Scottish Crime Recording Board: FOI release
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
Information requested
In regards to the Scottish Crime Recording Board, you asked for copies of all internal and external correspondence and information held (minutes, notes, briefing etc.) in relation to the recording of sex and gender in crime statistics.
Response
As this request is identical to an earlier one (FOI/202100209851), we have based the timeframe of our response from the date we received the first request (4th June 2021) to the date we received this request (30th January 2023).
The purpose and objectives of the Scottish Crime Recording Board relate to the Recorded Crime National Statistics. The data we receive from Police Scotland for the production of these statistics is a simple count of the number of crimes and offences, for each local authority, which the police have recorded. With the exception of a number of Sexual crimes and crimes under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 (where the codes used to categorise the crimes indicate gender of the victim), the data do not include any information on the demographics of either victim or perpetrator.
There was some correspondence in October 2021 that related to the Scottish Crime Recording Board and the collection of data for those aforementioned crimes codes that specify a victim’s gender (see attached as Document One and Two). While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exemption under section s.38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information. Further redactions have also been applied where information does not fall into the scope of this request.
No further information is held in relation to this request. There has been one meeting of the Board since October 2021 (in February 2022). A note of the Agenda and resulting actions are available on the Scottish Government website (SCRB meeting: 8 February 2022). This didn’t include any discussion on recording of sex and gender in crime statistics.
About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrews House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
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