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9.1 Under the Bail etc. (Scotland) Act 1980, breaching the bail condition that no further offences would be committed while on bail was treated as an offence in its own right. Revisions made by the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1995 changed this. Breaching this bail condition ceased to be a separate offence for those given bail after 31 March 1996. Instead the courts are able to treat the fact that an offence had been committed while the offender was on bail as an aggravating factor in sentencing and to increase the severity of the sentence imposed for the offence. The effect of this change on the court proceedings statistics is described at Annex note 13.
9.2 Of the 139,800 convictions in 1998, 9,500 (7 per cent) involved a bail aggravation, i.e. the offender was on a bail order issued after 31 March 1996 at the time of offending. In just over half (55 per cent) of these cases no additional sentence was imposed for the bail aggravation. A further 400 (0.3 per cent) of the persons convicted in 1998 had a charge under the Bail (Scotland) Act 1980. The proportion of convictions which involved either a bail aggravation or a charge proved under the 1980 Bail Act was highest for theft of a motor vehicle (22 per cent), robbery (20 per cent), theft by opening lockfast places (20 per cent), housebreaking (19 per cent) and shoplifting (19 per cent).
10.1 The preceding sections of the bulletin present information on persons proceeded against in court. In those statistics, each occasion on which a person is proceeded against is counted once, so that one individual offender may be counted on a number of occasions throughout the year. This section includes information on individual offenders convicted for any crime or for the offences of breach of the peace or simple assault (i.e. convictions for motor vehicle offences and most minor statutory and common law offences are excluded).
10.2 In 1998, there were 76,900 convictions for any crime, breach of the peace or simple assault. These involved 50,600 individual offenders who were convicted on at least one occasion, 5 per cent fewer than in 1997. Over half (51 per cent) of the convictions were accounted for by the 26 per cent of individuals who were convicted on more than one occasion. Those aged under 21 were the most likely to have been convicted more than once: 35 per cent compared with 27 per cent for the 21-30 age group and 19 per cent for the over 30 age group. For males aged under 21, the average number of convictions for relevant offences was 1.8. This group accounted for 27 per cent of all convictions in 1998 compared with 34 per cent in 1989. This decline partly reflects the demographic fall in the number in this age group in the population which has taken place over this period.
10.3 In 1998, the peak age for convictions was 18. The proportion of 18 year olds in the Scottish population who were convicted on at least one occasion for a crime, breach of the peace or simple assault was much higher for males (8.1 per cent) than females (1.4 per cent).
Chart 8: Custodial sentences as a percentage of custody, community service order and probation order, 1988-1998
Chart 9: Individuals per 10,000 population with one or more charges proved in court in 1998 for a crime, breach of the peace or simple assault
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