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1.1 This bulletin presents statistics on crimes and offences recorded and cleared up by the eight Scottish police forces in 1999. It forms part of The Scottish Executive series of statistical bulletins on the criminal justice system. Statistics of crimes and offences recorded by the police provide a measure of the volume of crime with which the police are faced. For a variety of reasons many crimes and offences are either not reported to the police or are not subsequently recorded by them and so changes in the number of crimes and offences recorded do not necessarily provide an accurate reflection of changes in the volume of crime committed. In particular, both Fife and Lothian & Borders police introduced improved crime recording systems during 1999 which led to substantial increases in the numbers of crimes they recorded. Section 9 discusses an alternative source for crime statistics: The Scottish Crime Survey. Definitions of the terms and classifications used in this bulletin are given in the Annex. Numbers in the text have been rounded as appropriate.
Chart 1 Crimes and offences recorded by the police, 1990 - 1999
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