Home Office Counting Rules (HOCR) underpin the standards for the recording and counting of notifiable offences recorded by police forces in England and Wales (known as ‘recorded crime’).
There have been two major changes to the methodology used for the compilation of crime statistics since 1997. In April 1998 the HOCR were amended to count crimes on a per victim rather than per offence basis, with also significant extension of the coverage of offences included in the notifiable list.
In April 2002 the HOCR were revised to take account of the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) which was adopted with the aim of recording crime in a more victim-focused way and maintaining greater consistency between police forces in the recording of crime. The change meant that where a crime is reported by a victim to the police it will be recorded unless there is credible evidence to the contrary.