Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2023/24: Main findings

Background to the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey

What is the SCJS and what purpose does it serve?

The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) is a large scale social survey which asks people about their experiences and perceptions of crime and the justice system. The survey is conducted in person, within respondents’ homes. Sections addressing sensitive topics are filled out by the respondents themselves, using the interviewer’s laptop or tablet.

This report presents the results for the eleventh SCJS, with interviews conducted between July 2023 and April 2024. The 2023/24 survey is based on 4,973 face-to-face interviews with adults (aged 16 or over) living in private households in Scotland.

The main aims of the SCJS are to:

• enable people in Scotland to tell us about their experiences of, and attitudes to, a range of issues related to crime, policing and the justice system; including crime not reported to the police
• provide a valid and reliable measure of adults' experience of crime, including services provided to victims of crime
• examine trends over time in the number and nature of crimes in Scotland, providing a complementary measure of crime to police recorded crime statistics
• examine the varying risk and characteristics of crime for different groups of adults in the population

Findings from crime surveys in Scotland have been used by policy makers across the public sector, academic and third sector to help understand the nature of crime in Scotland, target resources and monitor the impact of initiatives since the 1980s. The results of this survey provide evidence to inform progress against the Scottish Government’s National Performance Framework (NPF)[1] and a range of other metrics used across the justice system.

What do I need to know when reading this report?

Detailed information about the history, design and methodology of the SCJS is provided in the accompanying Technical Report to help you understand the strengths and limitations of the survey’s results. Annex E also provides guidance on how to interpret the figures and tables contained in this report. The following sections summarise the SCJS's background, the reliability of survey estimates, how uncertainty in results is addressed, and an overview of the report's content and supporting outputs.

Who is included and what does the SCJS cover?

The SCJS does not aim to provide an absolute estimate for all crime and has some notable exclusions.

Who takes part in the survey?

• Around 5,000 adults (aged 16 and over)
• In private households (including rented accommodation)
• Across Scotland

Who does not take part in the survey?

• Children
• Those living in group residences, institutions or those without a fixed address
• Commercial or public sector bodies

The SCJS is a survey of adults living in private residential households (including private and social rented housing) and therefore does not provide information on crimes against adults living in other circumstances (for example, tourists and those living in institutions or communal residences, such as prisons or hospitals, military bases and student accommodation). The survey also excludes people under the age of 16 and crimes against businesses. Further details on the sampling approach is outlined in the accompanying Technical Report.

The SCJS is primarily a victimisation survey that gathers data on adults' experiences with property and violent crimes and from 2023/24 onwards fraud and computer misuse, including those not reported to the police. However, it doesn't cover all crimes, such as those without a specific victim (e.g., speeding, drug possession, homicide). Experience of sexual offences are excluded from the main estimates and are collected separately through a self-completion section.

For more information on the questionnaire content and structure please refer to the Technical Report.

What is covered by the survey?

Experiences of being a victim of:

• Violent crime including:
  • Assault
  • Robbery
• Property crime including:
  • Vandalism
  • Personal theft
  • Other household theft
• Fraud and computer misuse including (from 2023/24 onwards):
  • Bank and credit card fraud
  • Other fraud (i.e. consumer and retail fraud)
  • Computer misuse

Public perceptions of:

• Crime
• The Police
• The Justice System

Respondents also self-complete a questionnaire that covers partner abuse, sexual victimisation and stalking.

What is not covered by the survey?

• Crime without a specific victim (e.g. drug possession, speeding)
• Crimes against businesses (e.g. shoplifting)
• Crime without a victim to interview (e.g. homicide)

Throughout the report, the term ‘SCJS crime’ (or just 'crime') is used to refer to any in-scope incident recorded by the survey, occurring during the interview reference period and in Scotland, in which the respondent or their household as a whole was the victim.

The survey also explores perceptions of the police, the justice system and safety in Scotland.

How is the survey delivered?

