Compare crime

In response to comments in Gareth Rose's report "Crimebusters struggling in Scotland" (23 March) and Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton's letter (26 March), I wanted to correct a misapprehension about the ability to compare crime surveys conducted in Scotland with those in other parts of the UK.

As part of the team that conducted the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey I can confirm that the crime surveys are not conducted in different ways in different parts of the UK as was quoted in the article. The methods of the current surveys used in the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) report featured in the article are now intentionally very similar.

The IPPR report's author does urge caution in comparing across geography, not because of different methods being used, but because of differences in criminal law. This leads to difficulties in comparing a small number of individual crimes. As the author makes clear, it is perfectly valid to draw comparisons about larger groups of crimes such as violent crime or about the overall level of crime in different parts of the UK.

The survey that measures crime in England and Wales has used the same method consistently each year since 2001, so it is easy to spot changes in crime levels. In Scotland 2008-09 was the first year of using this comparable method. Previous crime surveys in Scotland have been conducted less frequently and with a smaller number of interviews, so it makes it harder to sort out what has happened to crime over time.

PAT MACLEOD

TNS-BMRB

Atholl Crescent

Edinburgh