Criminal Proceedings in Scotland: 2023-2024

Introduction

This bulletin presents statistics on the number of people dealt with by the Scottish Criminal Justice System. The statistics are derived from data held on the Criminal History System (CHS), a central hub used for the electronic recording of information on people accused or convicted of perpetrating a criminal act. The CHS is used and maintained by Police Scotland.

All tables referred to below are available as an Excel workbook in the “supporting documents” accompanying this bulletin. The workbook includes an “Introduction” sheet, with information on how to navigate the tables, alongside a “Notes” sheet, with relevant details to assist users when reading and interpreting results.

Changes made to this year’s report

A new “Spotlight” section has been added. The intention of this section is to highlight a particular area of the statistics and use new analysis to provide a deeper understanding of an associated topic. This year’s topic is: What has driven the long-term rise in average custodial sentence length?

Data on the punishment part of life sentences and Orders for Lifelong Restriction (OLRs) were previously published as separate “experimental statistics” alongside this bulletin. Beginning with the 2023-24 bulletin these are now included as a separate section within the bulletin.

On 31 January 2024, a new offence under the terms of Section 184 of the Online Safety Act 2023 came into effect. This offence of “Encouraging or assisting serious self-harm” relates to a person carrying out an act which encourages or assists the serious self-harm of another person. This offence can be carried out online, in person or through any form of communication, and thus does not solely relate to “online activity”. There are no cases that concluded in court before 31 March 2024 with a main charge of Encouraging or assisting serious self-harm. If recorded in future these offences will appear under the Other non-sexual violence category within the Non-sexual crimes of violence group.

On 1 April 2024 the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 was implemented. This act introduced one new offence and two additional aggravations, for age and variations in sex characteristics. This is too recent for any new crimes or aggravators to appear in this bulletin. However, ahead of this change the category “Racially aggravated conduct” has been renamed “Hate aggravated conduct” (see Annex D).

Routes through the criminal justice system

Chart 1 depicts the various possible routes through the criminal justice system. People accused of a crime can be dealt with in a variety of ways: they can be dealt with directly by the police, by measures such as a warning or fixed penalty notice (More information on these measures can be found in the police disposals section); or the police can send a report to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) for review. COPFS can decide to:

• take no action
• issue a direct measure (see COPFS disposals section)
• proceed against the individual in Court

The number of people passing through the Criminal Justice System at a particular point in time depends in part on levels of crime made known to the police, as well as the measures that are available for use by criminal justice organisations at that time, as these can influence the point at which action is taken.

At each of the stages presented in Chart 1 information is logged on the CHS regarding the status of the accused. COPFS and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS) provide updates on their own systems which are fed back electronically to Police Scotland’s CHS. When an accused’s case is given a final conclusion it is considered completed and the case is “disposed” of from the criminal justice system. The option used to complete the case is referred to as the method of “disposal”, whether it is a court disposal used by SCTS or non-court disposal employed by COPFS or the Police.

Chart 1: Overview of action within the criminal justice system in 2023-24 [note 1].

Data from police recorded crime, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and Scottish criminal court proceedings showing the differing volumes of crimes, offences and both court disposals and direct measures across the Scottish criminal justice system in 2023-24.

Notes for Chart 1

Note 1. Figures are rounded to the nearest 100 and are based on activity during 2023-24.

Note 2. A crime recorded in 2023-24 may not have been cleared up or dealt with until 2024-25 or later.

Note 3. A report to the procurator fiscal may involve more than one crime or offence and more than one alleged offender.

Note 4. Reports to the fiscal on non-criminal matters such as sudden deaths, are not included in this total.

Note 5. Number of people from CHS.

Note 6. Number of cases; Data taken from Crown Office Case processing statistics 2020 to 2025.

Note 7. Figures for people with a charge proved count the number of different proceedings in which a person is convicted. People may be convicted of multiple charges in one proceeding, but this is counted as one person convicted per proceeding.

