Recorded Crime Detection 2020

Recorded Crime statistics

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) compiles and publishes Recorded Crime statistics for Ireland. Recorded Crime statistics are intended to inform users about the set of criminal offences which are reported to, or become known to, An Garda Síochána (AGS), Ireland’s national police and security service. The statistics are compiled using administrative data recorded by AGS on its PULSE (Police Using Leading Systems Effectively) crime incident database.

The CSO’s Recorded Crime series, published quarterly, provides statistical information on the number of crime incidents recorded by AGS on PULSE, including analysis by the type of criminal offence, the reference period when the offence was reported (i.e. year, quarter), and the location of the offence by Garda administrative areas (e.g. Garda regions).

The CSO provides, in this publication, annual statistics relating to Recorded Crime incidents which have been marked as detected by AGS. The rules which govern when an incident may be marked as detected by AGS are set out in the Guide to How Crime is Recorded and Counted by An Garda Síochána (PDF 959KB) document, which explains the current rules and procedures for recording crime data on PULSE.

The CSO also publishes annual statistics in respect of persons who have been recorded as the victims or suspected offenders of serious crimes against the person such as homicide, sexual violence or assault and related offences, see Recorded Crime Victims and Suspected Offenders.

Since March 2018, the CSO has applied a categorisation of Statistics Under Reservation to Recorded Crime statistics to inform users that:

• the CSO has concerns about the quality of the data source
• statistics compiled from the source may understate or overstate the actual occurrence of reported crime
• statistics may be subject to revision in subsequent publications

Recorded Crime statistics are made available to users in CSO Recorded Crime publications, via PxStat the CSO’s new Open Data Portal, or through direct contact with the CSO.

Recorded Crime Detection statistics

Recorded Crime Detection statistics published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) provide a snapshot of the extent to which crime incidents reported to An Garda Síochána (AGS) have been detected. A crime may be marked as detected when AGS have identified at least one person responsible for committing the offence and that person has been issued a charge or summons, a formal or informal caution, or a fixed payment notice. There are some limited circumstances where a detection is permitted even though no person has been sanctioned in this way. The rules which govern when an incident may be marked as detected by AGS are set out in the Guide to How Crime is Recorded and Counted by An Garda Síochána (PDF 959KB) document.

A charge is a document detailing the criminal offence(s) a suspected offender is accused of following arrest. Once charged, a suspected offender must either be released on bail or detained until they appear in court. A summons is an alternative to a charge whereby a suspected offender is ordered to appear in court at a later date. Cautions (e.g. adult caution, juvenile caution) are alternatives to prosecution which may be issued in limited circumstances when a suspect accepts responsibility for an offence.

AGS introduced new data governance controls targeted at improving data quality in the recording of detections in 2018. The implementation of these controls supports more reliable statistical outputs, but also marks a break-in-series for measuring crime detection rates in Ireland. Detection rates for time periods prior to 2018 are not comparable with figures published since. Indeed, the timing of the changes (25^th February 2018) mean that data for reference year 2018 includes a portion of the year where the old system was still in use. Statistical users should consider this when comparing 2018 with subsequent years.

The time gap between an offence being reported and a crime incident being detected is influenced by a variety of factors (e.g. gathering evidence, awaiting laboratory results, awaiting direction for prosecution), and can vary by type of crime. The crime incident detection rate, i.e. the number of detected incidents divided by the total number of recorded incidents, for a reference period tends to increase for a time, as more investigations are completed, before settling.

Initial measurement of detection rates for a reference year made by the CSO is carried out based on data extracted from PULSE eight months following the end of the year. The gap of eight months is selected to balance the need for timely publication of statistics with the need to allow time for criminal investigations to reach conclusion and for detection rates to begin to settle. Updated detection rates for previous reference years are based on latest available data. 

Chapter 6 of this publication provides statistical data on the sex (see Table 6.1) and age (see Table 6.2) of persons who have been marked as suspected offenders for crime incidents. These statistics were previously published at a later stage, in conjunction with statistics relating to victims in the Recorded Crime Victims and Suspected Offenders publication, but have been brought forward to provide more timely statistics for users. The range of crime types for which these statistics are provided has also been extended in response to user demand. Chapter 6 also provides detail of the type of sanction (i.e. charge/summon, caution or fixed payment notice) issued to the suspected offender.

Source data

The statistics in this publication are compiled from administrative records of crime incidents recorded by AGS on the PULSE (Police Using Leading Systems Effectively) and FCPS (Fixed Charge Processing System) databases.

CSO receives from AGS a subset of the data held on PULSE and FCPS and only processes data which are deemed necessary for the specific purpose of compiling official Recorded Crime statistics and related quality assessments.

