Chamber and committees

The Scottish Executive Central Research Unit is in the process of developing its Crime and Criminal Justice Research Programme for 2001-2004. The Programme will, in due course, be presented to Ministers for approval. It is not, therefore, possible at this stage to say what research will be commissioned over the next 5 years and how much will be earmarked for research on domestic violence. Currently, the Scottish Executive is funding an evaluation of the Zero Tolerance 'Respect' pilot. The research commenced in December 2000 and will run until July 2001. There is also a proposal to commission research into domestic abuse against men in early Spring 2001, to run until December 2001. The costs of individual research studies are not normally published as this could contravene commercial confidentiality.

We have put in place a wide range of criminal justice responses to tackle sexual violence including strengthening the sex offenders legislation, and providing resources to put more police on our streets. A White Paper in the spring will outline further proposals for legislation on serious and violent sexual offenders.

The Executive has no plans to launch such campaigns. However, as I made clear in my answer to question S1W-11531, a range of information about the Human Rights Act has already been made available to the public.

The Scottish Executive is currently conducting research in the area of domestic abuse. However, according to Yearnshire S (1997) "Analysis of cohort" published in Bewley S, Friend J, and Mezey G Violence Against Women, London, RCOG Press, in the context of domestic abuse it has been estimated that, on average, women are assaulted 35 times before they contact the police.

The recorded crime statistics collected centrally do not include information on the victims of the crimes and therefore cannot distinguish those crimes of sexual assault where the victims were children. The only information available derives from some internal research covering crimes of child sexual abuse recorded by the police in a three-month period. This research suggests that, although recorded crimes of child sexual abuse are rare, they represent a substantial proportion of crimes of indecency recorded by the police. The available information is given in the following table:Crimes of indecency¹ recorded by the police in Scotland,1 January - 31 March 1999

	All victims	Children	Per cent of crimes against children
Rape	188	65	35
Indecent assault	320	86	27
Lewd & libidinous practices	396	315	80
Indecent exposure	215	80	37
Sexual intercourse with a girl under 16	46	47	1022
Other	67	28	42
TOTAL	1,232	621	50

Notes:

1. Offences related to prostitution are excluded. 2. By definition, sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 is child sexual abuse. The information collected for the research was extracted from different computer systems from those holding recorded crime data, hence the anomaly.

The information is not available.

The types of evidence the police take into account when seeking corroborative evidence in cases of domestic assault are no different from those in any other type of crime, although such evidence can be more difficult to obtain for a number of reasons. The police will take a statement from the victim and any eye witnesses, although it is less likely in such cases that there will be eye witnesses. Statements would also be sought from neighbours and from children present in the house, if appropriate. Police officers attending domestic incidents can also give evidence about what they found when they arrived at the locus, the condition of the victim, the actions of the accused and so on. In addition, physical evidence can be sought, such as photographs of injuries, medical statements about injuries and expert evidence about how injuries could have been caused. DNA, fingerprint and analysis of, for example, bloodstains can also be used, as can previous history evidence from police records.

There is no specific charge of "domestic assault". However, statistics on domestic abuse recorded by the police in Scotland are contained in the Scottish Executive Statistical Bulletin (CrJ/2000/5), published in August 2000, a copy of which is available in SPICe (Bib. no. 1770). The bulletin presents statistics on incidents of domestic abuse returned by the eight Scottish police forces between 1 April and 31 December 1999. This is the first time that such data has been collated.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The Crime Prevention Unit of the Justice Department co-ordinates the work of Scottish Executive departments in tackling domestic abuse.