Racist Incidents Recorded by the Police in Scotland, 2010-11

4. Notes on the Statistics used in this Bulletin

4.1 Background

In response to the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry in 1999, the then Scottish Executive produced an action plan to progress the recommendations set out in the MacPherson report, which included the setting up of a statistical collection covering racist incidents.

The definition of a racist incident as given by Sir William MacPherson in his report on the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry is:

"A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person."

In the context of the data for this bulletin, the above definition was used.

4.2 Returns

The return from which figures in this bulletin are taken is a simple count of the number of incidents recorded by the police and the crimes, victims and perpetrators arising from these incidents. Only returns from the eight Scottish police forces are included in this bulletin.

Under the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, the estimated costs of responding to statistical surveys and data collection are to be published. The estimated cost of compliance for supplying and validating the data for this bulletin was: £2,700.

Details of the calculation methodology are available on the Scottish

Government Crime and Justice website at: www.scotland.gov.uk/topics/statistics/browse/crime-justice/costcalculation

4.3 Recording Issues

In an incident, one or more victims may be involved, and there may be one or more perpetrators. There may be no criminal element, or several crimes or offences may occur.

In Scotland, assault is a common law offence. In order to distinguish between serious and minor assaults, police forces use a standard definition of what constitutes a serious assault. Definitions are listed in note 4.6.

Quality assurance checks during the preparation of this bulletin have shown that there is an inconsistency in the number of crimes recorded by the eight Scottish police forces. Some forces have reported only the racist crimes associated with the racist incidents and others have reported all crimes associated with the racist incident. As a result, there may be an over count in the number of crimes recorded as part of a racist incident.

Due to recording issues, Lothian & Borders police force was unable to provide data for 2009-10 or 2010-11 on: who first reported the incident; any agency to whom the incident was first reported; the main language of the victim and perpetrator; or the action taken against the perpetrator.

Due to changes in recording practices by Lothian & Borders police force, the classification used to describe the location of an incident resulted in an increase in the number of incidents being recorded at 'sporting venues' and 'other businesses' in 2008-09. This corresponded to a decrease in the number of incidents recorded at locations classified as 'shops'. These variations do not represent a change in the locations crimes are being committed. Lothian & Borders police force was unable to provide information on the location of an incident in the 2009-10 data submission, and these have been classified as 'unknown'. However, the problem was rectified in time for the provision of 2010-11 data. Note that for Lothian & Borders, there were 17 racist incidents included in the 2010-11 data collection, where 15 of the incidents occurred in 2009-10 and two occurred in 2008-09. These have been backdated to reflect the year in which the incident took place.

4.4 Reporting Practices

These statistics do not record every occurrence of racist incidents in Scotland. Not all incidents are reported to the police. The 2010-11 Scottish Crime and Justice Survey¹ estimated that approximately 39 per cent of all crimes came to the attention of the police.

4.5 Crimes and Offences Cleared Up

The definition of "cleared up" is noted below. This definition came into force with effect from 1 April 1996.

A crime or offence is regarded as cleared up where there exists a sufficiency of evidence under Scots law, to justify consideration of criminal proceedings notwithstanding that a report is not submitted to the Procurator Fiscal because either

(i) by standing agreement with the Procurator Fiscal, the police warn the accused due to the minor nature of the offence, or

(ii) reporting is inappropriate due to the non-age of the accused, death of the accused or other similar circumstances.

4.6 Definitions

Racially-aggravated - the offender asserts towards the person affected, malice and ill-will based on that person's membership (or presumed membership) of a racial group; or the course of conduct or action is motivated (wholly or partly) by malice and ill-will towards members of a racial group based on their membership of that group.

Racially-aggravated harassment - a racially-aggravated course of conduct, amounting to harassment.

Racially-aggravated conduct - to act in a manner, including speech, which is racially aggravated and which causes, or is intended to cause, a person alarm or distress.

Serious assault - A serious assault is an assault in which the victim sustains an injury resulting in detention in hospital as an in-patient for the treatment of that injury, or any of the following injuries, whether or not detained in hospital; fractures (mean the breaking or cracking of a bone), internal injuries, severe concussion, loss of consciousness, lacerations requiring sutures which may lead to impairment or disfigurement.

Please note that nose is cartilage, not bone, so a 'broken nose' should not be classified as a serious assault unless it meets one of the other criteria.

Ethnicity - 2009-10 was the first year in which forces were asked to use the new classification of 21 groups (listed below) to record the ethnic group of victim and perpetrator. An individual is asked to 'self declare' their ethnic origin. Due to differences in recording systems used, not all police forces have been able to provide data using the new classification codes. For these areas, data was provided on the basis of the 13 group classification instead.

In order to compare ethnic classifications over the time period covered by the bulletin, the new ethnicity classifications have been aggregated to match the previous classification of 13 groups. This aggregation is detailed below.

