Glasgow City's crime rate of *** crimes per 10,000 people was the highest of any region of Scotland in 2024/25. The rate for the whole of Scotland was *** per 10,000 people, which appears to be driven by low crime in places such as the Shetland Islands, with almost all Scottish cities reporting higher than average crime rates. In Dundee, the crime rate was *** crimes per 10,000 people, while in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, the crime rate was *** per 10,000 population. Comparisons with the rest of the UK When compared with the rest of the United Kingdom, Scotland has experienced a noticeable decline in its overall crime rate. In 2008/09 for example, Scotland's crime rate was higher than that of England and Wales, as well as Northern Ireland, the other two jurisdictions in the UK. In 2022/23, however, Scotland's crime rate was the lowest in the UK, with the crime rate in England and Wales rising noticeably during the same period. Scotland's homicide rate has also fallen, from being the highest in the UK in 2002/03, to the lowest in 2022/23. What types of crime increased in recent years? The overall number of crimes recorded by the Scottish police since the mid 2010s has remained broadly stable, with ******* offences reported in 2024/25. Specific types of crime have, however, increased in recent times. In 2024/25, for example, there were ****** sexual crimes reported by the police, compared with ***** ten years earlier. As in the rest of the UK, shoplifting has increased rapidly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching a peak of ****** offences in the 2024/25 reporting year.

In the 2024/25 reporting year, there were 52,406 crimes recorded in Glasgow City, the most of any local authority in Scotland. The Shetland Islands, by comparison, had just 414 crimes recorded in the same period.

The 694 data zones in Glasgow ranked in 2012, 2009, and 2006 for the crime domain in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). Each data zone also has a local ranking i.e. within Glasgow to ease comparison for that data zone over time and within the city. Intermediate Geographies and political geographies such as the 2011 Scottish Parliamentary Constituencies, multi-member wards are also included. Datazones nest directly into intermediate geographies and local authorities but do not fit exactly into higher geographies like multi-member wards, SIMD FAQ The Scottish Government describes this index as follows, 'The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation identifies small area concentrations of multiple deprivation across all of Scotland in a consistent way. It allows effective targeting of policies and funding where the aim is to wholly or partly tackle or take account of area concentrations of multiple deprivation. The SIMD ranks small areas (called data zones) from most deprived (ranked 1) to least deprived (ranked 6,505). People using the SIMD will often focus on the data zones below a certain rank, for example, the 5%, 10%, 15% or 20% most deprived data zones in Scotland.' How to use the SIMD - Scottish Government Guidance Data extracted 2013-12-17 from opendatascotland.org and data.glasgow.gov.uk Data supplied by The Scottish Government Licence: None simd-crime-2006-2012-glasgow-v2.xlsx - https://dataservices.open.glasgow.gov.uk/Download/Organisation/728522f0-86da-48c6-8f75-1649934eb8a4/Dataset/e021aa52-e858-4770-bd2b-733a9c53d84d/File/56b9ecbd-340b-4f6c-8c26-adfd0205c04e/Version/8d4fa076-3db5-4c40-ab0a-531ba242aeb0

Between 2019/20 and 2023/24 there have been 47 homicide cases in the Glasgow City local authority area of Scotland, the most of any Scottish local authority in that time period. The City of Edinburgh had the second-highest number of homicides, at 24, while there were zero homicides in the Outer Hebrides.

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There were 11,249 handling offensive weapon crimes recorded by the police in Scotland in 2024/25, a peak for this type of crime during the provided time period.

