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RECORDED CRIME IN SCOTLAND, 2000

Annex

11. Notes on statistics used in this bulletin

Returns

11.1 The statistical return from which most of the figures in this bulletin are taken is a simple count of the numbers of crimes and offences recorded and cleared up by the police. Only returns from the eight Scottish home forces are included in this bulletin. One return is made for each council in Scotland and these are aggregated to give a national total. Amendments (such as the deletion of incidents found on investigation not to be criminal) which arise after the end of the year are not incorporated.

11.2 In 1993 information was collected for the first time from other police forces, such as the British Transport Police. This practice has been continued, but these figures have not been included in the main body of the bulletin. Thus, in addition to those crimes and offences referred to throughout the bulletin there were, in total, 5,000 crimes and 7,000 offences recorded by the British Transport Police, Ministry of Defence and UK Atomic Energy Authority in 19992000. The crime clear-up rate was 31 per cent and the offences rate was 35 per cent.

11.3 The figures included in the motor vehicle offences group do not include stationary motor vehicle offences dealt with by the issue of a fixed penalty ticket (some 296,000 offences, mostly parking, in 1999). However, offences dealt with under the vehicle defect rectification scheme and offences for which the procurator fiscal offers a fixed penalty are included in the figures. In addition to this, moving traffic offences which are the subject of a police conditional offer of a fixed penalty are also included, e.g. speeding, traffic directions offences.

Recording issues

11.4 In one criminal incident, several crimes or offences may occur - e.g. a house may be broken into and vandalised and the occupants assaulted. In multiple offence incidents, all the offences are counted rather than one for the incident as a whole; that is, the counting system is offence based rather than incident based. An offence may have more than one victim - for example in robberies - and be committed by more than one offender - e.g. some assaults and housebreakings. (Note that for murder, attempted murder and culpable homicide, the number of crimes recorded is equal to the number of the victims). Thus the statistics in this bulletin are not directly comparable with statistics on action taken against offenders, as one offence may lead to several persons being charged. Equally, an offender may be charged with several offences. The statistics for recorded number of crimes given in this bulletin are also not directly comparable with statistics collected in England and Wales for the recorded number of notifiable offences. This is mainly due to differences in the counting rules; for notifiable offences the counting system is, wherever possible victim based rather than offence based. The Home Office introduced new counting rules for notifiable offences, and expanded their coverage on 1 April 1998.

11.5 In Scotland, assault is a common law offence. In order to distinguish between serious and minor assaults (termed petty assault in the classification) police forces use a common definition of what is a serious assault. Although the definition did not change between 1980 and 1989 it became clear that over the years forces had adopted different interpretations. The definition of serious assault was amended at the start of 1990 to improve consistency between forces in coding assaults into serious and petty assault. The result of the revision to the definition has been much closer agreement on the interpretation of the definition of serious assault across forces, but it has resulted in a reduction in the number of assaults recorded as serious. It is estimated that the number of serious assaults that would have been recorded in 1989, using the revised definition, is some 1,150 fewer than that actually recorded, with a corresponding rise in petty assaults. In the tables in this bulletin, the number of recorded serious assaults etc., (which include cases of murder, culpable homicide and attempted murder) and petty assaults have not been adjusted. The table below gives the number of serious assaults etc. and petty assaults recorded in 1989 and 1990 together with adjusted figures for 1989.

Reporting practice

11.7 These statistics do not of course reveal the incidence of all crime committed. Not all incidents are reported to the police. The British Crime Survey (BCS) Scotland, a survey of crime victims, suggested that in Scotland victims reported 44 per cent of incidents to the police in 1987, up from 38 per cent in 1981. This increased to 55 per cent in 1992 before falling back to 50 per cent in 1995. The two reasons most commonly given by victims for not reporting to the police were that the incident was considered by them to be too trivial or that the police could not have taken any action in any case.

