In 2023/24 the crime rate in Scotland was 561 crimes per 10,000 people, one of the lowest crime rates recorded in this time period. After peaking at 1,007 in 2004/05, the crime rate in Scotland has fallen significantly, reaching a low in the 2021/22 reporting year.

Dundee City's crime rate of 847 crimes per 10,000 people was the highest of any region of Scotland in 2023/24. The rate for the whole of Scotland was 550 per 10,000 people, which appears to be driven by low crime in places such as the Orkney and Shetland Islands, with almost all Scottish cities reporting higher than average crime rates. In Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, the crime rate was 812 crimes per 10,000 people, while in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, the crime rate was 679 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 as of 2022/23. Theft and fraud drive recent crime uptick There was a slight increase in the number of crimes recorded by the Scottish police in 2023/24, when compared with the previous year. Although many other types of crimes declined during this reporting year, the number of theft offences has increased, reaching 111,054 offences in 2023/24. Fraud crime has also increased significantly in recent years, with 16,789 offences in 2022/23, compared with just 6,913 in 2014/15. The recent uptick in fraud and theft offences is also reflected in the jurisdiction England and Wales.

There were 299,780 crimes recorded by the police in Scotland in 2023/24, a similar figure to the previous year, when there were 289,352 crimes reported. During this time period, there is a clear trend of falling crime, with 2004/05 having the highest number of crimes, and 2021/22 the fewest.

In 2023/24 there were 71,463 non-sexual violent crimes recorded by the police in Scotland. The number of violent crimes in Scotland has generally fallen throughout this period, from a peak of 92,266 in 2002/03, to a low of 61,913 in 2020/21.

In the 2023/24 reporting year, there were 50,558 crimes recorded in Glasgow City, the most of any local authority in Scotland. The Orkney Islands by comparison had just 521 crimes recorded in the same period.

The homicide rate in Scotland was 10.4 homicides per one million people in the 2023/24 reporting year, compared with 26.9 homicides per one million people in 2004/05.

The most recent Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) was published in January 2020. This dataset contains the indicators that were used to calculate SIMD 2016 and SIMD 2020 crime domains.

This statistic shows the injuries sustained by victims of violent crime as a percentage of all violent crimes that involved injuries, as recorded by the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey in the fiscal year 2017/18. Minor bruising or black eyes were the most common injury at 60 percent, followed by scratches or minor cuts and severe bruising. On the other end, 1 percent of victims got severe concussion or lost consciousness.

A detailed overview of crimes and offences recorded by the police over the past decade, for Scotland, police force areas and local authorities.

Source agency: Scottish Government

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Recorded Crime in Scotland

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) is a social survey which asks people about their experiences and perceptions of crime in Scotland. The survey is an important resource for both the government and public of Scotland. Respondents are selected at random from the Postal Address File and participation in the survey is entirely voluntary. The main aims of the SCJS are to:

• provide reliable statistics on people's experience of crime in Scotland, including services provided to victims of crime
• assess the varying risk of crime for different groups of people in the population
• examine trends in the level and nature of crime in Scotland over time
• collect information about people's experiences of, and attitudes on a range of crime and justice related issues

An important role of the SCJS is to provide an alternative and complementary measure of crime to police recorded crime statistics. For further details of the scope and methodology of the SCJS, please see documentation. Information about the survey and links to publications may be found on the Scottish Government's Scottish Crime and Justice Survey webpages.

Background and history of the SCJS
Previous surveys of victimisation in Scotland began with the Scottish components of the 1982 and 1988 sweeps of the British Crime Survey (BCS) (held at the Archive under SNs 4368 and 4599) The Scottish element of the 1988 BCS was also known as the Scottish Areas Crime Survey and coverage was limited in those early surveys to the areas south of the Caledonian Canal. From 2012, the BCS has been renamed the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) (held under GN 33174).

The first independent Scotland-only crime survey was commissioned by the Scottish Office in 1993 under the title of the Scottish Crime Survey (SCS) and was followed by repeated sweeps in 1996 (both years held together under SN 3813), and again in 2000 (SN 4542) and 2003 (SN 5756). In 2004 the survey underwent both a name change, to the Scottish Crime and Victimisation Survey (SCVS) (SN 5757), and a major methodological change, with a move away from in-home face-to-face interviewing to telephone interviewing. However, the 2006 SCVS (SN 5784) returned to face-to-face interviewing after it was shown that the robustness of the data produced by the 2004 telephone survey could not be substantiated. From 2008-2009, the series name was changed to the present title, the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, and it moved to a repeated annual cross-sectional schedule based on financial year. From 2012-13 the SCJS moved from annual to biennial survey covering the financial year however, the 2014-15 survey was the last biennial survey and currently the SCJS is conducted on an annual basis. See the documentation for further details.

Special Licence data
From 2012-13 only the Main Questionnaire data are available under standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement. The Victim Form and Self-Completion data are available under Special Licence (SL). The SL data have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users of the SL version will need to complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables in order to get permission to use that version.

The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, 2021-2022 contains data from the SCJS Main Questionnaire only and is based on 5,516 face-to-face interviews with adults (aged 16 or over) living in private households in Scotland. The Victim Form questionnaire dataset is not included in this study.

