Report Summary
This report provides members of the Scottish Police Authority Policing Performance Committee with the final update of the Benchmarking Short Life Working Group, detailing the key achievements of the group and outlining how benchmarking and comparative analysis is now embedded in the Police Scotland performance, underpinning ongoing continuous improvement activity.
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Notes on Comparability
The work of the SLWG has also recognised the importance of accompanying any benchmarking comparisons with appropriate caveats and notes on comparability. In particular, the recorded crime statistics for Scotland are collected on the basis of the Scottish Crime Recording Standard (SCRS), which was introduced in 2004 aiming to achieve improved consistency in crime recording.
While the main principles of the SCRS are similar to the National Crime Recording Standard for England and Wales, there are various differences between the respective counting rules that 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 rules state 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. This means that an incident where an intruder breaks into a home and assaults the sole occupant would be recorded as one crime, the assault, in England and Wales, but the same incident would be recorded as two crimes in Scotland.
Differences in legislation and common law also have to be considered when comparing the crime statistics for England and Wales and Scotland, and will often be topic specific.
This does not mean that comparative benchmarking is not possible, but it does require a level of explanation and the application of reasonable judgement in applying adjustment to the source data to allow a comparison to be made.
The SLWG has agreed that any such differences, limitations and adjustments will be clearly noted when comparisons are reported whether these reports are public or internal.
