1998 1999 - Nationalarchives.gov.uk

ANNEX A
Assessment of the impact of the counting rule and coverage changes.
(1) The recorded crime figures in this publication are based on statistical returns
provided by the 43 police forces in England and Wales. The data are compiled
using rules for coverage, classification and counting issued by the Home Office. The
rules maintain consistency between police force areas for recording some of the
more complex and potentially difficult offences, such as multiple, continuous and
repeated offences. Periodically, the Home Office rules and police recording
practices are reviewed to ensure consistency and to determine whether updates are
necessary. The latest changes took effect on 1 April 1998.
(2) Under the new counting rules, the statistics wherever possible measure one
crime per victim; this will greatly improve the comparability between notifiable
offence figures and victim surveys, such as the British Crime Survey. The main
impact of the rule changes is on offences contained within the fraud and criminal
damage groups. The reasoning behind this assessment is that under the previous
rules:
• an offence relating to the fraudulent use of a credit card would only be
recorded by the police if the victim reported the misuse to the police; any
misuses that the police discovered during an investigation that had not been
reported to them would not be recorded. With the new rules any fraudulent
uses would be recorded.
• criminal damage of a very minor nature (valued at £20 or under) was not
counted for detection performance purposes, and it is likely that some of
these offences would not have been recorded. With the new rules all criminal
damage should be recorded irrespective of value.
(3) Under the new coverage rules, the notifiable offence umbrella has been
widened to include all indictable and triable-either-way offences, together with a few
summary offences which are very closely linked to these offences. All the new offence
headings can be seen in table 6 of this bulletin. Those which have made a substantial
impact on the total number of crimes recorded include:
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