Note 8. It may be deemed that an incident does not warrant recording e.g. if there is a lack of evidence that a crime was committed.

Recorded crime

The statistical publication, Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2023-24, was published on 25 June 2024. The Recorded Crime publication and this Criminal Proceedings publication divide violations of criminal law into (a) crimes and (b) offences (see Annex D for further detail). This distinction is made only for statistical reporting purposes.

As shown in Chart 1, the total number of crimes recorded by the police in Scotland in 2023-24 was 299,780, an increase of 4% from the 289,362 crimes recorded in 2022-23. The proportion of recorded crimes ‘cleared up’ by the Police increased by 0.8 percentage points from 53.3% in 2022-23 to 54.1% in 2023-24. A crime is regarded as “cleared up” where there is sufficient evidence under Scots criminal law to justify consideration of criminal proceedings.

The total number of offences recorded by the police increased by 1% from 172,207 in 2022-23 to 174,073 in 2023-24. It should be noted that the number of offences recorded by the police generally tends to be affected more by Police activity and operational decisions than the number of crimes.

Whilst differences in counting methods (see Annex C) mean the figures in the Recorded Crime publication and those in this bulletin are not directly comparable, a crime or offence only comes to the attention of COPFS for consideration for prosecution once it has been recorded as such by the police, so recorded crime figures will have some influence on the number of prosecutions and convictions in court.

Multiple outcomes may result in subsequent prosecutions or referrals to other agencies, for example if a condition such as payment of a fixed penalty is not complied with. For simplicity, these pathways are not shown in Chart 1.

Police disposals and referrals

Chart 1 also shows that following a crime being cleared up, Police Scotland will either send a report to COPFS to decide what action should be taken or will deal with the case directly. Section 11 of this report contains statistics on the following non-court disposals available to the police when dealing with a case directly:

• Recorded Police Warnings (RPWs)
• Anti-Social Behaviour Fixed Penalty Notices (ASBFPNs)
• actions which are used specifically for juveniles (those that have attained the age of criminal responsibility but remain under 18) such as Restorative Justice Warnings and some Early and Effective Interventions (EEIs)

RPWs were introduced on 11 January 2016 to deal with a wider range of low-level offences. A warning can be issued on the spot, or a notice issued retrospectively. This scheme replaced and extended Formal Adult Warnings. ASBFPNs were provided for in the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Act 2004 for a range of offences including drunken-related behaviours and playing loud music. Following a procedural change at Police Scotland in 2023-24, EEIs were primarily recorded on a different system than the CHS and will disappear from these statistics in future.

There are further options available to the police that we cannot provide data on such as conditional offers of a fixed penalty notice for coronavirus restrictions or moving motor vehicle offences. This is because these types of disposals are recorded on a separate system to the CHS and so we do not receive any data on them. A full listing of the range of disposals available can be seen in Annex D.

Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service disposals and referrals

In 2023-24, COPFS received 148,998 criminal reports (from the police and other specialist reporting agencies), an increase of 3% compared to 2022-23 (144,957) – more information is available in the Case processing statistics 2020 to 2025. Where there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to take action, prosecution in court is only one of a range of possible options the Procurator Fiscal has for dealing with people they have received a report for and, where appropriate, they may issue a direct measure. Statistics for the following non-court disposals are included in this publication:

• fiscal fines of between £50 and £500
• compensation orders of up to £5,000
• fiscal warnings
• fixed penalties of between £50 and £300, generally issued for motor vehicle offences

There are further actions that the Procurator Fiscal can take that are not included in this report such as diverting cases to social work and other agencies and referrals to the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA).

A full listing of the range of disposals available can be seen in Annex D.

