Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2013-14

Annex 1: Data sources and definitions

Data collection:

4.1 The statistical return from which most of the figures in this bulletin are taken is a simple count of the numbers of crimes and offences recorded and cleared up by the police. Returns are submitted quarterly from Police Scotland at local authority level which allows a national total to be obtained. Amendments (such as the deletion of incidents found on investigation not to be criminal) which arise after the end of the financial year are not incorporated. However, due to the implementation of the Scottish Operational Management Information System (ScOMIS) in Police Scotland, it may be possible to reassess whether a revisions policy should be put in place. This will be considered for future publications and users consulted accordingly if it is thought that this would be a useful change in practice.

4.2 Information on the data source used in the Recorded Crime bulletin series and supporting metadata can be found in the Data Sources and Suitability document which is available via the following link: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0045/00458459.pdf

4.3 The main Scottish Government Statement of Administrative Sources covers all sources of administrative data used by Scottish Government Statisticians. This statement can be found on the Scottish Government website at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/About/StatementAdminSources

A separate statement of administrative source is available for Police statistics via the following link: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0045/00451670.pdf

4.4 Information is collected from other police forces, such as the British Transport Police, but these figures have not been included in the main body of this bulletin. Thus, in addition to those crimes and offences referred to throughout this bulletin there were in total, 1,454 crimes and 3,756 offences recorded by the British Transport Police, Ministry of Defence Police and Civil Nuclear Constabulary in 2013-14. The crime clear up rate was 41% and the offence clear up rate was 51%.

Definitions:

4.5 In one criminal incident, several crimes or offences may occur - e.g. a house may be broken into and vandalised and the occupants assaulted. In this example, crimes of housebreaking (which would include the vandalism) and assaults would be recorded. In multiple offence incidents more than one offence may be counted rather than one for the incident as a whole; that is, the counting system is offence based rather than incident based. An offence may have more than one victim - for example in robberies - and be committed by more than one offender - e.g. some assaults and housebreakings (note that for murder, attempted murder and culpable homicide, the number of crimes recorded is equal to the number of the victims). Thus the statistics in this bulletin are not directly comparable with statistics on action taken against offenders, as one offence may lead to several persons being charged. Equally, an offender may be charged with several offences.

4.6 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."

4.7 Attempts to commit an offence are included in the statistics, in general in the same group as the substantive offence.

4.8 Housebreaking can be broken down into different building types: Dwelling, Non-dwelling and Other property. Where 'domestic dwelling' is presented in the statistics, this refers to dwellings and non‑dwellings only. Definitions of the different types of building are as follows:

Dwelling is defined as a house which is being used or fit for residential purposes and includes:

• Caravans used as residential home and touring caravans if used as permanent domicile.
• Houses which are unfinished / under renovation but are capable of being secured against intrusion (e.g. lock on door) which are roofed and have windows and doors fitted are classed as dwelling houses.
• Boarding House where the owner resides permanently on the premises.
• Domestic garage, which is an integral part of a dwelling house (ie. there is a connecting door between house and garage).
• Occupied bedrooms within hotel.

Non-dwelling is defined as all roofed buildings used for domestic purposes other than dwellings and includes:

• Garages which are not an integral part of the dwelling, sheds and outhouses.
• Domestic garages, which are not an integral part of a dwelling house.
• Garden huts / garden sheds / allotment huts (non-commercial)
• Outhouses

Other property is defined as all roofed buildings not used for residential or domestic purposes i.e. commercial premises and includes:

• Portacabins - not used for storage e.g office (portacabins used for storage and non-static caravans would be classified as a Lockfast Place)
• Commercial / Business premises
• Factory buildings, Schools
• Park huts
• Show houses (used purely for that purpose)
• Boarding House where the owner does not reside permanently on the premises
• Ships - unless used as full time domicile
• Barn within a working farm

Reported crime:

4.9 These statistics do not of course reveal the incidence of all crime committed. Not all incidents are reported to the police. The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) 2012-13 estimated that 39% of crimes, as defined by the SCJS, were reported to the police. The two reasons most commonly given by victims for not reporting to the police were that the police would not have been able to do anything (37%)incident was considered by them to be too trivial (36%) or the police would not have been interested (15%).

4.10 Some crimes and offences, for example, speeding or possession of drugs, have no victim other than perhaps the perpetrator and are discovered and recorded as a result of police activity rather than by being reported to the police by the public. Hence, the strength and deployment of the police forces mainly determine the numbers of such crimes and offences recorded.

4.11 Contraventions of Scottish criminal law are divided for statistical purposes into crimes and offences. "Crime" is generally used for the more serious criminal acts; the less serious 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.

4.12 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. Further information on crime codes can be found in the User Guide to Recorded Crime Statistics in Scotland, available via the following link: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/PubRecordedCrime/UserGuide

Crimes and offences cleared up

4.13 The definition of "cleared up" is noted below. This definition came into force with effect from 1 April 1996.

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 crime or offence the case is cleared up immediately because the offender is "caught in the act", e.g. motor vehicle 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. In some cases there is sufficient evidence but a prosecution cannot be brought, for example, because the accused has left the country. In such cases, the offender is said to have been traced and the crime is regarded as cleared up. The other terms in the definition describe the various actions that must be taken by the police against offenders.

4.14 Crimes or offences recorded by the police as cleared up in one financial year, year y, may have been committed and therefore recorded in a previous year, i.e. year y‑1. This means that the number of crimes or offences cleared up are being expressed as a percentage of a different set of crimes or offences. This means that clear up rates in excess of 100% can arise in a given year.

4.15 Clear up rates are calculated as follows:

number of crimes cleared up in year y	x	100
total number of crimes recorded in year y		1

4.16 Clear up rates for the Motor vehicle offences group are not included in the bulletin since many of these crimes are offences for which the offender is 'caught in the act'.

4.17 As the number of crimes cleared up in a year may include crimes recorded in a previous year, this is not a perfect measure of crimes cleared up, particularly since this method can result in clear up rates of over 100%. The best method would be to take the number of crimes recorded and the subset of those which have been cleared up by the police. However due to the aggregate way in which the data is obtained, it is not possible to do this at present.

4.18 Police Scotland are working on the development of a single crime recording system which when available, may open up the potential for more individual level crime data to be available which may make it possible to obtain a more accurate count of crimes cleared up which have been recorded in that same period. This is something we will investigate with Police Scotland and consult users on in due course.