Documentation

Users should note that the User Guide document was written to accompany the 2008/09 study, but the depositor advises that it is the latest version available and should be included here.

Main Topics:

The SCJS main questionnaire data file covers perceptions of crime, experience of and opinions on the justice system and police, experiences of cyber crime, and demographic details for the respondent and their household. Modular sections which are asked, respectively, of a quarter of the sample includes questions on local community, sentencing, civil law, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) and harassment. It also contains the victim form screener (types of crimes which respondents / households may have experienced in the 12 months prior to interview) but data from the victim form itself (details of and experiences resulting from crimes) will be published as a separate dataset.

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

Combined Violent and Property Crime Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in Scotland County, NC was 342.00000 Known Incidents in January of 2021, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, Combined Violent and Property Crime Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in Scotland County, NC reached a record high of 809.00000 in January of 2008 and a record low of 57.00000 in January of 2016. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for Combined Violent and Property Crime Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in Scotland County, NC - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on June of 2025.

In the 2023/24 reporting year there were 299,780 crimes recorded by the police in Scotland, with 111,054 of these crimes categorized as crimes of dishonesty, the most common crime type in this year.

Crimes and offences in which a firearm was alleged to have been used or stolen over the past decade at police force and Scotland level.

Source agency: Scottish Government

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Recorded Crime and Offences Involving Firearms, Scotland

Combined Violent and Property Crime Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in Scotland County, MO was 22.00000 Known Incidents in January of 2018, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, Combined Violent and Property Crime Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in Scotland County, MO reached a record high of 58.00000 in January of 2012 and a record low of 22.00000 in January of 2015. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for Combined Violent and Property Crime Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in Scotland County, MO - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on June of 2025.

With a crime rate of 132.4 per 1,000 people Cleveland, in North East England, had the highest crime rate of all the police force areas in England and Wales in 2023/24. High crime rates are evident in other areas of northern England, such as West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester at 121.7 and 117.7 respectively. In the English capital, London, the crime rate was 105.1 per 1,000 people. The lowest crime rate in England was in the relatively rural areas of Wiltshire in South West England, as well as North Yorkshire. Overall crime on the in England and Wales The number of crimes in England and Wales reached approximately 6.74 million in 2022/23, falling slightly to 6.66 million in 2023/24. Overall crime has been rising steadily across England and Wales for almost a decade, even when adjusted for population rises. In 2022/23, for example, the crime rate in England and Wales was 93.6, the highest since 2006/07. When compared with the rest of the United Kingdom, England and Wales is something of an outlier, as crime rates for Scotland and Northern Ireland have not followed the same trajectory of rising crime. Additionally, there has been a sharp increase in violent crimes and sexual offences since the mid-2010s in England and Wales. While theft offences have generally been falling, the number of shoplifting offences reached a peak of 440,000 in 2023/24. Troubled justice system under pressure Alongside rising crime figures, many indicators also signal that the justice system is getting pushed to breaking point. The percentage of crimes that are solved in England and Wales was just 5.7 percent in 2023, with sexual offences having a clearance rate of just 3.6 percent. Crimes are also taking far longer than usual to pass through the justice system. In 2023, it took an average of 676 days for a crown court case to reach a conclusion from the time of the offence. This is most likely related to the large backlog of cases in crown courts, which reached over 62,200 in 2023. Furthermore, prisons in England and Wales are dangerously overcrowded, with just 1,458 spare prison places available as of June 2024.

There were 9.7 homicides for every million people in England and Wales in 2023/24, unchanged from the previous year, but a decline when compared to 2021/22, when the rate was 11.6. In 2022/23, the homicide rate among UK jurisdictions was highest in Scotland, at 10.4 homicides per million people, and lowest in Northern Ireland, which had a homicide rate of 6.8. Throughout this provided time period, the homicide rate for Scotland has declined substantially. From 2003/04 to 2013/14, Scotland had the highest homicide rate among UK jurisdictions, with a peak of 27 homicides per million people recorded in 2004/05. Uptick in violent crimes since the mid-2010s In 2002/03, there were 1,047 homicides in England and Wales, but by 2013/14 this had fallen to just 533, with similar declines also evident in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Unlike the in the latter two jurisdictions, however, there was a noticeable uptick in homicides in England and Wales from 2016/17 onwards, with 720 recorded in 2019/20. Additionally, there has been a surge in violence against the person offences in England and Wales, rising from around 600,000 in 2012/13, to more than 2.1 million ten years later in 2022/23. It is unclear what exactly is driving this trend, but in an attempt to reverse it, the UK government has started to increase the manpower and funding available to UK police forces. Struggles of the UK justice system Recent boosts to police funding come after almost a decade of austerity was imposed on most public services. Although some government departments were protected from this, the Ministry of Justice saw its budget decline from 9.1 billion pounds in 2009/10,to just 7.35 billion pounds in 2015/16. Although the Justice Budget has also increased recently, there are several signs that the system as a whole is under pressure. There is a significant backlog of cases at Crown Courts in England and Wales, with serious offences taking an average of almost two years to pass through the court system. Meanwhile, prisons are struggling with severe capacity issues, along with upticks in violence and self-harm.

Between April 2023 and March 2024, there were over 14,484 sexual crimes recorded by the police in Scotland, with 5,025 of these falling under the crime category of sexual assault.