This is one of a series of reports prepared under the provisions of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 . The Act gives the Statistics Authority power to re-assess whether the Code of Practice for Official Statistics continues to be complied with in relation to official statistics already designated as National Statistics. The report covers the set of statistics produced by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) reported as follows:
• Police Recorded Crime in Northern Ireland: Monthly update (Crime Monthly)
• Police Recorded Crime in Northern Ireland: Monthly update to 31 March (Crime Annual)
• Trends in Police Recorded Crime in Northern Ireland (Crime Trends)
The previous assessment of this set of statistics was reported in Assessment report 214 . The Authority has chosen to reassess these statistics due to the nature of concerns raised in our Assessment report 268 Statistics on Crime in England and Wales and in response to recommendations made by the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) in its report Caught red-handed: Why we can’t count on Police Recorded Crime statistics.
This report was prepared by the Authority’s Assessment team, and approved by the Regulation Committee on behalf of the Board of the Statistics Authority, based on the advice of the Director General for Regulation.