Classification of Police codes for offences

The police codes for offences are also called «STRASAK-codes» or «statistical groups». From the 1980’s and onwards, the police and other agencies in the justice sector have used this classification to register offences in the criminal case registers. The police codes for offences, with corresponding versions, are essential for Statistics Norway’s classification Standard for Type of offence. Which offence codes make up the different types of offences, are described under «Correspondences» attached to each version of Standard for Type of offence. The police codes for offences consist of groupings and specifications of punishable acts, depending on which penal provisions are violated – and in some cases other aspect of the act are also weighted in. Each code comes with a short text, meant to simplify the more judicial wordings. Furthermore, both the codes and the short text are used in the police’ letter templates when informing involved parties about the progress of a criminal case. The groupings and classifications of the offence codes are widely used in the police’ own operations statistics, both within the police department and in publications available to the public. Since the introduction of these offences codes, more than 1 200 codes have been used to classify offences, all of which are included in these statistical classifications. However, many of the codes are discontinued and «not active», and have been replaced by new codes. For this reason, they are rarely used in present day proceedings of criminal cases. However, discontinued codes are still occasionally found in the raw data for the current crime statistics, and are significant to the raw data for previous statistical volumes. Thus, which penal legislation and offence codes that are actively used, can vary over time and between the raw data for the different crime statistics. Furthermore, the time of the offence can be decisive in deciding which penal legislation and corresponding set of codes is used in the individual criminal case. The individual versions made available in Statistical Classifications and Code Lists include information about which codes were available for registration in the police registers, derived from the information Statistics Norway has received along with the raw data files for the statistics on Offences reported to the police. Normally, the information about offence codes will render how the codes are defined in the police register as of 14 January in the year following the statistical year. Once a code is discontinued and marked as “not active”, it is not employable for registering offences which have happened after the date of discontinuation. The Police Directorate (POD) is responsible for the content and maintenance of the codes. However, the offence codes are of significant importance to a wide range of operations, and Statistics Norway participate in a cooperation with a mandate to maintain and improve these codes.

Police codes for offences 2025

Police codes for offences 2016 significantly differs from previous versions of the standard. This is due to the Penal Code of 2005 and corresponding offence codes coming into effect in 1 October 2015. The new codes are adjusted to the new penal code, and were worked out through cooperation between POD (with several subdivisions), the Attorney General Office and Statistics Norway. As a result, about 430 new codes for registering offences were implemented into the police registers to replace a similar number of codes corresponding to the Penal Code of 1902. The content of the Police codes for offences 2016 are published on the back of information received from the Police ICT Service (PIT) on 28 February 2017. Codes added(0588, 0589, 0590, 0687, 0688, 0689, 0988, 1691, 1692) and names harmonized according to legislation (0660, 0664, 1064, 7199, 8503, 8515, 8521, 8531, 8533). Code 8533 replaces code 8571 (now non-active code). In addition 20 active and non-active codes have been provied with gender-neutral terms.