Current status: Answered by Angela Constance on 22 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to reduce levels of serious violent crime, in light of the Police Scotland quarterly data recording that, in the last decade, incidents have nearly doubled to over 1,000 per month, and what data it has collected as to the reasons for the increase, including data on the reasons for any variation between (a) each city, (b) urbans areas and (c) rural and island areas.
The accredited official statistics on recorded crime categorically do not show a doubling in serious violent crime over the past decade. Police recorded non-sexual crimes of violence increased by 9% between 2014-15 and 2023-24, with most of that rise due to the introduction of new crimes under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 and an increase in cyber-enabled threats and extortion (most often ‘sextortion’ type cases on which the Scottish Government launched a social media campaign across Scotland in November 2024, and will refresh in February 2025). As a subset of non-sexual crimes of violence, recorded serious assault and attempted murder also increased by 9% since 2014-15. However, levels have fallen over the past six years, down 21% from 4,361 in 2018-19 to 3,457 by 2023-24. This is replicated in other sources, with hospital admissions related to assault down by a third between 2014-15 and 2023-24. Information on rates of non-sexual violence by local authority area are available in the accredited official statistics. Despite this encouraging progress the Scottish Government are determined to do more. For further information on the actions being taken to reduce violence in Scotland, I refer the member to the answer for question S6W-32880 on 15 January 2025.
All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers