Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2013-14

Annex 6: Changes to the statistical bulletin for 2013-14.

4.33 For 2013-14 there have been a number of changes to the standard breakdowns included in the bulletin tables.

Since the establishment of Police Scotland on 1 April 2013, it is no longer appropriate to publish information at a police force level. Since only limited information can be presented in the statistical bulletin, a set of web tables have been published alongside this statistical bulletin which allows users to access more information at local authority level for the last ten years. We aim to present more information in this way in due course but in the meantime if you have any comments on how the data is presented or if you have any suggestions of how you'd like to see information presented in future, please contact us on the details below.

4.34 In addition to the change in geographical presentation, there have also been a small number of changes to the breakdown of offences.

4.35 As detailed in the data quality section of the bulletin, a number of issues were identified in the Technical report which affects the comparability of offences. As a result, where data cannot be compared with previous years, this has been highlighted in the tables.

4.36 As the number of crimes included in the Other category is fairly large, we have opted to split out the two crime codes which make up the largest proprotion of this category: Urinating etc. and Consumption of alcohol in public places (designated byelaws prohibited). Urinating etc. has been represented as a category in it's own right, while Consumption of alcohol was found to sit best with Drunkenness offences. These offences have been renamed as Drunkenness and other disorderly conduct and data reworked across the time series to ensure consistency.

As with miscellaneous offences, the 'Other' category was found to be rather large and this was mainly due to Seat belt offences and Mobile phone offences. These have therefore been separated into their own categories. We have in the past received enquiries about these types of offence and therefore it is hoped that the separation of these categories is found to be useful to users.