Question reference: S5W-34381
- Asked by: Adam Tomkins, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 8 January 2021
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Current status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 1 February 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how many arrests were made for the common law offence of culpable and reckless conduct in (a) 2018, (b) 2019 and (c) 2020.
Answer
The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of arrests made by the police. Information is available on the number of culpable and reckless conduct (not with firearms) crimes recorded by the police, and is provided in Table 1. It should be noted that, in addition to crimes recorded under common law, these figures may include a small number of crimes recorded under statutory legislation. In addition, where the act causes serious injury this is recorded under a different crime category and therefore not included in these figures. In 2019-20, 52 crimes of causing serious injury etc. by culpable and reckless conduct were recorded.
Table 1: Number of crimes of culpable and reckless conduct (not with firearms) recorded by the police, 2017-18 to 2019-20
Year | Crimes recorded |
2017-18 | 2,496 |
2018-19 | 2,325 |
2019-20 | 2,464 |
Source: Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2019-20 National Statistics
In addition to the annual National Statistics on recorded crime, more recent information is available from the monthly Official Statistics – which we introduced to inform users about trends in crime during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Between April and December 2020, 2,009 crimes of culpable and reckless conduct (not with firearms) were recorded by the police. In order to produce the new monthly Official Statistics in the necessary shorter time frames, the information supplied by Police Scotland is extracted from a different database than the one used to produce the most recent National Statistics on Recorded Crime in Scotland (referenced in Table 1). The data is therefore not directly comparable although is likely to be very similar. The annual Recorded Crime in Scotland bulletin remains the primary source of information on crimes and offences recorded by the police.