Criminal Proceedings in Scotland 2012-13

Annex B - Data Quality, Revisions and Data Processing

Data quality

B.1 The data collected are subject to the errors which may arise in any large scale recording system, however, effort has been made to clean up records for which key information is incongruent or missing (such as checking against case extract information provided by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS)).

B.2 It is known that there may be times when the police report an offence to the procurator fiscal but, when the facts and circumstances are examined by the procurator fiscal, they decide to libel an alternative charge which may be less serious in nature and penalty. There are rare occasions when such decisions are made but unfortunately, the charge is not then updated on the computerised records. Changes such as this have been made where observed; however, it is likely that some other occurrences exist which have not been amended. There is nothing to suggest that the scale of this issue is large enough to alter the overall trends reported.

B.3 Information on the outcomes of court proceedings is publicly available. However, while our aim is for the statistics in this bulletin to be sufficiently detailed to allow a high level of practical utility, care has been taken to ensure that it is not possible to identify an individual or organisation and glean any private information relating to them.

B.4 In recent years, we have carried out much more extensive quality assurance with external agencies. The purpose of this is to ensure the accuracy and quality of the statistics published herein. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) have identified that there may be a small number of court proceedings (often involving multiple charges and of a complex nature) which are being recorded as separate court cases which, in fact, should only be reported as one. The effect of this would be to over-estimate the true number of court proceedings.

B.5 Initial investigations suggest that this affects all crime types, though to varying degrees. Further work will be carried out in preparation for the next publication of Criminal Proceedings in Scotland with a view to quantifying the extent of the problem and identifying whether a change in processing methodology is required.

B.6 The police record very detailed information on statutory offences but this does not always correspond exactly to the categories used by Scottish Government. The most important example of this, in numerical terms, is an offence under section 41(1)(a) of the Police (Scotland) Act 1967, which relates to "any person who assaults, resists, obstructs, molests or hinders a constable". The Scottish Government classification divides this into 3 categories - resisting arrest, serious assault and common assault, but this distinction is not made by the courts. The majority of such cases are thought to have been classed as common assault, and all the offences under this [sub]section have been so classified. Additional information on the number of such offences (and against other Emergency Workers) has been published alongside this bulletin as background data.

B.7 Following the introduction of computerisation of case recording to the sheriff courts, some difficulties were experienced by police force records offices in distinguishing court types when recording disposal information on the CHS database. Where possible, those cases where the court type was incorrect have been identified and appropriate changes made to the data held in the Scottish Government Criminal Proceedings Database.

B.8 There was a technical issue which resulted in the loss of information relating to companies in the criminal proceedings database between 2008 and 2011. This issue has now been resolved. Partial information for companies was available for 2011-12 with full information from 2012-13 onwards.

B.9 Information on the number of cases which received a highest disposal of fiscal fine, fixed penalty, compensation order and combined fiscal fine and compensation order are presented on the Crown Office website; and have been reported in Table 1. The number of people who received these disposals as identified by CHS are also presented in that table and have been validated against the Crown Office case-level data using an intermediate data extract of Crown Office 'closed case' data.

B.10 The way that Crown Office disposals are recorded in CHS was altered after summary justice reform. Previously, CHS did not consistently record when a procurator fiscal fine or fixed penalty had been issued, and, when it was recorded, it was not possible to derive the relative numbers of each. CHS began to record fiscal fines and fixed penalties consistently under separate codes following summary justice reform. During the transition to the use of the new codes however, in 2008-09 and 2009-10, CHS continued to record, respectively, 2,700 and 500 pre-SJR codes representing a combination of procurator fiscal fines or fixed penalties, although it is not possible to separate the numbers of each. These numbers are now much lower.

B.11 It is not currently possible to extract information on some of the other COPFS disposals, e.g. warnings and no actions, from CHS.

Revisions

B.12 The CHS, which holds information on the outcome of court proceedings, is not designed for statistical purposes. It is dependent on receiving timely information from the courts and police force records offices, while some types of outcome, e.g. acquittals, are weeded after a prescribed length of time. A pending case on the CHS is updated in a timely manner but there are occasions when slight delays happen. Recording delays of this sort generally affect High Court disposals relatively more than those for other types of court, as the most complex and lengthy trials are held in the High Court.

B.13 The figures given in this bulletin reflect the details of court proceedings as recorded on the CHS and as provided to the Scottish Government up to the end of July 2013. Any subsequent updates on court disposals made will be incorporated into future bulletins and therefore some figures for 2011-12 (in particular those relating to the High Court) are likely to be subject to minor revisions.

B.14 These recording delays mean that figures for 2012-13 should be considered provisional as future bulletins may provide updates. We estimate that the 2011-12 bulletin contained a small undercount of around 40 people with a charge proved in 2011-12, less than 1 per cent of all people with a charge proved. Since the 2011-12 bulletin was published, a small number of High Court cases have been added to the court proceedings database.