In Table 8, changes in the figures of the ethnic origin of victims from 2008-09 to 2010-11 may in part, be due to the changes implemented in classification codes. Therefore, trend data within these ethnic classification groups should be treated with caution. This is less of a problem for Table 12, as the groups have been aggregated for disclosure purposes.

Ethnic Groups collected:

Group Number	Ethnic group	Group Number	Mapped to
1	Scottish White	1	White British
2	English White	1	White British
3	Welsh White	1	White British
4	Northern Irish White	1	White British
5	British White	1	White British
6	Irish White	2	White Irish
7	Gypsy/Traveller White	3	Other White background
8	Polish White	3	Other White background
9	Other White	3	Other White background
10	Mixed or multiple ethnic groups	4	Mixed
11	Pakistani, Pakistani Scottish or Pakistani British	6	Pakistani
12	Indian, Indian Scottish or Indian British	5	Indian
13	Bangladeshi, Bangladeshi Scottish or Bangladeshi British	7	Bangladeshi
14	Chinese, Chinese Scottish or Chinese British	12	Chinese
15	Other Asian, Asian Scottish or Asian British	8	Other Asian background
16	African, African Scottish or African British	10	African
17	Caribbean, Caribbean Scottish or Caribbean British	9	Caribbean
18	Black, Black Scottish or Black British	11	Other Black Background
19	Other African, Caribbean or Black - please state	10	African
20	Arab	13	Other
21	Other	13	Other

Incident - an incident is any communication by whatever means about a matter which comes to the police attention which they may be required to act upon.

Crime - an act committed in violation of the law (common law or statute). Any single incident may include a number of crimes, or there might be no criminal element.

Victim - the individual who perceived the incident to be racist. In any incident, there could be one or more victims, and in some cases, no victim (e.g. graffiti reported to the police but no specific victim targeted).

Perpetrator - the person who was deemed responsible for the incident. In any incident, there could be one or more perpetrators.

4.7 Total Incidents, Crimes, Victims and Perpetrators

The table below shows the total number of incidents, crimes, victims and perpetrators recorded by the police. Note that crimes, victims and perpetrators can have multiple entries per incident as well as multiple entries with one another (i.e. one crime may have several victims/perpetrators).

Total incidents, crimes, victims and perpetrators, by financial year, 2004-05 to 2010-11

	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11
Incidents	4,519	5,112	5,322	5,247	5,145	4,960	4,907
Crimes	5,734	6,444	6,654	6,676	6,617	6,470	6,169
Victims	5,059	5,820	5,963	5,790	5,995	5,783	5,902
Perpetrators	3,321	4,100	5,082	5,013	5,447	5,504	5,558

4.8 Classification

Contraventions of Scottish criminal law are divided for statistical purposes into crimes and offences. The term "crime" is generally used for the more serious criminal acts; the less serious are termed "offences", although the term "offence" may also be used in relation to serious breaches of criminal law. The distinction is made only for working purposes and the "seriousness" of the offence is generally related to the maximum sentence that can be imposed.

The detailed classification of crimes and offences used by The Scottish Government to collect criminal statistics contains approximately 360 codes. These are grouped in the bulletin as shown in note 5

4.9 Scottish Crime Recording Standard

It was expected that the number of crimes would have been affected by the implementation (from 1 April 2004) of the Scottish Crime Recording Standard (SCRS), which means that no corroborative evidence is required initially to record a crime related incident as a crime if so perceived by the victim. This was expected to increase the number of minor crimes recorded by the police, such as minor crimes of vandalism, minor assaults and breach of the peace.

Previously, where there were crimes which the victim did not wish the police to actively investigate (for instance, if they were concerned that this could lead to more trouble), the crime itself would not have been recorded. Therefore the SCRS is thought to have caused an increase in the number of crimes recorded where there is no real possibility of clearing up the crime, which has an impact on the clear up rates.

4.10 Census Figures for Scottish Population 2001

The following table gives the most recent Census figures for the ethnicity of the population of Scotland.

Scottish Population by Ethnic Group, 2001

Ethnic group	Percentage of Total Population	Percentage of Minority Ethnic Population	Base
White British	95.5	n/a	4,832,756
Other White	1.5	n/a	78,150
White Irish	1.0	n/a	49,428
Pakistani	0.6	31.3	31,793
Chinese	0.3	16.0	16,310
Indian	0.3	14.8	15,037
Any Mixed Background	0.3	12.6	12,764
Other Ethnic Group	0.2	9.4	9,571
Other South Asian	0.1	6.1	6,196
African	0.1	5.0	5,118
Bangladeshi	0.0	1.9	1,981
Caribbean	0.0	1.7	1,778
Black Scottish or other Black	0.0	1.1	1,129
All Minority Ethnic Population	2.0	100	101,677
All Population	100	n/a	5,062,011

Source: Scottish Executive, Analysis of Ethnicity in the 2001 Census