Convictions for causing death by careless driving 2020-2023: FOI release

Information requested

Regarding convictions for causing death by careless driving in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023:

1. The number of prosecutions in each of the above years.
2. The sentences imposed by the court in each of those years.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have all of the information you have requested. Data on prosecutions, convictions and sentences in Scottish criminal courts are published as part of the Criminal Proceedings in Scotland statistical bulletin. Data are published by financial year and the most recent year for which data are available is 2021-22. We are therefore unable to provide data by calendar year or data from 2023.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have all the information you have requested.

With respect to the first part of your request, people proceeded against in Scottish criminal courts for a main charge of Causing death by driving dangerously, these are already published in Criminal Proceedings in Scotland 2021-22. Specifically, these figures are provided in Table 3a of the Main Bulletin Tables, which are available as Supporting documents.

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the
website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

With respect to the second part of your request, this is provided in the table below.

Table: People convicted of a main charge of causing death by driving dangerously, by main penalty, 2019-20 to 2021-22.

	2019-20	2020-211	2021-221
Total convicted	22	23	27
Custody	9	12	13
Community sentence	13	7	9
Monetary	-	2	4
Other	-	2	1

1. Data for 2020-21 and 2021-22 were affected by the pandemic and subsequent court closures, reduced court capacities and delayed cases where key participants tested positive for COVID-19. Volumes for these years should be treated with caution and not considered indicative of longer term trends.

About FOI

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