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Measurement of the Extent of Youth Crime
in Scotland
3 Main sources of information
Introduction
3.1 Each of the main sources of information, secondary
data sources and previous research that we used in
compiling estimates for the levels of youth crime are
summarised briefly below.
Recorded crime statistics
3.2 As argued in Section 2, police recorded crime
statistics are the most complete source of data on crime in
Scotland. They can provide a breakdown of the number of
crimes committed by crime type and by local authority area.
As such, they are the logical starting point in any
exercise that is attempting to estimate crime levels.
3.3 However, recorded crime statistics will only provide
a partial picture of the actual level of crime because not
all crime is reported to the police or recorded by them.
Neither can it determine the level of youth crime, as it
does not record the crime perpetrator (often impossible,
unless someone has been convicted). The latest recorded
crime data is for 2002.
Court statistics
3.4 The Scottish courts hold data on criminal
proceedings. This includes details on the offences
proceeded against in court by the types and numbers of
offences and the age and gender of the person proceeded
against. This data is useful in any attempt to estimate the
proportion of crime committed by young people.
3.5 However, few crimes result in any kind of court
proceedings and a high proportion of crimes committed by
young people is dealt with by the Children's Hearings
system. The latest courts data is for 2001.
Children's Hearings data
3.6 Courts data needs to be supplemented with data from
the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration (SCRA) in
any attempt to estimate the proportion of crime committed
by young people. Data from the SCRA records provide details
on the number of offenders referred by crime type and the
number of offences that they commit and therefore provides
information on incident rates. However, like the courts,
not all crime by young offenders is dealt with by the
Children's Hearings system.
3.7 The SCRA now has a case management database that can
provide fairly specific data requests, but the new system
has only been fully rolled-out from December 2002. There
is, however, SCRA data on offences referred by crime type,
age and gender for offences referred for 2002, but not for
2001 (the latest available courts data).
The 2000 Scottish Crime Survey
3.8 The Scottish Crime Survey (SCS) measures crimes
against people living in private households throughout
Scotland by means of a representative survey of over 5,000
Scottish adults.
3 Despite the title, the reference year for the data in
the latest survey is 1999 and this is the latest year for
which data are available. The main value of the survey is
that it attempts to provide estimates of total personal and
household crime committed against adults, and, therefore,
goes beyond crimes recorded by the police. Because not all
incidents are reported to the police and not all that are
reported are recorded by the police, there is a significant
gap between SCS estimates of crime and the number of police
recorded crimes.
3.9 The SCS has been designed to be comparable (as far
as possible) with the British Crime Survey, which covers
England and Wales, and it is also designed to provide
evidence of both the incidence of crime (victimisation) and
the fear of crime.
3.10 The key limitation of the SCS is that it is a
survey of adults (aged 16 and over) resident in private
households and it does not collect information about crimes
committed against corporate and public sector bodies,
individuals not resident in households and those aged under
16. However, in 2000 there was a small additional survey of
403 young people aged between 12 and 15 and resident in
households (see below).
3.11 The SCS depends on the willingness of the public to
take part, therefore there may be some response bias in the
results (the response rate was 71% in 2000). It also relies
on individuals' recollections of events that may have
occurred some time before and may not, therefore, be
entirely accurate. Finally, the SCS is only able to produce
results that are reliable at the whole of Scotland level;
the results for any sub-national analysis are subject to
very wide margins of error and are not generally presented
in the main report.
Glasgow Youth Survey 2003 (MORI Scotland)
4
3.12 This study was undertaken in response to issues
raised by school pupils in the city and was aimed at
gauging the opinions, feelings and experiences of young
people (aged 11 - 18) in mainstream education in terms of
their current lifestyle and future plans. Just over 1,500
young people took part in the study, which was conducted
through a self-completion questionnaire in a classroom
setting. A number of topics covered by the research relate
to crime and anti-social behaviour. In particular, the
findings offer useful insights into young people's fear of
crime and concerns about personal safety, their experience
of being a victim of crime and their experience in
committing various types of crime.
Fear of Crime/ Personal Safety
- 17% feel very safe in areas around where they live
and almost half feel fairly safe. However, greater
anxiety is reflected in the fact that a quarter say
they do not feel very safe and one in ten "not at all
safe" in their local area.
- The most commonly mentioned situation in which
young people feel unsafe is when they see gangs and
drug users. More than half feel unsafe in rough areas
and walking through dark areas.
- Three in five young people say they feel either
very or fairly worried about being attacked in the
street or other public place. Very young people (11
year olds) and girls are most likely to feel worried
about being attacked in the street, along with young
people from black and ethnic backgrounds. In contrast,
just one in six say they actually have been attacked in
the last year with this being most common among boys
aged 14 - 15.
