Non-harassment order statistics: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for an amendment of the answer in relation to a previous FOI disclosure relating to the issue of non-harassment orders in the sentencing of cases of domestic abuse and other crimes with domestic abuse aggravators by court type applied (FOI/202500462174).

This is your new request:

“Please can you provide the number of Non Harassment Orders NOT applied for case-accused convicted for domestic abuse offences (including offences with domestic abuse aggravators) by court type. Please can this be added into table 2*. I would like to understand the rate at which they are being refused and how this differs by court type. I would like to see the number of NHOs applied Vs not applied (by court type) within the same table please.”

*from previous FOI 202500462174.

Response

Regarding your new request, the number of people convicted for domestic abuse offences or offences with domestic abuse aggravators by court type has been extracted from the management information used to publish the Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services Criminal Disposals Dashboard (Source: Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services Criminal Disposals Dashboard).

We have considered the same domestic abuse aggravators used to answer the previous FOI:

CODE	Aggravation	Legislation
D	Domestic Abuse
W	Statutory Aggravation - Domestic Abuse	Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016
Y	Domestic Abuse Statutory Aggravation involving a child	Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018

D aggravator is used for cases where COPFS consider it to be a domestic abuse case, but the statutory aggravation in the 2016 Act doesn't apply. Courts are under statutory obligation to consider an NHO in cases where the statutory W aggravator is used and the 2018 Act Y aggravator is used, but not cases where the D aggravator is used.

Table 1 shows the total number of people convicted for a domestic abuse offence or another offence with domestic abuse aggravator and, how many of those accused, got a non-harassment order because of any of those offences by court type and financial year.

Table 1: Non-Harassment orders for case-accused convicted for domestic abuse offences (including offences with domestic abuse aggravators) by court type.

	Court type
Number of case-accused 1,2,3	High Court		Sheriff Solemn		Sheriff Summary		JP Court		Total
Non-Harassment orders issued	No	Yes4	No	Yes4	No	Yes4	No	Yes4	No	Yes4
2018-2019	83	3	286	113	8,769	993	25	0	9,163	1,109
2019-2020	77	14	286	178	8,374	1,548	35	1	8,772	1,741
2020-2021	53	9	150	213	5,980	1,696	4	0	6,187	1,918
2021-2022	78	34	226	353	6,814	2,804	10	0	7,128	3,191
2022-2023	86	68	274	441	6,718	3,022	6	3	7,084	3,534
2023-2024	72	133	271	552	6,046	3,325	3	1	6,392	4,011
2024-2025	59	196	248	562	6,077	3,830	4	0	6,388	4,588

1 Number of people convicted of at least one domestic abuse offence or another offence with a domestic abuse aggravator in a case
2 If there are multiple accused in a case they will be counted separately
3 If a person appears in more than one case per year then they will be counted more than once
4 Limited to one per person per case

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