The future of recorded crime and police activity statistics: consultation

Part Two – Dissemination of Recorded Crime Statistics

Introduction

24. This part of the consultation gives users an opportunity to provide any views they may have on how the Police Recorded Crime Statistics are disseminated (including for example questions on the frequency and content of our publications). This feedback will (i) help shape the way we present future releases of the National Statistics and (ii) allow us to gauge user interest in a range of analytical developments which may become possible due to changes in the administrative system used to record crime data.

Statistics on recorded crime in other countries

25. To aid consideration of how recorded crime statistics in Scotland are disseminated, we have included analysis below of how crime statistics are produced in a selection of other countries. This desk-based research, carried out by Scottish Government researchers in 2021, looked at what Scotland and 11 other countries.^[4] publish as police recorded crime statistics. They considered:

• The format of police recorded crime statistics publications
• Their coverage – including type of crime, demographic breakdowns and time series data, and
• Issues around governance, user engagement, new and future developments and the use of complementary data sources

26. Most but not all countries provide some form of written commentary, apart from Denmark and Norway. Scotland, along with England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Canada and Germany provided a detailed written commentary. Scotland's report was significantly longer than most other countries that were reviewed.

27. Most countries present statistical information in the form of tables and charts. Some countries provide "hover charts" – where hovering the mouse over data points in online charts shows figures. England and Wales provide interactive charts, such as selecting an area on a map to see for example knife crime rates in that area, and the percentage change from the previous year.

28. Most of the countries selected allow users to download Excel spreadsheets of the data that sits behind charts. Most countries looked at (apart from Canada, Sweden and Germany) allow users to download open access data and customised data tables e.g. to provide detailed breakdowns by state and territory (Australia).

29. The majority of countries publish their crime statistics on an annual basis, with a few publishing monthly or quarterly in addition to this.

30. All the countries looked at provide statistics at a national level. It is fairly common to provide statistics for at least one sub-national level breakdown at a level equivalent to a Local Authority / Region / State / Province / Territory. Only three countries provide statistics at a second, more detailed sub-national level (Finland, Germany and Norway), with both Finland and Norway reporting on more than 300 municipalities and Germany on 40 large cities.

31. Scotland and England and Wales were the only countries looked at who do not provide demographic breakdowns for victims or suspects as part of their police recorded crime statistics. All other countries provided at least some demographic information for both victim and suspect.

Current publications on Recorded Crime in Scotland

Annual publication

32. The Recorded Crime in Scotland bulletin presents National Statistics on crimes and offences recorded by the police. Statistics on crimes and offences recorded by the police provide a measure of the volume of criminal activity with which the police are faced. The most recent data for 2020-21 was published on 28th September 2021: Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2020-2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

33. The bulletin provides in-depth commentary and as highlighted in paragraph 26 is significantly longer and more detailed than other countries' publications. The bulletin includes tables within the document as well as in Excel format.

34. In the 2020-21 edition of the annual bulletin, a new cyber-crime chapter, presenting the latest available information on recorded cyber-crime in Scotland was added. This includes an estimate of the proportion of recorded crime which is cyber-crime (based on the review of a random sample of crime records). This was added in response to user support for new cyber-crime analysis, as demonstrated in the 2019 consultation. We would like to understand if this has been valuable to users, and if there is anything we can do to improve this analysis in future.

Question Five: How do you use the annual Recorded Crime in Scotland bulletin? For example, to read through the commentary, pull out figures from tables, conduct your own detailed analysis of the data, etc.

Question Six: Does the depth of commentary meet your needs? Would it be an issue if we reduced the amount of commentary down to just the main points? (and for example removed more of the background detail to a separate user guide?)

Question Seven: Does the way we currently present our data (in tables and charts) meet your needs? If we were to remove the tables from the bulletin and provide them in Excel format only, would this cause you an issue?

Question Eight: Did you find the presentation of information relating to cyber-crime in the 2020-21 annual bulletin useful? Would you suggest any improvements?

Question Nine: One potential development is to produce future annual reports which rotate around certain themes (such as violent crime or sexual crime) alongside a general summary long term trends on recorded crime. Would you find this approach helpful? If so, what topics would be of interest?

Question Ten: Is there anything else we can do to increase the value of the annual publication?

Scottish Crime and Justice Survey

35. Crime in Scotland is also measured by the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS), a national survey of adults (aged 16 and over) living in private households, which asks respondents about their experiences and perceptions of crime.

36. The SCJS and police recorded crime cover different populations and different timescales, and the SCJS does not cover the entire range of crimes and offences that the police are faced with. These and other differences mean that making direct comparisons between the two sources is not straightforward. However, the two sources present complementary information on crime occurring in Scotland, it is therefore helpful and informative to look at these sources together.

