Highland Council Ward Overall Crime Map
Highland Local Authority
The Highland local authority is a low crime area and one of the largest in term of geographical size in Scotland. It had total recorded crimes of 13,917 in the year ending 2022. Between 2018 and 2022 crime has increased by 10,186 (or 273%). The crime group with highest percentage increase in recorded crime is Group 7: Motor vehicle offences with a 23 fold increase (or 3,741 crimes * See note immediately below) between 2018 and 2022. Group 3: Crimes of dishonesty, is the group with the next highest percentage increase in recorded crime with an threefold increase between 2018 and 2022 (1,800 crimes) (see Table1).
Note to recorded crime data for Highland
There appears to be a large increase (approx three fold) in the recorded crime data for 2022 compared to previous years. This was questioned by the author who was told it may reflect differences in the way crimes are recorded/reported after the beginning of 2022 (see Table1).
Highland Wards
There are twenty-one council Wards in Highland with a total annual recorded crime count in 2022 ranging from 201 to 2,508 in the wards with the lowest and highest values respectively.
Based on total crime rate per 1000 population in each ward for the year 2022, eight wards (Aird and Loch Ness; East Sutherland and Edderton; Black Isle; North, West and Central Sutherland; Nairn and Cawdor; Inverness South; Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh; Inverness Ness-side) of the twenty-one Highland local authority council wards are in the two deciles with the lowest values, corresponding to dark green on the map. Only one ward (Inverness Central) is in the two bands representing the highest crime rate per 1000, corresponding to dark purple on the map (see Table 2).
The map (Figure 1) shows the same information although in this case the Scottish Council Wards are split into five bands covering 20% range each since it is difficult to accurately portray 10 bands on colour maps.
Analysis by Crime Types is also presented below and follows the Scottish Crime Classification scheme. Line charts for each Ward with each of the seven crime types are shown in Figure 2.
For those wishing further detail summary files and raw data files are available for download see below.
Similar data for all of the Scottish Local Authorities can be found using the Sitemap
Figure 1: Highland Council Wards Crime Map showing crimes per 1000 population in 2022
Recorded crime rates per 1000 population for the whole of Scotland at Local authority Ward level were calculated then ranked into 5 bands see legend; dark green, Band 1 lowest rate per 1000; light green, band 2; light orange, band 3; light purple, band 4; deep purple, band 5 – the highest crime rate per 1000). If you click on the map the crimes per 1000 population for the past five years will be revealed in the pop-up. You can zoom in using the ± navigation aid on the map and drag the map around to centre an area of interest.
Table 1: Recorded Crimes in Highland
Annual crime counts for each of the seven crime classification groups and the overall total for all crimes. Crime counts for each of the years 2018 to 2022 plus the change between 2018 and 2022 is shown.
Table 2: Highland Council Wards Crime Rates
Highland Council Wards Crime Rates By Crime Classification
Download summary crime data for Highland
(a smaller file) with data for council wards by major crime category.
Download raw data file for Highland
(a large file) with data for each council ward by major crime category further subdivided by aggregate crime classification.
Figure 2: Highland Wards – Annual Total Crimes by Crime Group
Use navigation aids within the figure to zoom, pan and reset the axis. Click on the CGRP legend to remove a Crime Group.
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.