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Chapter One : Introduction
1.1 Section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 was implemented on 27 th June 2003 and states that 'an offence is aggravated by religious prejudice if -
(a) at the time of committing the offence or immediately before or after doing so, the offender evinces towards the victim (if any) of the offence malice and ill-will based on the victim's membership (or presumed membership) of a religious group, or of a social or cultural group with a perceived religious affiliation; or
(b) the offence is motivated (wholly or partly) by malice and ill-will towards members of a religious group, or of a social or cultural group with a perceived religious affiliation, based on their membership of that group'. 1
The Act states that, when sentencing, the Court must take the aggravation into account and must state the extent of, and the reasons for, the aggravation making a difference to the sentence which would otherwise have been imposed if the offence did not feature such an aggravation.
1.2 In response to Action Point 16 of the Action Plan on Tackling Sectarianism in Scotland, the Scottish Executive and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (hereafter COPFS) have worked together to provide an analysis of the cases containing a religious aggravation reported by the police to COPFS between 1 st January 2004 and 30 th June 2005. The specific aims of this research project were:
- to gain an understanding of the information collected on religious aggravated offences and provide practical recommendations in order to obtain a more systematic and robust evidence base;
- to provide an update of the research previously conducted and published by the COPFS (June, 2005); and
- to provide an in-depth examination of case information available from the COPFS.
1.3 The rest of this report is structured as follows. Chapter 2 will look at the methodology used and discuss the analytical limitations of the available data sources. Chapter 3 will present the findings of this study, and chapter 4 will present recommendations for future research activity.
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