Recorded Crime in Scotland: year ending December 2023

Annex 2: Data Sources

Since 2020-21 the National Statistics on Recorded Crime in Scotland have been produced using data extracted from a single Police Scotland IT system called the Source for Evidence Based Policing (SEBP), which was created in 2019.

A technical review on the impact of changing from the previous IT system to SEBP, found strong alignment between both administrative systems for recorded crime in 2020-21. Further information on this is available in Annex 3 of the Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2020-21 bulletin.

Amendments to crime and offence records will always arise after data has been submitted by Police Scotland to the Scottish Government. Some crime or offence records may, on further investigation by the police, be redesignated to not constitute a crime or offence (a process known as 'no-criming'). In other cases, the original crime or offence may be re-classified, which could shift the record between different crime or offence groups. As such it is important for National Statistics purposes that data is extracted at a similar point in time each year, to allow comparisons of any trends to be on a like-for-like basis.

The figures provided in this bulletin for the year ending December 2023 were extracted in January 2024. Data for year ending December 2022 was extracted at the equivalent time in January 2023 and the two previous years ending December 2020 and December 2021 were extracted retrospectively to reflect the position as it would have been at December in each of those two years. This ensured a like-for-like comparison could be carried out, as discussed above. Due to earlier IT constraints, this retrospective extraction wasn't possible for the year ending December 2019. However the impact this will have on any comparisons with that year, will be minor.