Statistics compiled for this publication are based on data extracted from PULSE on 2^nd September 2021, and from FCPS on 14^th October 2021

Methodology

The crime incident detection rate is defined as the number of detected crime incidents divided by the total number of recorded crime incidents for the reference period.

Figures for the total numbers of recorded crime incidents presented in this publication are as presented in Recorded Crime Q2 2021. Notes on how these statistics are compiled are available in the Background Notes for that publication.

Figures for the number of detected crime incidents are based on the incident_detection_status data field for each crime incident. The incident_detection_status field is automatically updated to ‘detected’ or ‘resulted in proceedings’ when an appropriate sanction such as a charge, summons or caution is first recorded against a person in respect of that crime, or when a Crime Counting Rules exception is validated. This method is almost equivalent to measuring the number of crime incidents which have at least one person profile recorded as a suspected offender for the crime, as has been employed in previous Recorded Crime Detection publications. The total variation between these methods was measured to have been 28 incidents out of a total of 188,350 in reference year 2020 (0.01%).

A measure of the proportion of crime incidents which have led to charge or summons is provided in Table 5.1 of the publication. This measure is calculated by linking the set of valid crime incidents directly to the set of valid charges and summonses recorded on PULSE, irrespective of the incident_detection_status field. 

Person profile records which are marked invalid or have incomplete age or sex data are not included when compiling statistics in respect of the age, sex or mode of sanction of suspected offenders. Measurement of the age of suspected offenders (at the time the offence took place) is calculated based on the recorded date of birth of the suspected offender and the date_occurred_from field for the crime incident.

Statistics on Fixed Payment Notice offences, as presented in Table 7.1, are based on Fixed Charge Processing System (FCPS) data. A small number of records are not included in the statistics, such as records whose status is ‘terminated’, records which are assigned to invalid Garda sub-districts (<0.01% of records), and records which exhibited an error once extracted (<0.02% of records).

Classifications and definitions

The CSO uses the Irish Crime Classification System (ICCS) to disseminate statistics on Recorded Crime in Ireland. A classification has been introduced to report on Fixed Payment Notice offences issued by An Garda Síochána. Please contact crime@cso.ie for further information.

Recorded crimes are classified by year and by quarter according to the date_reported data field, in accordance with international best practice.

The crime incident detection rate is defined as the number of detected crime incidents divided by the total number of recorded crime incidents for the reference period. As such, unless otherwise specified, the detection rate refers to incidents which are detected irrespective of when the detection took place. For this reason, measured crime incident detection rates tend to increase for a time, as more investigations are completed, before settling.

The recorded crime rate is the ratio of the number of crimes reported to and recorded by An Garda Síochána relative to the population, expressed as a rate per 100,000 people. Populations for Garda administrative regions are calculated by using measured population by Garda Division from the 2016 Census of Population (for persons in private households) and applying the breakdown to current national population estimates.

Crimes are classified by location according to the Garda sub-district against which the crime has been recorded. These are aggregated to Garda regions for geographical breakdowns. The Garda regions used in this publication are the ones which were operational at the end of the reference period.

Data Quality

PULSE Upgrade 7.3, released on 25 February 2018, introduced new data governance controls in respect of recording detections. These new controls now better ensure that the number of detections identified match the number of sanctions for those detections, apart from what should be a relatively small number of exceptions (e.g. the offender has died).

In the Recorded Crime Detection 2018 publication, the CSO put forward its basis for republishing crime incident detection statistics from a data quality perspective, by measuring the impact of changes introduced in PULSE Upgrade 7.3. CSO looked in particular at reference year 2014 - when caveated statistics had last been published, and reference year 2018 – when the PULSE upgrade was implemented. Three main areas of data quality improvement had been identified. An update on each of these measures is presented here:

1. A reduction in the number of suspected offenders classified as having “proceedings commenced” (i.e. the detection status of the suspected offender is recorded as "Proceedings Complete", "Proceedings Commenced" or "Committed for Trial") for which no corresponding charge or summons record could be identified.

2. A reduction in the use of the exceptions facility in the designation of a sanction

3. A reduction in the number of suspected offenders for whom no sanction type is recorded in their detection status.

1. With the definition of a “detection” dependent on the application of a designated sanction (charge, caution, etc.), based on An Garda Síochána operational guidelines, a key area of focus relates to any marking of criminal incidents as detected and, in parallel, the marking of persons as suspected offenders, before or in the absence of a formal sanction. For example, persons being recorded as having proceedings commenced against them for a criminal incident even though no matching charge or summons record could be found. The data in Table 8.1 below outlines the scale of this issue for the years 2014 and also for 2018, 2019 and 2020. Table 8.2 provides a monthly breakdown of the annual figures.  Taken together, these tables outline strong quality improvements in the detections data, with the timing of the PULSE upgrade (25^th February 2018) clearly impacting on the monthly totals from March 2018 onwards, and sustained through 2019 and 2020.