Number, and rate per 10,000 population, of crimes and offences recorded by the police
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Number, and rate per 10,000 population, of crimes and offences recorded by the police. For more information on the recorded crime figures please see the Scottish Government website.
Crimes and offences per 10,000 population rates are calculated as follows: (total number of recorded crimes / mid-year population estimate) x (10,000 / 1). When calculating the rates of crimes and offences per 10,000 population, the relevant mid-year population estimates produced by the National Records of Scotland are used. The mid-year population estimates can be accessed here. The statistical return from which the data are taken is a simple count of the numbers of crimes and offences recorded and cleared up by the police. Returns are submitted quarterly from Police Scotland at local authority level which allows a national total to be obtained. Crimes and offences are included against the year in which they are recorded by the police. This is not necessarily the year in which the crime or offence took place, the year in which the accused is brought to trial for the crime or offence, or the year in which the case is finally disposed of by the courts. Amendments (such as the deletion of incidents found on investigation not to be criminal) which arise after the end of the financial year are not incorporated.
Contraventions of Scottish criminal law are divided for statistical purposes into crimes and offences. “Crime” is generally used for the more serious criminal acts; the less serious 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. For further information please see the Data Sources and Suitability document.
This dataset does not contain any sensitive or personal information.
Details of the quality assurance process can be found in the Framework of Assurance and Quality Assurance Paper.
A quality assurance process is in operation which includes automated validation procedures and manual checks for significant changes in the data and unrealistic values. Any questionable values are referred back to Police Scotland for either correction or for an explanation to be provided for any unusual values. Police Scotland are required to sign-off their data at the end of the validation process. Bulletins are subjected to a secondary level of checking by statisticians who have not been involved in the production process.
Comparable time series data for total crimes and offences are available dating back to 1930 upon request. Additionally, from 1971 onwards further breakdowns of crimes and offences are available. Please note that due to due to local government reorganisation, data for 1975 are not available. Comparable time series for crimes and offences cleared up are available from 1976 onwards.
The reporting year was changed from calendar to financial year, with the last reported calendar year being 1994 and the first reported financial year being 1995-96. Information is electronically available via the Scottish Government’s website dating back to 1988. Long term, as well as short term, comparability of some crime groups over time will be affected due to changes in legislation. An example of this is the introduction of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009, which came into force on 1 December 2010. Further details regarding this can be found in the Note on comparability of Sexual crimes data.
Recorded crime statistics for England and Wales are not directly comparable with those in Scotland. The recorded crime statistics for Scotland are collected on the basis of the Scottish Crime Recording Standard (SCRS), which was introduced in 2004. In England and Wales the recording of crime statistics are based up on the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) and Home Office Counting Rules for recorded crime. Like its counterpart in England and Wales, the SCRS aims to give consistency in crime recording. The main principles of the SCRS itself are similar to the NCRS for England and Wales with regard to when a crime should be recorded. However there are various differences between the respective Counting Rules in that they specify different approaches for counting the number of crimes that should be recorded as a result of a single incident. For example, crimes recorded in England and Wales tend to be incident based where the Principle Crime Rule states that if the sequence of crimes in an incident, or a complex crime, contains more than one type of crime, then the most serious crime should be counted. For example, an incident where an intruder breaks into a home and assaults the sole occupant would be recorded as two crimes in Scotland, while in England and Wales it would be recorded as one crime. Differences in legislation and common law have also to be taken into account when comparing the crime statistics for England and Wales and Scotland. A guide to the comparability of recorded crime between England and Wales and Scotland has been published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and can be accessed on the ONS website.
Crime Statistics for England and Wales are published quarterly on the ONS website and can be accessed here. The legal system in Northern Ireland is based on that of England and Wales and the Police Service for Northern Ireland (PSNI) has the same notifiable offence list for recorded crime as used in England and Wales. In addition, the PSNI has adopted the NCRS and Home Office Counting Rules for recorded crime that applies in England and Wales. Thus there are similar comparability considerations between recorded crime statistics for Northern Ireland and Scotland. Crime statistics for Northern Ireland are collected and published separately. The latest police recorded crime data for Northern Ireland can be accessed [here] (http://www.psni.police.uk/index/updates/updates_statistics.htm).
Due to differences in legislation, there are also comparability issues when comparing the statistics for the recorded number of crimes given in the Recorded Crime bulletin internationally. Data users are always advised to consult any relevant and accompanying metadata and to proceed with caution when formulating any arguments or drawing any conclusions from international recorded crime comparisons.
Information is presented at a national (Scotland) level, with core tables provided at Local Authority level.
The statistical bulletin is generally published in the September following the end of the financial year in question.
Revisions and corrections to this publication are dealt with in accordance with the Scottish Government published policy.
This is a linked data resource: it has a permanent unique uri at which both humans and machines can find it on the Internet, and which can be used an identifier in queries on our SPARQL endpoint.
A linked data-orientated view of dimensions and values
| Dimension | Locked Value |
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Crime Or Offence
http://statistics.gov.scot/def/dimension/crimeOrOffence
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(not locked to a value) |
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Reference Area
http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/dimension#refArea
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(not locked to a value) |
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Reference Period
http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/dimension#refPeriod
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(not locked to a value) |
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Measure Type
http://purl.org/linked-data/cube#measureType
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(not locked to a value) |
Linked Data is stored in graphs. We keep dataset contents (the data) separately from the metadata, to make it easier for you to find exactly what you need.
The data in this dataset are stored in the graph: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/recorded-crime
The data structure definition for this data cube dataset is stored in the same graph as the data: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/recorded-crime
All other metadata about this dataset are stored in the graph: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/recorded-crime/metadata
A breakdown by type of the 56,244 resources in this dataset's data graph.
| Resource type | Number of resources |
|---|---|
| Collection | 2 |
| Component specification | 8 |
| Data set | 1 |
| Data structure definition | 1 |
| Observation | 56,232 |
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