Experience (victimisation) of crime
- 55% of young people surveyed stated that something
negative had happened to them in the last year. Being
threatened by others (39% of respondents) was the most
commonly mentioned incident. One in five (18%) say they
had been physically attacked in the past year.
- Boys are more likely than girls to have experienced
some sort of incident: half (48%) say they have been
threatened by others compared with around three in ten
girls (29%).
- The likelihood of being a victim of crime also
increases with age: more than half of boys aged between
14 and 18 claimed to have been threatened by others and
a third said they had been physically attacked in the
last year.
- Half of black and ethnic minority young people said
they had experienced abuse because of their race or
religion in the past year, in stark contrast to the 5%
of white young people who say the same.
Committing Crime
- While most young people say that they have not
actually broken the law in the past year, many admit to
a range of anti-social behaviour
5.
Youthlink: State of the Nation Study
3.13 YouthLink Scotland, the national youth agency for
Scotland, commissioned a survey in 2003 to explore what it
means to be young in Scotland and to generate information
on young people to inform the development of policy.
6 MORI Scotland surveyed 3,096 11-25 year olds
across Scotland and explored their experiences of and views
on a range of issues including lifestyle, living in
Scotland, education and training, work, technology,
attitudes towards the media, social and environmental
values, volunteering, self-perceptions, citizenship and
equality.
3.14 In the context of this research on crime and
anti-social behaviour, the MORI study found that one in ten
young people reported having been a victim of racist abuse.
However, attitudes appear to be predominantly non-racist -
at least seven in ten young people regard using terms such
as 'chinky' or 'paki', speaking negatively in private about
people from different ethnic backgrounds and being impolite
or verbally offensive to people from different ethnic
backgrounds to be either slightly or strongly racist.
Young people and crime in Scotland
3.15 The 2000 Scottish Crime Survey undertook an
additional survey of just over 400 young people between the
ages of 12 and 15.
7 The survey covers young people's offending
behaviour, their worries about specific crimes, their
feelings of safety and their likelihood to report
victimisation
3.16 The survey, however, is small and there was a high
level of non-response to some of the questions. The
sections on experience of victimisation and offending
behaviour, in particular, were based on very small
numbers.
Counting the cost
3.17 In recognition of the limitations of the SCS in
estimating crime against corporate bodies, an exercise was
undertaken for the Scottish Executive in 2000 that
attempted to estimate the levels of crime against business
in Scotland.
8 It examined the experience of crime across five
principal business sectors (manufacturing, construction,
wholesale and retail, hotels and restaurants and transport
and telecommunications) that account for around half the
value of the Scottish economy. The study used surveys of
business headquarters and individual business premises
alongside a number of qualitative interviews.
3.18 The study investigated all the main types of crime
that these businesses had experienced, i.e. break-ins,
vandalism, thefts and violence. It also provided statistics
on commercial crime levels across five Scottish regions
(Borders, East Central, West Central, North and the
Islands).
3.19 However, the study only covered half of the
Scottish economy and some economic sectors, notably the
public sector, are excluded from the analysis. It is also
worth noting that, in general, representatives of business
are less likely than individuals living in households of
having an accurate overview of all incidents of crime
experienced within a particular period. The study can also
only give broad regional measures of commercial crime.
However, it remains useful as a source to estimate levels
of unreported crime committed against commercial
interests.
Home Office Research Study on Estimating the
Costs of Crime
3.20 In 2000, the Home Office undertook a research
exercise that attempted to estimate the economic and social
costs of crime.
9 As part of this exercise, the study attempted to
estimate actual incidents of crime by attaching multipliers
to various categories of recorded crime. The sources of
these multipliers included the British Crime Survey (BCS)
(for personal and household crime) and the Commercial
Victimisation Survey (for commercial and public sector
crime). A lot can be learned from this approach in any
other exercise that attempts to estimate the number of
incidents of crime.
3.21 However, inevitably, there were some shortcomings
with the Home Office's approach. The BCS, like the SCS,
only estimates crimes committed against those over 16 who
live in households and additional adjustments had to be
made to include crimes committed against those under-16.
Although estimates of sexual victimisation were included,
it was accepted that the estimate could only be tentative
given the uncertainty among people as to what constitutes a
sexual crime. It was also accepted that estimates of
offences such as fraud and theft from a shop were also
tentative given the measurement difficulties. The study did
not attempt to estimate the number of handling stolen goods
offences, drugs offences, other notifiable offences,
traffic and motoring offences and other non-notifiable
offences due to the obvious difficulties in even rough
approximations for offence types that are committed
frequently but are seldom detected.
Youth Lifestyles Survey
3.22 The Home Office's Youth Lifestyles Study includes
an examination of youth crime.
10 It is a large self-reporting survey of offending
by nearly 5,000 people aged between 12 and 30 and living in
private households in England and Wales. It examines
prevalence and incidence rates for various types of crime
that could be used to estimate the proportion of offences
committed by young people. It also breaks the results down
by age and gender.
