Scotland Recorded Crime Data By Year and Category 2018 to 2022
The Scottish Police Force/ Scottish Government have for the first time published detailed recorded crime data that is broken down into seven major crime categories, sub categories and geographically by Local Authority Wards. Previously data was published at a Local Authority level and summarised only by the top (seven) categories without the detailed sub-categories of crimes (see Scottish Crime Classification for details of how crime is recorded).
Overall, recorded crimes have decreased by 15,800 between 2018 and 2022 although some categories of crimes have seen increases. Most notably, serious non-sexual crimes of violence and sexual crimes have both risen since 2018, by 2479 and 1699 respectively. In contrast Crimes of dishonesty, Motor vehicle offences, Fire-raising / vandalism etc. and Miscellaneous offences have fallen.
Detailed analysis for every Local authority will be available on this website. Each page will feature:
- a map of the local authority showing the most recent crime data for each council ward in the local authority
- a table of crimes by classification within the local authority
- a table of crime rates in each council ward
- a chart showing crimes in each ward by year and classification
- a download file with summary data for each local authority
- a download file with all the raw data – by council ward, by year, by classification, by sub-classification
Links to Local Authority Crime Maps
Scotland Crime Map
Aberdeen City Crime Map
City of Edinburgh Crime Map
Dundee City Crime Map
Glasgow City Crime Map
for a full list of all local authorities see sitemap
Table 1: Scotland Crimes 2018 to 2022
Scottish crimes by crime group category plus total crimes (bottom row) and change in crime count between 2018 and 2022
Figure 1: Recorded Crimes in Scotland 2018 to 2022
Figure 1: Recorded Crimes in Scotland 2018 to 2022
Recorded crimes in Scotland broken down by crime group category
Data Sources
Scottish Crime Data is available on the police website via https://www.scotland.police.uk/about-us/how-we-do-it/crime-data.
Shapefiles for UK Council Wards (district_borough_unitary_ward_region) is available from https://osdatahub.os.uk/downloads/open/BoundaryLine.
Ward population data was based on https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/population/population-estimates/2011-based-special-area-population-estimates/electoral-ward-population-estimates.
Methods in Brief
- Multiple annual crime data files (provided as fiscal years) were combined and calendar years were allocated to the data.
- Population data was added however, as no data was available for 2022, the 2021 data was used for this year and rates per 1000 population calculated. Ranks for each Ward were calculated based on the Crime Rate per 1000.
- Some remapping of wards was carried out since the police data in a few cases did not map precisely to ward codes. E.g. the police data combined Arran and Ardrossan (wards in North Ayrshire LA. Some data is missing from the maps since it was not possible to properly map data for the Hebridean Isles as reported data appeared to be from overlapping wards.
- Maps were prepared using Python with Folium and Geopandas modules
- Figures, graphs and tables were prepared using Python and the Plotly module.