Rape conviction statistics: FOI release

Information requested

Part 1: The total number of people convicted of rape in Scotland, each year, between 16 January 2022 and 16 January 2025.

Part 2: The number of each nationality (meaning the country of citizenship) convicted of rape each year. For example, 230 UK nationals.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exemption(s) under section(s) s.17 (information not held) of FOISA applies to that information. The reasons why that exemption(s) applies are explained below.

Regarding part 1 of your request, the number of people convicted of rape in Scotland has been extracted from the management information used to publish the Journey times in the Scottish Criminal Justice System interactive dashboard (Source: Journey times in the Scottish Criminal Justice System interactive dashboard). At the moment we only hold information relating to convictions in Scottish criminal courts covering the period April 2017- September 2024, so we can only extract the number of people convicted of rape in Scotland between the 1st January 2022 and 30th September 2024. If you require the information regarding to the October 2024 to December 2024 period, we could provide that after receiving and processing the data for the dashboard, that will be updated in March 2025.

Regarding part 2 of your request, the Scottish Government does not hold the data on the nationality (meaning the country of citizenship) of the accused. Therefore we are not able to answer that part of your request.

Table 1 shows the total number of people convicted of rape from January 2022 and 30th September 2024 by calendar year.

Table 1: Number of people convicted of rape from January 2022 and 30th September 2024 by calendar year.

Year	Number of case-accused1,2
2022	190
2023	178
January-24 to September-24	133

Source: Dataset for Journey times in the Scottish Criminal Justice System interactive dashboard

1. If there are multiple accused in a case they will be counted separately.
2. If a person appears in more than one case per year then they will be counted more than once.

About FOI

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