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YOUNG PEOPLE AND CRIME IN SCOTLAND: FINDINGS FROM THE 2000 SCOTTISH CRIME SURVEY
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
The majority of research and analysis regarding young people and crime has approached the topic with the aim of explaining the involvement of young people in criminal and anti-social behaviour. Studies aiming to investigate the world of 'juvenile delinquents' have used longitudinal 1 and retrospective 2 instruments to track the changing circumstances of individuals, and have attempted to impute causal links between these circumstances and involvement in criminal activity. This focus on young people (especially males) as perpetrators of crime has tended to hinder the development and application of more representative investigations of the wider relations between young people and crime.
One reaction to this lack of wider information has been the development of studies administering questionnaires to children in a classroom setting 3. Although an efficient method of administration, these studies have potential problems associated with the correlation of children within groups, with consequent lack of generalisability and poor links to household circumstances and therefore, limited socio-demographic information. Representativeness may be affected by truancy or exclusion and false disclosure resulting from peer group pressure.
Growth in the use of victimisation studies like the Scottish Crime Survey since the 1970s and the growing recognition of a lack of research into young people's experience of victimisation 4 has led to the relatively recent incorporation into these studies of measures 5 investigating the experiences of young people 6. The first major British victimisation survey to include a questionnaire for young people was the 1992 British Crime Survey (BCS) 7. This measure was included in the 1993 SCS and has since been repeated in 1996 and 2000.
The advantage of incorporating cover of young people in a nationally representative victimisation survey is that it addresses the lack of structured research on young people, crime and contact with the criminal justice system in a way that overcomes some of the problems associated with school-based surveys. It can therefore provide more accurate indicators of the extent of victimisation and offending. Also, the repetition of the survey allows observation of trends.
This report presents the findings of the Young Person's Questionnaire from the 2000 Scottish Crime Survey (SCS) 8. The SCS measures crimes directly experienced by people living in private households. The 2000 SCS is the fifth survey of its kind to be carried out in Scotland since the early 1980s. The first two sweeps in 1982 and 1988 were conducted as part of the British Crime Survey and covered Central and Southern Scotland only. A separate SCS was introduced in 1993, which covered the whole of mainland Scotland, including the larger islands. This was repeated in 1996 and 2000.
The report is presented in chapters covering :
- young people's concerns about crime and other issues
- young people as victims of crime
- young people as offenders
- young people and the police
- young people and illegal drugs
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DATA
As with all surveys, this one has limitations that must be considered when interpreting the findings. Firstly, while the SCS sample is more broadly based than school based studies in terms of demographic and geographic coverage certain young people are excluded - for example, those living in local authority homes and those who spend a great deal of time away from parental supervision 9. Both these groups are likely to have very different experiences of crime and victimisation than those surveyed but they constitute a small proportion of the Scottish population aged 12-15.
Secondly, the validity of the data may be affected by reporting errors. 10 This may result from interviewing young people in their homes where - despite measures taken to ensure anonymity and confidentiality - it is reasonable to assume that some may feel anxious about confessing to anti-social behaviour or drug awareness, especially if they feel a parent might see what they had written. The high level of non-response to some questions, such as those on offending or experience of crimes such as sexual harassment is an indication of this problem. In common with all self-completion questionnaires, there is also a chance that respondents will complete the questionnaire wrongly, misunderstand instructions or misinterpret questions. This is more likely to be the case for young people.
The achieved sample size for the survey of young people was 403. This represents a response rate of 70% of those in the relevant age group identified by the survey (the response rate for the survey as a whole was 71%). The sample sizes from previous years were 353 in the 1996 survey and 495 in the 1993 survey. Comparisons will be made with previous years during the report, the sample sizes being those indicated unless otherwise specified.
The sample size is small and there was a high level of non-response to some of the questions. The analysis presented here is therefore limited and care should be taken when generalising from the results. In particular, the sections on experience of victimisation and offending behaviour are based on very small numbers, thus reducing the reliability of results and making detailed presentation (for example, by demographic variables) inadvisable. The small sample size also limits the likelihood of findings being statistically significant. Therefore, differences over time and between types of young people are highlighted only when they are sizeable. Unless otherwise specified, differences are statistically significant at the 95% level of confidence.
Non-responses and 'don't knows' have been excluded from the analysis unless otherwise specified. All data have been weighted and include responses from the whole of Scotland. The time period to which various questions refer will be highlighted in the text where appropriate.
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