Comparability

Comparability - geographical

Kriminologiska institutionen at the University of Stockholm published a birth cohort crime statistics in 2012. The Swedish statistics is designed after the same principles as the Danish statistics except that persons born outside Sweden are not included in the study. It is mentioned in the Swedish statistics that the birth cohort crime increases when immigrants are included.

Comparability over time

Comparability over time can be affected by law amendments in terms of changes in the penalties for certain types of offences. It can be the case if a conviction includes both a main charge and one or several secondary charges. Practice is to register the conviction with the offence of the main charge, i.e. the offence that can cause the most severe penalty. Tougher penalties regarding a certain type of offence can therefore imply that more convictions will be registered with this kind of offence. Presumably, this can be a contributory explanation for the increasing percentage of the birth cohorts convicted for violence.

Furthermore, the development in the percentage of a birth cohort who have been convicted at a certain age, can also be affected by the development of the share of the reported crimes that are cleared up and by the developments in mortality and migration.

Coherence - cross domain

The statistics on birth cohort crime build on the same data source as the statistics on convictions. Yet, the unit in convictions is the criminal conviction while in birth cohort crime the unit is persons born in a given year. Convictions include all convictions made during a calendar year while birth cohort crime includes convictions related to birth cohorts. Finally, convictions include all convictions while birth cohort crime only include convictions where the person have been found guilty and only convictions for violation of the penal code.

Coherence - internal

Data are internally consistent.