11.8 Many offences, for example, speeding or possession of drugs, have no victim other than perhaps the perpetrator and are discovered and recorded as a result of police activity rather than by being reported to the police by the public. Hence the strength and deployment of the police forces mainly determine the numbers of such offences recorded.

11.9 Variations in police recording practice can also occur between areas over time. It is known, for example, that the introduction of computerised crime logging systems has resulted in improved recording of minor incidents in Scotland since 1975, and as such systems come to be more widely used and improved such effects will continue to occur.

Revision to recorded crime series: offending while on bail

11.10 Section 2 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1995, which came into effect on 31 March 1996, amended the Bail etc. (Scotland) Act 1980 provisions relating to breach of bail conditions. Consolidation under the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 subsequently took place with the provisions relating to breach of bail conditions contained in section 27 of this Act.

11.11 The revisions made by the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1995 included one change that impacted on the recording of crimes by the police. Under the 1980 Act, breaching the bail condition that no further offences would be committed while on bail was treated as an offence in its own right. The 1995 Act changed this; breaching this condition ceased to be a separate offence. Under the new provisions (which have applied since April 1996), if an accused commits a further offence while on bail then it is taken into account in sentencing for that offence. The court is now required, in determining sentence, to have regard to the fact that the offence was committed while on bail and may impose a more severe sentence than it would otherwise have done for the conviction. The new provisions under the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1995 apply to any bail order made on or after 31 March 1996.

11.12 The recorded crime series was revised to remove all crimes of "offending while on bail" from the historical data (1983-1995) to enable comparisons over time to be made. Full details of the changes can be found in the statistical bulletin "Recording of Offending while on Bail, Scotland", CrJ/1997/1.

Crimes and offences cleared up

11.13 The definition of "cleared up" is noted below. This definition came into force with effect from 1 April 1996.

A crime or offence is regarded as cleared up where these exists a sufficiency of evidence under Scots law, to justify consideration of criminal proceedings notwithstanding that a report is not submitted to the procurator fiscal because either

(i) by standing agreement with the procurator fiscal, the police warn the accused due to the minor nature of the offence, or

(ii) reporting is inappropriate due to the non-age of the accused, death of the accused or other similar circumstances.

For some types of crime or offence the case is cleared up immediately because the offender is caught in the act, e.g. motoring offences. In Scots law, the confession of an accused person to a crime would not in general be sufficient to allow a prosecution to be taken as corroborative evidence is required. Thus, a case cannot be regarded as "cleared up" on the basis of a confession alone. In some cases there is sufficient evidence but a prosecution cannot be brought, for example, because the accused has left the country. In such cases, the offender is said to have been traced and the crime is regarded as cleared up. The other terms in the definition describe the various actions that must be taken by the police against offenders.

11.14 Certain motor vehicle offences are not always recorded in cases where police forces are unable to clear-up the offence (e.g. speeding offences where the driver is untraceable). Clear-up rates for motor vehicle offences in these circumstances are artificial. Thus, clear-up rates for the motor vehicle group and clear-up rates for Total Offences and Total Crimes and Offences (which include motor vehicle offences) are not included in the bulletin. However, the number of motor vehicle offences cleared up is still included.

11.15 Clear-up rates in excess of 100 per cent can arise where offences recorded in one year are cleared up during the following year.

Classification

11.16 Contraventions of Scottish criminal law are divided for statistical purposes into crimes and offences. The term "crime" is generally used for the more serious criminal acts; the less serious are termed "offences", although the term "offence" may also be used in relation to serious breaches of criminal law. The distinction is made only for working purposes and the "seriousness" of the offence is generally related to the maximum sentence that can be imposed.

11.17 The detailed classification of crimes and offences used by The Scottish Executive to collect criminal statistics contains about 360 codes. These are grouped in the bulletin as shown below.

11.18 The following symbols are used throughout the tables in this bulletin

- Nil * less than 0.5

11.19 Further analyses of recorded crime statistics can be supplied on request. In certain cases a fee is charged. For details of what can be provided please telephone Miss Allison Wood on 0131 244 2225.

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