Statistical Bulletin: Crime and Justice Series: Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2010-11

Notes on Statistics Used in this Bulletin

Annex A: Data Sources

Court proceedings, Police disposals and COPFS disposals

A1. Statistical information in the Scottish Government Criminal Proceedings Database is derived from data held on the Criminal History System ( CHS) at the Scottish Police Services Authority ( SPSA). The CHS is maintained by SPSA on behalf of the eight Scottish police forces who own the majority of the data on the system.

Bail and undertakings

A2. The source of the statistical data on bail orders and undertakings is also the SPSACHS. SPSA create a statistical extract each day, which picks up records of any bail orders or undertakings granted three days before, which are still associated with live pending cases on the SPSA database. For example, the extract run at the start of a Thursday will pick up any bail orders or undertakings granted on the Monday of that week which a) have been recorded on the database by the start of Thursday, and b) which are associated with pending cases still live at the start of Thursday.

A3. CHS data on undertakings commenced in April 2008, however analysis has found that the recording of undertakings in CHS does not appear to have become consistent across Scotland until July 2008. Projecting back the relatively stable trend in the number of undertakings issued between July 2008 and February 2009 suggests that the number of undertakings recorded on CHS for the period April 2008 to July 2008 is likely to be an underestimate of around 2,000. Between July and November 2008, CHS data on undertakings are consistently higher than comparable data collected by the Association of Chief Police Officers ( ACPOS). More confidence in the undertakings data emerges from December 2008 onwards, when the ACPOS data begins to include undertaking numbers for Strathclyde, Glasgow & Strathkelvin, Argyll & Clyde and Ayrshire; thereafter, the CHS and ACPOS data become more aligned in relative magnitude and trend (as shown in Chart 5).

Other

A4. Chart 2 uses a range of summary data collected from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Scottish Government Recorded Crime data and information on police conditional offers made for motor vehicle offences, based on figures provided by police force traffic departments, and information derived from CHS.

A5. The population figures used as denominators in Table 5 and Chart 5 are the relevant mid-year estimates prepared by the National Records of Scotland ( NRS) ³.

Chart 5: Comparison of Criminal History System bail and undertakings data, 2008-09 to 2010-11 (using data provided by the Scottish Court Service and ACPOS)