Crime Check In My Area
The interactive map shows the impact of crime in each of the SIMD 2020 zones, based on the number of recorded crimes of violence, sexual offences, domestic housebreaking, vandalism, drugs offences, and common assault. The Scottish Government publishes data differently from the rest of the UK: datazone vs postcode; annual data vs monthly; all crimes are lumped together vs crimes split into different categories. The data presented was published by the Scottish Government in Jan 2020 as part of the SIMD 2020 data collection. There is no crime data by postcode. Each datazone consists of approximately 700 people which is the smallest area for which published data is freely available. Crime data by different categories is published by Scot Gov but it is released at council authority level of detail and is thus not informative at a local area.
The zones with the most crime are depicted in purple and the least deprived zones in green and the zones are grouped into decile ranges. There is a pop-up if you hover over a zone which provides additional information: Data Zone ID, Local Authority, crime_domain_2020 rank plus the ranks for overall-SIMD2020, income_domain2020, health-domain2020 and employment-domain2020.
This is a large file (approx. 30mb) because it contains map coordinates necessary to draw the 6976 data zones. It takes 3 – 4 seconds to load – so please be patient. Once it downloads you will be able to move it around and zoom in to visualise areas in more detail. Densely populated areas appear black before you zoom in because the data zones are tightly packed but will become clearer in close up view. Shetland isles are just off the top of the map but are visible when the chart is pulled down.
For details of the oversight and methodology of the data collection used by the Scottish Government please see:
https://www.gov.scot/collections/scottish-index-of-multiple-deprivation-2020/
4 thoughts on “Scottish Crime Data by Postcode”
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Hi –
I am looking for spreadsheets of crime in Scotland, similar to those readily available for the rest of the UK: https://data.police.uk/data/
I think you are saying that this data might simply not be recorded in Scotland.
Can you however provide me a link to spread sheets that come as close as possible to the UK ones? Or an idea where else I might look?
Thank you very much for your work and any answers you might have.
Hi,
Yes the Scottish Government make a lot of play about providing open access to data. In fact they make finding information difficult with no easy to navigate central database of data. As far as I can determine they only make summary crime information available at Local Authority level.
The link below gives access to the data available to me. It is down to Data Zone level which are areas which generally follow existing voting ward boundaries and are established to have on average 700 inhabitants
All the SIMD measures are in a sub-file SG_SIMD_2020.dbf
https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/scottish-index-of-multiple-deprivation-simd-2020?locale=en
Regards
Alan
Is there a way to find out what the rankings mean on the Crime maps?
Hi Iona,
The data comes from the SIMD202 dataset published by the Scottish Government where data is collected across 6976 zones containing on average approximately 700 inhabitants
Different measures are ranked according the data for each individual zone.
For Crime the Scottish Governemt collects data on the number of recorded crimes of violence, sexual offences, domestic housebreaking, vandalism, drugs offences, and common assault.