Scottish Crime and Justice Survey
In April 2008 the Scottish
Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) replaced the Scottish Crime and Victimisation Survey (SCVS) which had replaced the Scottish Crime Survey (SCS) in
2004.
The SCJS is a social survey which asks people about their experiences and perceptions of crime in Scotland. The structure of the survey is similar to the British Crime Survey, but contains different modules and questionnaire sections. The main aims of the SCJS are to:
- Provide reliable statistics on peoples experience of crime, including services provided to victims of crime
- Assess the varying risk of crime for different groups of people in the population
- Examine trends in the level and nature of crime in Scotland over time
- Collect information about people's experiences of, and attitudes on a range of crime and justice related issues
An important role of the SCJS is to provide an alternative and complementary measure of crime to the police recorded crime statistics, which provide statistics on crimes and offences recorded and cleared up by the eight Scottish police forces.
Interviews for the SCJS began in April 2008 and will run continuously until March 2010. The survey involves interviewing a randomly selected adult in 16,000 households across Scotland per year .The findings from the SCJS will be used by policy makers across the public sector in Scotland to help understand the nature of crime in Scotland, target resources and monitor the impact of initiatives to target crime.
Crime surveys have been carried out
in Scotland since the early 1980s. In 1982 and 1988, the SCS formed part of
the British Crime Survey (BCS). In 1993, however,
the first independent SCS was run in Scotland and was repeated in 1996, 2000
and 2003. The SCS is referred to by the year in which data were collected rather
than the year to which the data refer.
In June 2004, the Scottish Executive
commissioned the Scottish Crime and Victimisation Survey (SCVS), a new survey
of victimisation in Scotland. In two distinct ways the SCVS was significantly
different from previous sweeps of the SCS. that had been undertaken in Scotland
since 1993. First, the sample size was increased from 5,000 interviews every
three years to an annual sample of 27,000 with continuous interviewing. More
importantly, the survey method was changed from a face-to-face survey to a telephone
survey. These changes were the outcome of a fundamental review of the SCS undertaken
in 2003 and the change of data collection method represented the potential for
change in the data series established by the SCS. Reflecting this, the Scottish
Executive commissioned MORI Scotland and TNS Social to undertake a parallel
face-to-face survey designed as a repeat of the previous waves of the SCS, although
with a smaller sample of 3,000 interviews, to provide a measure of victimisation
against which the telephone survey could be compared. In addition to the 3,000
full SCS interviews, 2,000 additional short interviews were conducted to bring
the total number of adults providing the self-completion data that had been
a feature of the previous SCS up to 5,000.
The National Statistics web site contains some detailed
information about the survey.
