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. 2023 Feb 1;8:47. [Version 1] doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.18720.1

Table 2. Variables in the dataset provided by A&S police.

Variable type Variable name Description % missing
(100%=6413)
Available for researchers?
Administrative occurrence_id ID of the crime 0% Yes 1
offendercount How many offenders were involved
in the crime
0% Yes
Date occurrencecreateddate System generated, triggered by a
111/999 call about an occurrence
that the officer later declares a
crime, or similar.
0% No (however, age available) 2
occurrencereporteddate Automatically entered when
the crime occurrence is created
(generated from STORM 1 and
pushed to Niche 2 ).
0% No (however, age available) 2
occurrencefromdate Date of the offence, person
reported via 111/999 or any other
way
0.1% No (however, age available) 2
Type/severity
of offence
currentoffencegroup 12 category variable giving type of
offence
0% Yes
currentoffencehocode Offence Home Office code 0% No 3
currentoffencedescription Offence description 0% No 3
scorexmultiplier Crime severity score 0% Yes
Disposal type currentclassificationhooutcom Offence-level. Home office
outcome code and description
0% No
offenderclassificationconcat Individual-level. String variable
with up to 6 terms. This has been
split into 6 separate variables.
0% No
Flag domesticabuseindicator Crime involved domestic abuse
(no/yes)
0% Yes
knifecrimeindicator Crime involved a knife (no/yes) 0% Yes
drugsflagged Crime involved drugs (no/yes) 0% Yes
alcohol Crime involved alcohol 98.2% No 4
currentsubstanceusedbyoffend Offender affected by: alcohol;
alcohol and drugs; drugs; not
affected; not known.
This flag started being used in the
mid-2000s but has since fallen into
disuse. Not mandatory field.
95.2% (99.0% if not
known category is
treated as missing)
No 4
Magistate’s Court casefileid ID of Magistrates’ court case 87.9% Yes 1
casefilecreateddateandtime Date of court case 88.2% (3.0% of those
with a casefileid)
No (however, age
available) 2
verdict Verdict of Magistrates’ court case
(Not guilty; guilty)
92.5% (37.9% of those
with a casefileid)
No 4

1A pseudonymised version of these variables is available.

2Age in months has been derived for each of the date variables.

3The Home Office code, and corresponding description, variables are not available to researchers due to a large number of codes having small numbers of records. However, researchers can specify an aggregated variable - this will be available provided numbers in each grouping are adequate.

4These variables will not be released due to a high proportion of missing data.