of an accused person to a crime would not in general be sufficient to allow a prosecution to be taken, as corroborative evidence is required. Thus, a case cannot be regarded as 'cleared up' on the basis of a confession alone.

It has been suggested that the above definition of 'cleared up' may not have been applied consistently in all police forces returning data on incidents of domestic abuse.

4.10 Consultations

• User review of bulletin content 2010

In June 2010, the Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services carried out a survey of users of the Domestic Abuse Recorded by the Police in Scotland statistical bulletin series. A copy of the report and recommendations can be viewed online via the following link: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/scotstatcrime/StakeCon/DAConResult

• User review of bulletin frequency 2011

In October 2011, the Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services carried out a second survey of users of the Domestic Abuse Recorded by the Police in Scotland statistical bulletin series to assess the need for an annual publication and to assess whether a biennial publication would meet users needs.

Having carried out the consultation, the view was that we could move to a biennial publication of domestic abuse statistics, since there are alternative sources of data which would be sufficient to meet many users needs. Overall trends are not changing markedly over time and biennial data will still allow adequate information to allow users to track changes in policies.

However since the time this consultation was held, the Act to merge Scotland's police and fire and rescue services was granted Royal Assent. The Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 creates a single Police Service of Scotland and a single Fire and Rescue Service to serve local communities and meet the demands and challenges of the 21^st century. The new Police Service of Scotland will go live on 1 April 2013.

The Scottish Government is currently planning for the continued provision of existing domestic abuse data during the transition to the Police Service of Scotland.

Data for 2012-13 will be the final year for which data will be able at police force level. In view of this, the Scottish Government proposes to publish domestic abuse statistics for 2012-13, in late 2013.

The consultation report can be accessed via the following link: www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/scotstatcrime/StakeCon/DAOctober2011/DAOct11

4.11 UK Statistics Authority

In 2011, the United Kingdom Statistics Authority¹ assessed these statistics against the Code of Practice for Official Statistics². An assessment report³ was prepared under the provisions of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007⁴. One of the requirements to be met before the statistics could be designated as National Statistics was as follows:

Requirement 6 Address the implications of recording practices on the relevance of statistics on domestic abuse.

In August 2010, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland (HMICS) published the Crime Audit: National overview report⁵ following a crime audit, in which a sample of incidents reported to the police was examined to determine whether they had been properly recorded as crimes. Crime recording was checked for compliance with the Scottish Crime Recording Standard⁶ (SCRS).

The crime audit focussed on three types of recorded crime, including domestic abuse and was also used to assess forces' progress in responding to a recommendation in an earlier HMICS report⁷, namely:

Recommendation 5: that forces review and reinforce their quality assurance practices and processes for recording domestic abuse incidents.

The report stated that four police forces failed to meet the 95% compliance target set by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) for domestic abuse. This highlighted an urgent need for these forces to increase compliance.

A follow up report, Crime Audit 2011: National Overview Report⁸ was published by HMICS in May 2012 which provided an update on the four forces who previously failed to meet the 95% compliance rate. During this follow up audit, it was found that the progress made by these four forces was deemed sufficient to discharge recommendation 5 (as given above).

4.12 Other sources of domestic abuse (related) statistics

The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2010-11

The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey: First Findings (SCJS) 2010-11 had an enhanced self-completion section on domestic abuse. This section has been completely reworked and questions about sexual assault/rape have been added in consultation with stakeholders. The definition of abuse is wider than used in 2006 and includes physical, emotional/psychological, sexual and financial abuse by partners. This definition of abuse is closer to the UN definition of violence against women but is not a gender based definition. Findings from the SCJS 2010-11, partner abuse module were published in December 2011: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/12/16145746/0

It was estimated that the police came to know about less than one in five (17%) of the most recent /only incidents of partner abuse experienced in the last 12 months. This was higher for female victims (24%) than for male victims (9%).

Findings of the 2012-13 Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, Partner Abuse module are due to be published in late 2013.

Domestic Abuse awareness raising campaign:

The Scottish Government, working under the Safer Scotland superbrand, has conducted an annual Domestic Abuse campaign since 1998, focussing on the key message 'Domestic Abuse - there's no excuse'. Since initiation of the campaign, there have been 11 waves of post-campaign evaluation, tracking attitudes and perceptions towards domestic abuse and the media executions.

The 2008-09 campaign ran from 26th December 2008 for four weeks, and consisted of television and online advertising, containing the contact details for both the freephone Scottish Domestic Abuse helpline and the website.

The 2008-09 evaluation report is available via the following link: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/07/15100712/0

Comparisons with England and Wales

Care must be taken in making comparisons between crime statistics due to different counting rules and definitions.

In England and Wales, Domestic Violence data is not comparable with Scotland's statistics on Domestic Abuse due to differences in definition. The definition of domestic violence in England and Wales is:

'Any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between adults who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality'.

The Scottish definition does not include family members, and data collected from the Scottish police forces includes only domestic abuse between partners and ex-partners.

In September 2012, the Home Office announced that the definition of domestic violence would be widened to include psychological abuse and would include those aged 16-17 years of age. Details of this change in definition can be found via the following Home Office link: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crime/violence-against-women-girls/domestic-violence/

The changes in definition will be implemented in March 2013.

4.13 Other

The following symbols are used throughout the tables in this bulletin.

- = Nil

* = <0.5

**= <5

N/A = Not applicable