1. A sample of households are randomly selected

2. An interviewer visits the respondents home

3. Participation is voluntary but is important in helping us make representative estimates for Scotland

4. Interviews last approximately 40 minutes

5. The main survey questions are answered verbally and the interviewer inputs information into a computer

6. An additional section on sensitive issues (such as partner abuse) is completed privately on a tablet computer

The design of the 2023/24 SCJS was broadly similar to the approach used since 2008/09. Therefore, when examining changes over time, this report generally compares the latest findings to those in 2008/09 and the last SCJS in 2021/22. As discussed further below, comparisons are also made with the last pre-covid survey in 2019/20.

Other summary points to note on the methodology are outlined below.

• Survey frequency: Since 2008/09, the SCJS frequency has varied slightly. It returned to an annual schedule in 2016/17. However, no survey was conducted in 2020/21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic halting fieldwork in March 2020. The 2023/24 SCJS is the latest annual survey, the second following the resumption of fieldwork in November 2021.
• Sample: The sample is designed to be representative of all private residential households across Scotland. A systematic random selection of private residential addresses was produced from the Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF) and allocated in batches to interviewers. Interviewers called at each address and then selected one adult (aged 16 or over) at random from the household members for interview
• Questionnaire: The questionnaire consists of a modular design completed by the interviewer using Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI). When face-to-face interviewing was either not possible or respondents were not willing to let an interviewer into their home, a telephone or video-interview option was available, conducted with the interviewer using the same CAPI script. A self-completion section covering sensitive crimes was administered using Computer-Assisted Self Interviewing (CASI), or a web or paper survey when the main interview was conducted by telephone or video. Annex C gives an overview of the questionnaire structure and general topics, and the most recent questionnaire is available in the supplementary documents
• Fieldwork: Interviews were conducted on a rolling basis between July 2023 and April 2024, with roughly an equal number of interviews conducted across most months
• Interviews: A total of 4,973 interviews were conducted, from the original 5,000 target, with a response rate of 46.0%. This is comparable to that of 2021/22 (47.3%) which itself saw a large fall following the COVID-19 pandemic. Chapter 2 of the 2021/22 main findings report detailed earlier work which demonstrated that the fall in response rate and the mixed-mode approach taken for the 2021/22 survey year did not adversely impact the quality of the data collected or the comparability with earlier years.
• Interview length: An average interview lasted around 40 minutes, though there was variation in interview length, depending on the respondent's reported experience of crime
• Time period covered: Respondents were asked about incidents experienced in the 12 months prior to the month of interview (the reference period). The time period covered by the data on experiences of crime included in this report extends over 21 months (from the start of July 2022 to the end of March 2024) so is not directly comparable with any calendar year
• Weighting: The results obtained were weighted to correct for the unequal probability of selection for interview caused by the sample design and for differences in the level of response among groups of individuals

How reliable are SCJS results?

The SCJS gathers information from a sample rather than from the whole population and, although the sample is designed carefully, survey results are always estimates, not precise figures. This means that the results are subject to a margin of error which can have an impact on how changes in the numbers should be interpreted, especially in the short-term. Further information on the process used to calculate estimates is contained within the Technical Report.

To indicate the extent of uncertainty, this report presents key results on the extent and prevalence of crime using both best estimates and lower/upper estimates. The best estimate is the mean figure drawn from the sample. The lower and upper estimates are for the 95% confidence interval. Aside from these key findings, the majority of the analysis provided in the report focuses on best estimates.

Because of sampling variation, changes in reported estimates between survey years or between population sub-groups may occur by chance. We therefore use standard statistical tests to examine whether differences are likely to be due to chance. Only differences that are statistically significant at the 95% confidence level are described as differences or changes within this report.

Where no statistically significant change has been found between two estimates, this has been described as showing ‘no change’ (or equivalent). The presentation of uncertainty and change in this report reflect best practice guidance produced by the Government Statistical Service (GSS).[2]

Uncertainty can be particularly high around some crime incidence estimates, often where experiences are less common and incident numbers are derived from the experiences of a relatively small number of victims in the sample. We assessed the uncertainty for crime incidence figures in this report by computing the relative standard error (RSE) around the results and have flagged results which have RSE values greater than 20%.[3] We advise using these results with careful consideration.

What findings are included in this report and where can I access additional results?