37. The Recorded Crime in Scotland annual bulletin includes a chapter which compares police recorded crime data with SCJS findings. It does this in two ways:

• National trends of overall crime captured by police recorded crime and by the SCJS.
• Comparable crime groups – a grouping of crimes specifically constructed to allow comparison between the SCJS and police recorded crime statistics for a set of crimes that are covered by both sources.

Question Eleven: Do you find the chapter comparing Police Recorded Crime and Scottish Crime and Justice Survey's findings useful? Would you suggest any improvements to the way in which this is presented?

Monthly Statistics

38. The Scottish Government started producing monthly Official Statistics on Recorded Crime in Scotland from April 2020, to inform users about the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic (and related actions to limit social interaction) on the type and volume of crime recorded in Scotland.

39. We would like to ask users whether this frequency of publication is necessary and well used, or if the frequency could be reduced. For example would a quarterly release of recorded crime statistics (similar to practice in England & Wales) be just as sufficient for their needs?

40. The latest edition of Recorded Crime in Scotland monthly statistics was published on 23rd September and can be found here Recorded Crime in Scotland - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Question Twelve: What (if any) use do you make of these monthly statistics? Would it cause you any issues if the frequency of their release was reduced (e.g. quarterly rather than monthly)?

User Guide

41. We recently published an updated User Guide which provides detailed information on the recorded crime bulletin. It is designed to be a useful reference guide with explanatory notes regarding the updates, issues, and classifications which are crucial to the production and presentation of crime statistics in Scotland.

Question Thirteen: Do you use the User Guide? Do you find it useful? Would you suggest any improvements?

Future developments

Individual level data

42. Currently the Scottish Government collects aggregated numbers of crimes and offences from Police Scotland, meaning that no information about victims, perpetrators or the individual crimes, offences and incidents are available. As discussed in paragraph 31, Scotland is one of the few countries looked at that does not publish information on the demographic characteristics of victims or perpetrators.

43. Police Scotland are currently in the process of introducing a new system to record crime. This may provide an opportunity from the 2023-24 reporting year onwards, to produce new details on the characteristics of recorded crime, such as victim and perpetrator demographics (e.g. age, sex).

44. Once the new system is in place and we have more detailed information on what new analysis could be achievable, we will engage further with users. At this stage we would like to ask users what interest they may have in the production of more detailed statistics on the characteristics of crime in Scotland, using individual level data.

Question Fourteen: Would it be useful to produce more detailed analysis on the characteristics of recorded crime in Scotland, such as the demographics of those involved? What would you use this data for?

Levels of geography

45. We currently present data at Scotland level, as well as broken down to Local Authority level. With the introduction of the new Police Scotland IT system referred to above, it may be possible to produce data at lower geographical areas.

Question Fifteen: Does the current level of geography (Scotland and local authority level) meet your needs? If not, what other levels of geography would be helpful? What might that enable you to do, that you cannot currently do?

Open data & Interactive data exploring tool

46. Recorded crime data is currently made available in Excel tables which sit alongside the annual publication and some data is also on statistics.gov.scot:

• Crime clear up rates and
• Recorded crimes and offences (number and rate per 10,000 population)

Data is available for 1996-97 – 2019-20 (with 2020-21 to be added shortly), at Scotland and Local Authority level, and split by crime/offence group and by crime/offence group subcategory.

47. We noted from the 2019 consultation that some users are supportive of the publication of non-personal data in an open format. Therefore, further consideration is being given to the way users can access data, such as providing data in an open data format, consistent with the wider Scottish Government Open Data Strategy.

48. Another possible option is for accessing data through an interactive platform, such as the one the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) have recently introduced: SCJS interactive data exploring tool.

Question Sixteen: Do you use this data on statistics.gov.scot? Would you like to see more data available in this format? If so, what?

Question Seventeen: Would something similar to the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey Interactive data exploring tool be of interest? If so, what might you use it for?

Crime severity score

49. A Crime Severity Score is designed to reflect the relative harm of offending, rather than how many crimes there are, so gives some crime/offence categories a higher weight than other ones, based on sentencing information.

50. England and Wales currently publish a Crime Severity Score (as experimental statistics): Crime Severity Score (Experimental Statistics) - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk). Under this measure of crime, murder is given for example the top weighting – 7,973 points per offence – while cannabis possession has the lowest of 2 points per offence.

Question Eighteen: Would similar analysis to the Crime Severity Score for England and Wales be of value for Scotland? What might you use it for? Is there anything it would enable you to do that you currently cannot do?