Court disposals

The majority of statistics in this publication provide information on criminal cases brought to court and are contained in Sections 1 to 10. The outcomes possible for the person proceeded against are:

• the person is convicted, either after pleading guilty or being found guilty after evidence has been heard in Court
• the person is acquitted following a not guilty verdict
• the person is acquitted following a not proven verdict
• the person has their plea of not guilty accepted by the prosecutor or the case against them is deserted i.e. the Crown decides no longer to proceed with a prosecution at that time (though they may in some cases decide to prosecute at a future date)

Disposals interactive dashboard

Separate statistics on disposals issued in Scottish criminal courts are available via an interactive Criminal Disposals Dashboard. This dashboard provides management information on disposals at charge level given in Scottish criminal courts. The dashboard presents all disposals for each charge that was proven in court. The dashboard allows users to investigate trends from April 2017 by financial year or financial year quarter and is updated quarterly.

This data in the dashboard is not directly comparable to the data in this Criminal Proceedings bulletin. Data in this bulletin usually relates to the main charge against which a person is proceeded against or convicted. If there were multiple charges libelled on a Complaint or Indictment and thereafter proven against an accused in a single proceeding, the main charge is the crime or offence receiving the most severe penalty.

Although the trends shown in the dashboard and the ones published in the Criminal Proceedings bulletin are similar, the numbers presented in the dashboard are larger than those presented in the bulletin. This is because data presented in the dashboard include all disposals issued for a charge including those disposals sometimes referred to as secondary disposals. These are often a specific order or warning given alongside a primary disposal. These secondary disposals appear in the dashboard in the “Other disposals” category. This means that the numbers in this category appear larger than might be expected. The dashboard also provides detailed information about custodial and community disposals.

Comparability with other statistics

Please note that the statistics presented in Chart 1 are taken from multiple data sources which are not strictly comparable, and there is no direct relationship between the number of crimes and offences recorded by the police and the number of follow-up actions taken by other agencies within the criminal justice system. For example, in the recorded crime statistics a single crime or offence recorded by the Police may have more than one perpetrator, each of whom would be counted separately in the criminal proceedings statistics. There are also some offences included in this bulletin, such as failure to pay a television licence, which are reported directly to the procurator fiscal by specialist reporting agencies such as TV Licensing and therefore are not included in the police recorded crime statistics.

There are other comparability issues in that crimes or offences recorded and cleared up by the Police may not be processed by the Procurator Fiscal or the courts in the same year as they were recorded. There is also the possibility that the crime or offence recorded by the police is altered by the Procurator Fiscal during the marking process.

For full details of comparability issues please see the relevant sections in Annex C.

What is covered by these statistics?

These statistics cover people who are dealt with at different stages of the Scottish Criminal Justice System, specifically:

• Police disposals, including:
  • Anti-Social Behaviour Fixed Penalty Notices
  • Recorded Police Warnings
  • Early and Effective Interventions, where recorded on the CHS
• Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service disposals, including:
  • Fiscal fines
  • Fixed penalties
  • Fiscal warnings
  • Compensation orders
• Scottish courts, including:
  • Proceedings
  • Convictions
  • Sentencing outcomes
  • Bail

What is not covered by these statistics?

These statistics do not include data on:

• police-issued Fixed Penalty Notices for road traffic and coronavirus restriction offences
• COPFS-issued Fiscal Work Orders
• court appeals
• children’s hearing activity and most diversions for young people
• diversions from prosecution
• police-issued EEIs not recorded on the CHS

An Accredited Official Statistics Publication for Scotland

These statistics are accredited official statistics. The Office for Statistics Regulation has independently reviewed and accredited these statistics as complying with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Criminal Proceedings in Scotland statistics were accredited by the Office for Statistics Regulation in June 2012 and passed a further compliance check in October 2021. You can visit the Office for Statistics Regulation web site for details of the most recent compliance check.

Please note that the Spotlight section and the Length of the Punishment Part of Life Sentences and OLRs section are designated as Official Statistics but have not yet been accredited like the rest of this bulletin.

Accredited official statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

More information about Scottish Government statistics is available on the Scottish Government website.