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The crime rate in the United Kingdom was highest in England and Wales in 2024/25, at **** crimes per 1,000 people, compared with Scotland, which had **** crimes per 1,000 population, and Northern Ireland, at **** crimes per 1,000 people in 2023/24. During this time period, the crime rate of England and Wales has usually been the highest in the UK, while Scotland's crime rate has declined the most, falling from **** crimes per 1,000 people in 2002/03, to just **** by 2021/22. Overall crime on the rise In 2024/25, there were approximately **** million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales. Although this was a slight decline on the previous two years, it was still far higher than during the mid-2010s. While crime declined quite significantly between 2002/03 and 2013/14, this trend went into reverse in subsequent years. While there are no easy explanations for the recent uptick in crime, it is possible that reduced government spending on the police service was at least partly to blame. In 2009/10, for example, government spending on the police stood at around **** billion pounds, with this cut to *****billion in 2013/14. One of the most visible consequences of these cuts was a sharp reduction in the number of police officers in the UK. Between 2010 and 2017, the number of officers fell by 20,000, although the number of officers returned to pre-austerity levels by the 2020s. A creaking justice system During the period of austerity, the Ministry of Justice as a whole saw its budget sharply decline, from *** billion pounds in 2009/10 to just **** billion by 2015/16. Although there has been a reversal of the cuts to budgets and personnel in the justice system, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the depleted service hard in 2020. A backlog of cases grew rapidly, putting a strain on the ability of the justice system to process cases quickly. In 2022, for example, it took on average *** days for a crown court case to go from offence to conclusion, compared with *** days in 2018. There is also the issue of overcrowding in prisons, with the number of prisoners in England and Wales dangerously close to operational capacity in recent years.

In 2024/25, there were 26,617 crimes against public justice recorded by the police in Scotland, the highest figure for this type of crime since 2011/12, when there were 26,635 crimes of this type recorded.

There were 15,253 fraud crimes recorded by the police in Scotland in 2024/25, a slight fall on the previous year, but a significant increase compared with previous reporting years, such as in 2019/20 when there were 11,939 of these offences.

There were approximately 7,381 housebreaking offences recorded in Scotland in 2024/25,compared with 9,033 in the previous reporting year.

In 2023, there were four homicide offences recorded in the Northern Ireland policing district of Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon, and one each in seven other districts. In this reporting year, there were 11 homicides in Northern Ireland, with three policing districts recording no homicide offences.

In 2024/25, there were 104 homicide offences recorded in London, the most of any region of the United Kingdom during that time period. North West England, which includes the large cities of Manchester and Liverpool, had 69 homicides and had the second-highest number of homicides. In the same reporting period, the constituent countries of Wales and Northern Ireland reported the fewest homicides, at 23, and 13 respectively. Homicides in the UK falling despite recent uptick Since 2002/03, all three jurisdictions of the UK; England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, have seen their homicide rates fall, with Scotland seeing the steepest decline. The most significant decline in homicides in this period occurred between 2002/03 and 2014/15, which saw the annual number of homicides in England and Wales half from over 1,000 to around 500. This trend was suddenly reversed from 2015/16 onwards, with homicides rising to around 700 per year between 2016/17 and 2019/20. While homicides fell back to 535 in 2024/25, it remains to be seen if this pattern will continue. Knives used in almost half of all murders In 2024/25 a knife or other sharp instruments were used in approximately 46 percent of all murders in England and Wales, making this, by far, the most common method of killing in that reporting year. The overall number of knife homicides reached 262 in 2023/24, compared with 243 in the previous year. Firearm homicides were much rarer than knife homicides, with only 22 taking place in the same reporting year, and homicides caused by shooting only accounting for 3.9 percent of homicides overall.

In the 2023/24 reporting year there were estimated to have been approximately 5,400 fraud offences recorded in Northern Ireland, compared with 4,671 in the previous year.

Data on the number of abductions recorded by the police in Scotland from reporting year 2008/09 to reporting year 2019/20 shows that since the high of *** offences recorded at the start of this period, the number of abductions in Scotland has fluctuated between *** and *** recorded offences, with *** cases reported in 2019/20.

There were 1,064 public order offences recorded by the police in Northern Ireland between in the 2023/24 reporting year, which was a slight decrease compared with the previous year.

In 2024/25, there were 51,583 offences recorded by the police in England and Wales as 'sexual assault on a female aged 13 and over', the most of any sexual offence in this reporting year.

Between April 2021 and March 2022 there were over 4,000 sexual offences recorded by the police in Northern Ireland, of which 1,210 were rape offences, the most of any sexual offence in this time period.