3.23 The survey also considers various types of
anti-social behaviour as a risk factor in predicting
serious or persistent offending.
3.24 Although the survey only covers England and Wales,
there is no reason to believe that the picture in Scotland
will be substantially different.
3.25 However, as the survey only covers people up to the
age of 30, it can only provide details on young people
committing types of crime as a proportion of those 30 and
under, not as a proportion of the total adult
population.
Youth Survey
3.26 The annual Youth Survey study conducted by MORI for
the Youth Justice Board in England and Wales examines young
people's experience of crime, as offenders and victims. It
examines the levels of offending among young people and the
types of crime they commit as well as young people's
concerns about their own safety.
3.27 The latest Survey is for 2003 and involved a survey
of around 5,000 mainstream school pupils aged 11-16 and a
separate survey of around 600 excluded pupils aged 10-16.
11
3.28 As it is a self-reporting study, it provides
reasonably accurate prevalence figures for types of crime
and anti-social behaviour. It also provides some
information on incidence rates on crimes and types of
behaviour and some information on young people's fear of
crime by asking questions about their safety and concerns
about crime. On the downside, it only covers young people
up to 16. Nevertheless, it does provide some useful
comparable information on youth crime in England and
Wales.
Edinburgh Study on Youth Transitions and
Crime
3.29 The Edinburgh Study on Youth Transitions and Crime
(ESYTC) is a longitudinal study of offending and
anti-social behaviour by young people. It follows a single
year group of around 4,300 young people who started
secondary school in Edinburgh in 1998. The year group has
now reached school leaving age.
3.30 Although it is confined to Edinburgh, the study and
its various publications provide much useful information on
the prevalence and incidence rates of various types of
crime and anti-social behaviour of young people up to the
age of 15. The Edinburgh population can be seen as
generally reflective of the broader Scottish population,
which mostly lives in cities, as it is also highly variable
and contrasting, especially through the class ranges.
3.31 Useful findings include data on the proportion of
young people who have carried out anti-social acts or
crimes of various types, together with the proportion who
have been caught, in a similar way to the MORI Glasgow
Survey. The usefulness of the data is restricted however by
the fact that it relates only to young people of 15 and
under, and also by the fact that the questions about
"getting caught" have been asked in slightly different ways
in the different sweeps of the survey.
Cautionary Tales
3.32 This is a 1994 study that included an examination
of young people and crime in Edinburgh.
12 The study involved the interviewing of 250 11-15
year-olds at a number of local Edinburgh schools. Although
the study is a number of years old, relatively small and
confined to Edinburgh, it does include a fairly
comprehensive examination of young people's offending
behaviour, their fear of certain types of crime and their
experiences as victims and witnesses of crime. Furthermore,
like the "Young people and Crime in Scotland" survey
referred to above, it provides data on the proportion of
various types of offences that young people report to the
police, a factor that we could take into account when
devising estimates of crimes committed against young
people.
Study on Shoplifting Self-reporting
Rates
3.33 Farrington (1999)
13 brought together a number of studies on
shoplifting and found that police recorded crimes reflected
only between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000 of shoplifting
incidents in two department stores studied in 1984. Other
self-report data from other studies he reported suggested
that between 1 in 40 and 1 in 250 shoplifting offences led
to a conviction or caution.
A Study of Crime in Rural Scotland
3.34 This study draws on a variety of sources of
information, including primary research, a review of the
existing literature and secondary data sources to build up
a picture of the nature and extent of rural crime in
Scotland.
14
3.35 The study includes an examination of young people
and crime in rural areas. It also discusses some of the
differences between rural and urban crime in Scotland as
well as perceptions of the fear of crime.
Findings from the British Crime Survey on Anti
Social behaviour and Disorder
3.36 In the 2000 BCS, people were asked about their
perceptions of social and physical problems in their area
and their personal experiences of anti-social behaviour.
15 The full results only apply to England and Wales,
although some of the measures used are also available from
the SCS and the BCS results could also be taken as
indicative for Scotland.
3.37 Although this exercise does provide some
information on peoples' perceptions of disorder and
experience of anti-social behaviour, it does not provide
statistics on the actual number of incidents of such
disorder/behaviour.
The Scottish Office Baseline study of Housing
Management
3.38 The Baseline Study of Housing Management was
published in 1995 and questioned over 2,000 tenants about
neighbour problems, finding that one in five public sector
tenants had experienced such a problem in the previous
year.
16 It included an examination of some of the forms
of anti-social behaviour that residents were experiencing.
These results and results from similar studies are
discussed and summarised in an article by Scott and Parkey
(1998)
17.
3.39 Such studies are useful as a source of peoples'
perception and experience of anti-social behaviour, but
they cannot provide information on either incidence or
prevalence rates.
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