Appendix A - Terms of Reference

Background:

The Scottish Crime Recording Standard (SCRS) was introduced in Scotland on 1 April 2004.  The aim of the SCRS is to provide a more victim orientated approach that serves the needs of our communities and ensures uniformity in crime recording practices throughout Scotland.  It is the role of the Crime Registrar to ensure there is understanding and compliance with SCRS and to achieve comprehensive, consistent and accurate recording and reporting of incidents and crime in line with all relevant guidelines. 

In support of the Tayside pilot as part of the D Division Pilot Framework the Crime registrars were requested to carry out an initial Crime Data Integrity Audit to assess compliance in terms of the SCRS and additional quality assurance checks on a number of data quality aspects of the crime system.

The intention of a Crime Data Integrity Audit report was as a supportive mechanism in order to identify critical processes that are not operating optimally and or identify issues and potential risks as work progresses. This is in order to forecast challenges and to support to project team to prioritise areas for further investigation and quality assurance prior to full implementation.

In recognition of the value that the early stage one Crime Data Integrity Audit provided within the Tayside Pilot, it has been requested that the Crime Registrars continue to support the COS roll out programme by conducting comparable Audits in line with the continued National rollout programme.

These proposed Crime Data Integrity Audits support the National COS rollout programme assurance framework and are far reaching. Whilst still incorporating SCRS compliance checks across a myriad of crime types, it will be much smaller in data set size.  However, it will incorporate scrutiny of all data input fields, along with reviews of STORM cross referencing interoperability and SMART2 crime recording alignment.  As such, the review process goes much deeper than that conducted during a routine SCRS Annual Audit.

It is additionally proposed that the Crime Registrars return to D Division for a stage 2 audit, however, it has been deemed beneficial to delay this audit until 12 months post implementation, to give additional scope for the improvements related to the original Crime Data Integrity Audit findings to have been concluded. 

Scope/Review Objectives:

Crime Registrar COS Stage 1 Data Integrity Audit

The Crime Data Integrity Audit will comprise of an audit of crime records recorded by the Division.

Stage One audit will provide a snapshot of the quality of recorded crimes obtained from a small sample (50 to 100 records) during Week 4 following rollout.

It is anticipated that this sample will provide a sufficient spread of crimes and offences within the various crime groupings taking into account crimes which are detected and undetected and any which have been updated to No Crime. It is recognised that approximately one third of this number will be Road Traffic offences, which will be taken into account in obtaining sample data to ensure that this is weighted more heavily towards crime groups 1 to 6, which are more likely to highlight any SCRS or data quality issues. In obtaining data samples if it is considered that the mix of crimes and offences recorded in that one week period is insufficient to cover all the areas intended to be audited it may be necessary to include some records from an adjacent time period.

Audit Methodology
Specific areas which will be covered by the audit in addition to what would be expected in terms of SCRS compliance are:

- That all "related" crimes are attached to the main crime.

- Where a crime is marked detected and reported by SPR whether the recorded crime equals that reported on SMART 3 (National Case) and that the crime disposal on National Crime is correct.

- Where a crime is marked detected and dealt with by a Direct Measure that the circumstances justify the recorded crime and that crimes are counted correctly, e.g. are multiple Breach of the Peace (BOP) tickets issued for the same incident recorded as a single crime of BOP for the incident and do the circumstances amount to a BOP, are correct number of offences recorded where a VDRS is issued.

- Where a crime is marked undetected that the correct disposal has been applied.

- Where a Group 3 and 4 crime is recorded that all stolen property and all damage caused are correctly recorded.

- That a crime which would have been marked as "No Crime" on the previous crime system is correct and that the new disposal of "No Crime", "Raised in Error" and "Duplicate Record" has been applied correctly.

- That the correct tags and aggravators have been applied and that the locus and Modus Operandi are correct.

- That the link to STORM is being used correctly and relevant reference numbers are populated on both systems.

Some of the above areas may not be audited if full functionality is not available on national crime at the time of audit.

The Crime Registrars will work in conjunction with the COS team to monitor and track the improvements required, compare and contrast findings within each rollout and monitor improvements and/or identify common themes that require to be addressed.

Stage Two Revisit Tayside: 

This SCRS Audit will involve a larger sample of crime data but will focus on SCRS compliance. The sample will be determined using a suitable sample size for audit which will be statistically significant.

In addition, the timelines for review will reflect standard SCRS audit timescales of 12 weeks.

Timescales

Stage 1
Data capture will commence week 4 post rollout data and will be analysed and reviewed from week 6.

Stage 2
The stage two audit will data capture will ensure that a reasonable time has elapsed to allow records to be as complete as they can be in terms of enquiry and SCRS compliance. It is intended that work on the audit timescales will be reflective of standard SCRS Audit timescales.