This report presents counting rules produced by the Research Development and Statistics Directorate of the Home Office in the counting and classifying of notifiable offenses recorded by the police forces in England and Wales. The general rules are divided into 10 categories: (1) whether or when to record, (2) classification and reclassification, (3) no crimes, (4) one crime per victim, (5) the finished incident rule, (6) the principal crime rule, (7) crimes in more than one force, (8) detections, (9) other agencies, and (10) other issues. All the general rules have an overall application, yet, there are exceptions for certain types of crime, stated on the counting rules page for that particular crime type. The rules were revised to take into account the introduction of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS), adopted in April 2002. The main aims of these general counting rules are to improve clarity and to ensure consistency in the recording by police forces. Appendices include: National Crime Recording Standard, extract from CPS code for Crown prosecutors and National Crime Recording Steering Group Protocol for managing reports of crime occurring in other public police force areas.