The Scottish Government

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3. Notes on statistics used in this bulletin

3.1 Background

In response to the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, the Scottish Executive produced an action plan to progress the recommendations set out in the MacPherson report, which included the setting up of a statistical collection covering racist incidents.

The definition of a racist incident as given by Sir William MacPherson in his Report on the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry is:

" A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person."

In the context of the data for this bulletin, the above definition was used.

3.2 Returns

The return from which figures in this bulletin are taken is a simple count of the number of incidents recorded by the police. Only returns from the eight Scottish home forces are included in this bulletin.

3.3 Recording Issues

In one incident, one or more victims may be involved, and one or more perpetrators. There may be no criminal element, or several crimes or offences may occur - e.g. a house may be broken into and vandalised and the occupants assaulted - all the offences are counted.

In Scotland, assault is a common law offence. In order to distinguish between serious and minor assaults police forces use a common definition of what is a serious assault.

Central Scotland Police have a robust system in place for recording and monitoring racist incidents. However, due to changes to their recording systems between 2003/04 and 2004/05, they were unable to supply the detailed information requested for 2003/04.

3.4 Reporting Practices

These statistics do not record every occurrence of racist incidents in Scotland. Not all incidents are reported to the police. The 2004 Scottish Crime and Victimisation Survey ² estimated that approximately 44 per cent of total crimes came to the attention of the police.

3.5 Crimes and offences cleared up

The definition of "cleared up" is noted below. This definition came into force with effect from 1 April 1996.

A crime or offence is regarded as cleared up where there exists a sufficiency of evidence under Scots law, to justify consideration of criminal proceedings notwithstanding that a report is not submitted to the Procurator Fiscal because either

(i) by standing agreement with the Procurator Fiscal, the police warn the accused due to the minor nature of the offence, or

(ii) reporting is inappropriate due to the non-age of the accused, death of the accused or other similar circumstances.

3.6 Definitions

Racially-aggravated - the offender evinces towards the person affected malice and ill-will based on that person's membership (or presumed membership) of a racial group; or the course of conduct or action is motivated (wholly or partly) by malice and ill-will towards members of a racial group based on their membership of that group.

Racially-aggravated harassment - a racially-aggravated course of conduct, which amounts to harassment

Racially-aggravated conduct - to act in a manner, including speech, which is racially aggravated and which causes, or is intended to cause, a person alarm or distress.

Ethnicity - forces were asked to use the standard 13 groups listed below to record the ethnic group of victim and perpetrator. An individual is asked to 'self declare' their ethnic origin.

Ethnic Groups collected

Incident - an incident is any communication by whatever means about a matter which comes to the police attention which they may be required to act upon.

Crime - an act committed in violation of the law (common law or statute). Any single incident may include a number of crimes, or there might be no criminal element.

Victim - in any incident, there could be one or more victims.

Perpetrator - in any incident, there could be one or more perpetrators.

The following totals indicate the data collected. Note that crimes, victims and perpetrators can have multiple entries per incident as well as multiple entries with one another. (i.e. one crime may have several victims/perpetrators):

Total numbers of data by financial year

3.7 Classification

Contraventions of Scottish criminal law are divided for statistical purposes into crimes and offences. The term "crime" is generally used for the more serious criminal acts; the less serious are termed "offences", although the term "offence" may also be used in relation to serious breaches of criminal law. The distinction is made only for working purposes and the "seriousness" of the offence is generally related to the maximum sentence that can be imposed.

The detailed classification of crimes and offences used by The Scottish Executive to collect criminal statistics contains about 360 codes. These are grouped in the bulletin as shown on page 17.

3.8 Census figures for Scottish Population 2001

The following table gives the most recent census figures for the ethnicity of the population of Scotland.

Scottish Population by Ethnic Group, 2001

Source: Analysis of Ethnicity in the 2001 Census

Footnote

2. Further details about the 2004 Scottish Crime and Victimisation Survey can be obtained from the summary findings paper available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/2006/07/14152750/0

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