The report is organised into chapters that cover various topics from the survey, including the extent, prevalence, and nature of crime in Scotland: perceptions of the police and justice system, and consideration of how evidence from the SCJS compares to and complements police recorded crime statistics in Scotland. The report does not include in-depth, multivariate statistical analysis that would explore the more complex underlying relationships within the data.

Further information on how to interpret figures, tables and data presented in this report is provided in Annex E. Many of these tables and figures include breakdowns by respondent characteristics such as sex, age, victim status (where available), area deprivation[4] and rurality. Further detail on many of these tables, for example with additional breakdowns, and full time series results, are provided in the data tables presented in Annex A.

All tables referred to throughout the bulletin are available in the ‘annex tables’ excel workbook. In addition, we have also released a more comprehensive set of SCJS online data tables alongside this report which present further breakdowns of results, from a wide range of survey questions, by geographic, demographic, attitudinal or experiential characteristics of respondents.

The raw survey data files and survey documentation will be available soon after publication of this report from the UK Data Service.

Data from the SCJS's self-completion section (on stalking and harassment, partner abuse, and sexual victimisation) is collected over two survey years and published biennially. The latest findings, from the 2018/19 and 2019/20 surveys, were published in the 2019/20 Main Findings Report, with supporting data tables also published. Due to updates to the partner abuse module for the current survey questionnaire, the next set of results will be for the combined 2023/24 and 2024/25 years. Details on these changes were provided in Annex D of the 2021/22 Main Findings Report.

SCJS results at the Police Division level are available biennially, combining two survey years to enhance sample size and result precision. Key results from the 2018/19 and 2019/20 surveys were included in the 2019/20 Main Findings Report. This includes perceptions of the police and victimisation rates by division. Results can be accessed through the SCJS interactive data tool, which compares divisional data to national averages for specific years or over time. The next set of these results will be for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 combined survey years.

What was the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the SCJS?

In order to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, face-to-face interviews for the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) were suspended on 17th March 2020. The last findings for the SCJS to be unaffected by COVID-19, for the 2019/20 survey year, were published in March 2021.

To fill the evidence gap, the Scottish Victimisation Telephone Survey (SVTS) ran in late 2020, collecting crime and safety data. However, no SCJS interviews took place in 2020/21, so no data was published for that year.

SCJS interviews resumed in November 2021. Due to ongoing restrictions at the time these were conducted remotely either by telephone or video, with face-to-face interviews resuming in April 2022. The findings from this sweep of interviews were published in November 2023.

An additional analysis was conducted to examine whether the change in approach to interviewing had impacted the comparability of the 2021/22 findings with earlier, pre-covid, surveys years. The results of this showed that while there were some minor fluctuations in some estimates, the move from interviewing face-to-face in-home to remote interviewing did not have a major impact on the results in relation to measurement error and are unlikely to have introduced discontinuity into the data time series for the SCJS. The full report is available on the supplementary documents page for the 2021/22 main findings report.

Further information on the impact of COVID-19 on the SCJS and a summary of the comparability analysis is available in Chapter 2 of the 2021/22 main findings report.

This report (2023/24) is the first post-pandemic SCJS to be completely unaffected by covid restrictions – the nature of which may have impacted on patterns of crime in Scotland (and therefore the SCJS findings for 2021/22). As such, to aid user interpretation we have also included comparisons with 2019/20, the most recent equivalent year that was not impacted by the pandemic. Given this, some caution should be taken when making inferences based on the comparisons between 2021/22 and 2023/24.

How can I find out more about the SCJS?

The SCJS is utilised by various sectors, including government, public services, academia, and the third sector. Engaging with users helps keep the survey relevant and responsive to their needs.

To learn more about the SCJS or Scottish Government Statistics Group work:

• SCJS user group: This group includes members from government, academia, the justice system, and the third sector, helping ensure the survey remains relevant. If interested in joining, please contact us
• ScotStat: Register with the ScotStat mailing list to receive updates and participate in working groups on Scottish Official statistics, including publications and questionnaire development.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to a number of people involved in the development, implementation and reporting of the 2023/24 Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS), in particular the 4,973 people across Scotland who took the time to provide their thoughts and opinions in the survey, as well as the interviewers and support staff who carried out the interviews. Thanks also go to colleagues at Ipsos and ScotCen for their support.