Headline Crime, Quarter 3 2006

Headline Crime, Quarter 3 2006

New Arrangements for the Publication of Crime Statistics

In July 2004 the Expert Group on Crime Statistics reported to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and recommended, inter alia, that the compilation of recorded crime statistics should be transferred from the Garda Síochána to a dedicated and independent external statistical unit. Following discussions with the Director General of
the Central Statistics Office it was agreed that such a unit should be established within the CSO. The necessary legal, technical and organisational arrangements have now been completed to enable the transfer to proceed. Today’s publication of the reported crime statistics for the 3rd Quarter of 2006 marks the formal transfer of responsibility for the
published results from the Gardaí to the CSO. These arrangements include the direct transfer of the relevant individual records from the Garda PULSE system to the CSO. This will enable the CSO to carry out further analysis and to publish quarterly and annual statistical reports.

The focus in the preparatory work has been on ensuring that the statistics produced by the Gardaí could be replicated and validated in the new CSO processing environment. Today’s release does not involve any change in the methodology from that recently used in the production of quarterly 'Headline' incidents and a retrospective quarterly series is provided back to the first quarter of 2003.

The CSO has established an Advisory Group to assist it in the development of Crime and Criminal Justice statistics.  One of the first tasks of the Advisory Group is to review current methodology and to make recommendations for the development and presentation of crime statistics. This review, which is to be informed by best practice in other countries, will better align crime statistics with public and specialist user needs. This element of the work of the Advisory Group should be completed in the first half of 2007 and in particular involves examination of:

• the distinction between 'Headline' and 'non-Headline' offences;

• the impact of the counting rules used where there are multiple offences involved in the one crime incident; and

• the development of a new robust classification of offences/incidents to be used in the future.

In addition to developing crime statistics from administrative sources (eg PULSE), the CSO is also preparing to develop a more integrated and comprehensive system of statistics on Crime and Victimisation. This will include offences which do not necessarily come to the attention of the Gardaí (eg white collar crime, tax fraud etc) as well as offences that are
often under-reported to the Gardaí. The CSO is currently conducting a Crime and Victimisation module as part of its ongoing Quarterly National Household Survey programme. The results of this survey will be available in the Spring of 2007 and will allow direct comparisons to made with similar surveys conducted in 1998 and 2003.

Finally, consideration is also being given to the development of statistics on the wider criminal justice system to include the Courts, Prisons and Probation services.

For further information contact:

Ger Healy 021 453 5205

Crime Statistics,
Central Statistics Office

Phone: LoCall 1890 313 414 / (021) 453 5000/ (01) 498 4000
Fax (021) 453 5555

Internet www.cso.ie (PDF 512KB) (PDF 511KB)
E-mail crime@cso.ie

27 October 2006

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