Press Statement

Preasráiteas

11 December 2018

CSO publishes third Review of the Quality of Recorded Crime statistics

Go to release: Review of the Quality of Recorded Crime Statistics 2017 (PDF 539KB)

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (11 December 2018) published a third review of the quality of Recorded Crime statistics. The latest review is based on data recorded on the PULSE database in respect of crimes reported to An Garda Síochána (AGS) in 2017.

The review has found considerable development in the quality of Recorded Crime statistics since the publication of the last CSO quality review in 2016, including:

• A marked reduction in the non-recording of reported crime incidents on PULSE
• A reduction in misclassification errors
• Improvement made in criminal incidents being recorded in a timely manner on PULSE
• Improvement made in the recording of criminal incident records subsequently marked invalid

The scope of this review expanded on previous CSO reviews to include data quality concerns arising from the examination of homicide data records during 2017 such as the correct application of crime counting principles. The CSO has also undertaken, for the first time, to assess the quality of statistics relating to crimes with a discriminatory motive and domestic abuse. The CSO concludes that further work is needed to improve the accuracy of recording in these areas.

Commenting on the latest quality review, Sam Scriven, Statistician said: “Recorded Crime statistics are an important resource to policy makers and to citizens. The quality and usefulness of Recorded Crime statistics are ultimately determined by the quality of the data recorded and maintained on PULSE by An Garda Síochána.” 

“This report seeks to provide users of crime statistics with context on the data quality concerns affecting crime data and how they relate to crime statistics. Users are reminded that the categorisation of Recorded Crime statistics as ‘Statistics Under Reservation’ will remain in place until the CSO is satisfied that the levels of accuracy and completeness in the underlying data are of sufficient quality.” 

“This report concludes that there is evidence of improvement in both the recording process and in data quality, but that more work is needed to ensure a consistent statistical product. The CSO are committed to assisting AGS in improving data quality wherever possible, and have proposed a data quality improvement plan to AGS.”

For further information:
Statistics Under Reservation FAQs

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