Crime and violence: key data sources

Data collected from health and justice settings, together with survey findings, help to quantify the incidence of violent crime across Scotland. We cannot rely solely on police recorded crime as an indication of crime and violence, due to the high proportion of incidents that are not reported to police.

Recorded crime data can be combined with survey data and health data to provide a more comprehensive picture. However, any combination of different sources is still likely to produce an underestimate of violent crime across Scotland.

Recorded Crime in Scotland and quantitative data from surveys such as the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey provide information about the causes of violence, its nature and effects. Data can also be collated from a number of health sources, including: primary care data; ambulance data; emergency department data; hospital admissions data; and deaths data.

Police recorded data sources

Recorded Crime in Scotland:

Annual bulletin presenting statistics on crimes and offences recorded and cleared up by the police.

Homicide in Scotland:

Annual statistical bulletin on crimes of homicide recorded by the police in Scotland.

Domestic abuse recorded by the police in Scotland:

This Official Statistics publication presents statistics on incidents of domestic abuse recorded by the police in Scotland.

Recorded Crimes and Offences Involving Firearms, Scotland:

Annual statistical bulletin on crimes and offences involving firearms recorded by the police in Scotland. The bulletin presents statistics on those crimes and offences recorded by the police in which a firearm was alleged to have been involved or where a firearm was stolen.

Survey data sources

Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS):

A national survey of people's experiences and perceptions of crime in Scotland. There have been a series of similar surveys carried out since 1993. From 2016/17 the SCJS has run as a continuous survey sampling around 6,000 adults each year.

However, the most recent data available for the SCJS is for 2019-20 as face-to-face interviewing could not be conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a one-off survey of a sample of previous SCJS respondents were contacted by phone as part of the Scottish Victimisation Telephone Survey (SVTS) in 2020.

Scottish Household Survey:

The Scottish Household Survey (SHoS) is a survey of the people in Scotland. The survey provides information on the composition, characteristics, attitudes and behaviour of households and individuals at national and sub-national level. It includes questions related to experience of crime, perceptions of crime and the safety of neighbourhoods.

The SHoS was paused in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A telephone survey was completed in 2020, but this is not directly comparable with the main Scottish Household Survey and so the latest data for the main survey is from the 2019 report.

Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime:

The Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime is a longitudinal study of criminal offending and anti-social behaviour among young people. The study follows a single year group of approximately 4,300 young people who started secondary schools in the City of Edinburgh in 1998. The study collects information from young people, parents, schools, other agencies and from neighbourhoods.

Indicator / Profile Tools

ScotPHO Online Profiles Tool

Indicators relevant to crime and violence.

Health and wellbeing profile:

Number of crimes (based on SIMD crimes of violence, sexual offences, domestic housebreaking, vandalism, drug offences and common assault) and crude rate per 1,000 population.
Number of domestic abuse incidents and rate per 10,000 population by local authority area.
Prisoner population (16+ year olds) based on prisoners' home address: total number and directly age standardised rate per 100,000 population.
Number of violent crimes recorded by the police and rate by 10,000 population by local authority area.

Alcohol profile:

Number of attempted murders and serious assaults recorded by the police and rate per 10,000 population.
Number of cases of breach of the peace recorded by the police (including threatening or abusive behaviour, offence of stalking, offensive behaviour at football and threatening communications) and rate per 10,000 population.
Number of cases of vandalism recorded by the police (including malicious mischief, culpable and reckless conduct (not with firearms), reckless conduct with firearms) and rate per 10,000 population.

Drugs profile:

Number of drug crimes recorded by the police and rate per 10,000 population by local authority area.

Children and young people profile:

Children aged 8-15 years referred to the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration for offence reasons, number and crude rate per 1,000 children aged 8-15 years.
Number and percentage of the population aged 0-25 years living in the 20% most crime deprived areas (2011 datazones) in Scotland, based on ISD population-weighted SIMD.
General acute inpatient and day case admissions in young people aged 15-25 years with a diagnosis of assault in any position, 3-year rolling average number and directly age-sex standardised rate per 100,000 population.

Understanding Glasgow | The Glasgow Indicators Project

Understanding Glasgow: The Glasgow Indicators Project, produced by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH), sets out to describe life circumstances and health in the city. A wide range of indicators and data, including community safety and violence, are included as well as profiles for neighbourhood areas in the city.

Health data

Primary care data:

There is currently no standardised approach to gathering information on violence collected by primary care settings in Scotland. As more Scottish General Practices contribute to the Scottish Primary Care Information Resource (SPIRE), a national health intelligence project, there is the potential to gather useful data on the epidemiology of violence in community settings. SPIRE is a service that will allow small amounts of information from GP practice records to be used to help doctors’ surgeries, NHS Scotland and the Scottish Government improve care and plan services, and help researchers to learn more from patient information held at GP practices. For further information, please refer to the SPIRE website.

Ambulance data:

As with primary care, violence data from Scottish Ambulance Services about violence in community settings could make a useful contribution. However, similarly, it is currently not collected at a national level.

Emergency department data:

Data collected from emergency departments can be an excellent source of data on violence with the potential to describe the demographics of the individual and the type of injury (A&E Data Mart). While policies exist relating to mandatory data reporting from Scottish emergency departments, there is known to be considerable variability in the quality of data recorded and reported.

Hospital admissions data:

Emergency hospital admissions as a consequence of an assault are routinely available by sex, NHS board of residence and year. The Unintentional injuries publication by Public Health Scotland provides data on emergency department admissions and deaths due to assault, and it breaks this down further to identify admissions and deaths due to assault with a knife or sharp object. This data revealed that in 2020/21 there were 1,891 emergency admissions of adults and children related to assault (97% of which were adults). Assault with a sharp object accounted for 26% of these admissions.

Deaths data:

National Records of Scotland hold data on causes of death in Scotland. Summary headings of the International Classification of Disease (ICD) coding used, provide some level of description of the contribution of violence to deaths at a Scottish national level.

The Scottish Government publishes annual statistical bulletins on Homicide in Scotland, which describe the characteristics of police-reported homicides in considerable detail.