Restriction of Liberty Orders - Revision

B.15 During 2012-13, we noted that the number of restriction of liberty orders (RLOs) were falling sharply, which was unexpected. Further investigation showed that this occurred after the introduction of the Community Payback Order (CPO) and the fall in RLOs was the result of how the CPO was ranked in the Scottish Government Criminal Proceedings database.

B.16 When a person is proceeded against for multiple charges and/or given multiple disposals, the Scottish Government Criminal Proceedings database must identify which one should be reported as the main disposal. The database logic identifies which penalty is the most severe through a ranking system; disposals with a higher ranking take precedence over those which are ranked lower. This logic is used to decide which charge will be reported as the main charge within the statistical bulletin.

B.17 When the CPO disposal was introduced in 1 February 2010, it was ranked higher than the old community sentences (i.e. probation and community service orders). This meant that, in cases where someone is given an RLO and a CPO in the same proceedings, the CPO was taken as the main disposal. This impact of this was to under-report the number of RLOs in the Criminal Proceedings statistical bulletin.

B.18 In 2012-13, the Criminal Proceedings database was updated to rank the CPO disposal to be the same as the old community based sentence, probation. This change was introduced to ensure consistency of the processing of CPOs against the old community based sentences and importantly to ensure that the Criminal Proceedings statistics did not under-report the number of RLOs being issued in Scottish courts since the introduction of the CPO.

B.19 The change in processing takes effect from the 2012-13 statistical bulletin. However, in order to ensure comparability with previously published information on RLOs, the data related to CPOs was re-processed from its introduction in February 2010. The impact of re-processing this information is to increase the number of RLOs that we previously reported in the 2011-12 Criminal Proceedings statistical bulletin which conversely reduces the amount of CPOs we previously reported.

B.20 The backdating of the 2011-12 data means that there are now around an extra 200 RLOs being reported in 2011-12 which were previously recorded as CPOs. The 200 extra RLO disposals account for 29 per cent of the new total of RLOs and results in a 2 per cent decrease in the number of CPOs which were originally reported in 2011-12.

B.21 No other years or court disposals are affected by this change.

Bail Orders and Undertakings to Appear - Revision

B.22 During processing of bail and undertakings for 2012-13, it was noticed that a small number of undertakings to appear were incorrectly coded in 2011-12 as bail orders (i.e. issued by the courts as opposed to an undertaking to appear issued by the police). In total 83 records were incorrectly coded which resulted in an under-count of the total number of undertakings to appear that was published in 2011-12. The error accounts for less than one per cent of the total number of bail orders and undertakings to appear issued in 2011-12. The tables in the 2012-13 bulletin have been modified to reflect this change.

Table 8b (Column Percentages) - Revision

B.23 During processing of the 2012-13 statistical bulletin, we found a discrepancy in the processing of the column percentages. These figures were being calculated on an offence basis, rather than on the main charge - the unit used for the majority of tables in this bulletin.

B.24 In 2011-12, this discrepancy in processing resulted in the true column percentages for the 'all crimes' grouping being reported lower for custodial sentences (4 percentage points), community sentences (6 percentage points) and other sentences (6 percentage points) and 1 percentage point higher for monetary sentences The discrepancy in processing led to differences of similar magnitude for 'all offences'.

B.25 The data that inform these statistics are collated and shared via an existing automated process from the CHS. Therefore, there was no cost to the data provider in 2012-13.

B.26 In all matters relating to revisions, these statistics comply with Scotland's Chief Statistician's current revisions policy: http://scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/About/CPSonRevisionsCorrections/Q/EditMode/on/ForceUpdate/on

Data processing - Bail orders

B.27 Difficulties with the supply of consistent bail data due to the move to a new version of the CHS in October 2007 have now been resolved, allowing provision of offence level breakdowns again from 2009-10. However, due to these difficulties, processing of the 2008-09 bail data was carried out in isolation from bail data from previous years.

Data processing - Breach of social work orders

B.28 In bulletins since 2007-08, tables 1 to 12 have been amended compared to previous years, with people having a charge proved for breach of a social work order (for example breaches of community service orders, probation orders and supervised attendance orders) excluded from the totals. Analysis has shown that the number of people with a charge proved for breaching a social work order fell by 39 per cent between 2006-07 and 2007-08 from 4,900 to 3,000. Analysis found that this sharp fall is likely to be due to a change in recording practices rather than a true fall in actual numbers.

B.29 In 2006-07 and previous years, a breach of social work order had, by necessity, been recorded as a crime on its own, with no link to the previous crime which led to the imposition of the order in the first place. This was because it was not operationally possible for cases to be re-opened if a breach of the original community sentence occurred. However, the introduction of new IT systems within the courts meant that breaches could be recorded within the original case. Therefore, because (generally) only the initial outcome is included, the change in recording practice produced a fall in the numbers of breach of a social work order identified.