This dataset provides police recorded crime counts and related resident population estimates for all violence and burglary (housebreaking in Scotland) (data on burglary and violence is provided separately) for the financial years 2004-5 to 2015-16. This is a longitudinal data set with data aggregated by year to financial years (1st April in one year to 31st March in following year) for the years 2004-5 to 2015-16 inclusive. Data runs from 1st April 2004 as this is the date from which all nations had national crime recording standards for police recorded crime. The dataset has been prepared to provide comparative data at the regional level - in this case - local authority districts for Scotland, and Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) as at 2015-16 in England and Wales. Data for England and Wales are directly comparable. As Scotland, and England and Wales, have different legal systems, and different police crime recording standards, the recorded crime definitions of violence and burglary (housebreaking) used here aim to provide the best available comparable data between the countries, but precise definitions of violence and burglary (housebreaking) used in the Scottish, and the English and Welsh, legal systems are not the same. Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs), previously also called Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, are comprised of one or more English or Welsh district or unitary local authorities. Over time, some CSPs have merged and / or added additional local authorities to the partnership, this may also lead to change of partnership name. The CSPs used here are those current as listed in Home Office open data tables on recorded crime for 2015-16 (downloaded in February 2017). Police recorded crime data are data reported to and recorded by the police. Not all crimes are reported to the police, and not all reported crime are subsequently recorded. Data used from England Wales to derive this dataset do not have National Statistics status, this was withdrawn in January 2014. Data for Scotland had National Statistics status withdrawn in July 2014 but reinstated in September 2016. These data are derived entirely from open data as defined in the Open Government Licence version 3 (OGL3).The Applied Quantitative Methods Network (AQMeN) Phase II is a Research Centre that aims to develop a dynamic and pioneering set of projects to improve our understanding of current social issues in the UK and provide policy makers and practitioners with the evidence to build a better future. Three principal cross-cutting research strands will exploit existing high-quality data resources: Education and Social Stratification will focus on social class differences in entry to, progression in and attainment at tertiary education and how they affect individuals' labour market outcomes and their civic participation; Crime and Victimisation will explore the dramatic change in crime rates in Scotland and other jurisdictions and examines the determinants and impact of criminal careers amongst populations of offenders; and Urban Segmentation and Inequality which will create innovative new measures of social segmentation and combine these with cutting-edge longitudinal and sorting-model techniques to explore the causes of neighbourhood segmentation, household location choice and neighbourhood inequalities. Five additional projects will focus on the referendum on Scottish independence, location dynamics and ethnicity and exploiting existing datasets. The research will fed into training activities and knowledge exchange events aimed at boosting capacity in quantitative methods amongst the UK social science community.

Data was downloaded from websites and combined using Microsoft Access and Excel. The data was placed into a single excel worksheet which includes tabs with the data, and information on lookups and crime definitions. The excel workbook contains recorded crime count data for England, Wales and Scotland, for all violent crimes (excluding murder and manslaughter) and burglary (England and Wales) and all violent crimes (excluding murder and culpable homicide) and all housebreakings (Scotland). Data were aggregated for financial years for 12 years 2004-5 to 2015-16 inclusive. Variables were created for counts of police recorded crimes of all violence in each financial year, and all burglary (housebreaking) in each financial year. Crime rates and logged crime rates based on mid year population estimates downloaded from the Nomis - official labour market statistics website were also calculated and added as variables to the datasets. There are separate sheets of data within the worksheet for England and Wales which have the same legal system, and Scotland, which has a different legal system. Crimes included from England and Wales are a 'best fit' to the Scottish crimes (as more detailed crime data by crime type is provided by the UK Home Office for England and Wales than by the Scottish government). The England and Wales data includes information on which Police Force Area (Force Name) and English or Welsh Region the CSP falls within. There has been a single police force in Scotland since April 2013 and there are no Scottish sub-regions (so no data on police force areas or sub-regions a local authority fall within is supplied for Scotland). No data on legacy Scottish police forces is provided. There also sheets of data with England Wales and Scotland combined. A country code (England =22, Wales=14 or Scotland=12), and a Scotland Yes variable (1 if in Scotland otherwise 0) are provided in this sheet but not details on Force Area or sub-region are provided as these are not provided for Scotland. Specific work has been undertaken to provide a complete dataset for England and Wales Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) going back to 2004-5 based on English and Welsh CSPs as defined at 2015-16. A list of Community Safety Partnership as at 2015-16, with the name commonly used in the Home Office open data tables, along with the Police Force Area and Sub-Region the CSP falls within, and the unique alphanumeric codes of the local authority (or local authorities where there are more than one) that make up the CSP is provided in the sheet labelled 'CSP201516HONameNomisLA' in the excel worksheet: RegionalCrimeTrends_ScotlandLAs_EnglandWalesCSPs_2004_2016.xlsx. Additional information on assumptions made to create a time series of England and Wales CSPs based on CSPs at 2015-16 from 2004-5 to 2015-16, including list of all CSP names used as a lookup in all years, and notes on assumptions made for each CSP to match data across years, are provided in the sheets 'ReadmeEnglandWalesCSPs' and 'Appendix_EWCSPs'. The sheet 'NOMISPopulationLACSPLookup' provides a lookup table which lists all unitary and district local authorities as at April 2015 and their unique code (as used on www.nomisweb.co.uk and commonly by Office for National Statistics) of the Community Safety Partnership (CSP) they are part of (unique code and name) as used in the Home Office Open Data tables for 2015-16 recorded crime data. Work was also undertaken to select a broad definition of all violence and all burglary (housebreaking) that was broadly comparable between the Scottish and English and Welsh legal jurisdictions. Recorded crime definitions used can be found in the tabs labelled 'DefinitionsandCodesEnglandWales' and 'DefinitionsandCodesScotland' of the excel worksheet. For further information see the metadata tabs in the worksheet and the file RegionalCrimeTrends2004-2016_Readme.txt.