Criminal offence statistics: FOI release

Information requested

1. Of those convicted of an offence in 2022-23 who were under 25, please provide the main penalties handed out to those offenders, broken down by the Scottish Government crime groups and their sub-groups. By main penalties, I refer to custodial sentence, community sentence, financial penalty or ‘other’.

2. Of those convicted of an offence in 2022-23 who were over 25, please provide the main penalties handed out to those offenders, broken down by the Scottish Government crime groups and their sub-groups. By main penalties, I refer to custodial sentence, community sentence, financial penalty or ‘other’.

3. Of those convicted of an offence in 2023-24 who were under 25, please provide the main penalties handed out to those offenders, broken down by the Scottish Government crime groups and their sub-groups. By main penalties, I refer to custodial sentence, community sentence, financial penalty or ‘other’.

4. Of those convicted of an offence in 2023-24 who were over 25, please provide the main penalties handed out to those offenders, broken down by the Scottish Government crime groups and their sub-groups. By main penalties, I refer to custodial sentence, community sentence, financial penalty or ‘other’.

5. Of those convicted of an offence in 2024-25 who were under 25, please provide the main penalties handed out to those offenders, broken down by the Scottish Government crime groups and their sub-groups. By main penalties, I refer to custodial sentence, community sentence, financial penalty or ‘other’.

6. Of those convicted of an offence in 2024-25 who were over 25, please provide the main penalties handed out to those offenders, broken down by the Scottish Government crime groups and their sub-groups. By main penalties, I refer to custodial sentence, community sentence, financial penalty or ‘other’.

Response

The number of people convicted by disposal type and crime 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).

The dataset used to answer this FoI is management information extracted from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals case management system. The data are extracted at charge level meaning that every disposal for every charge is available. For the purposes of answering this FoI, these data have been aggregated to case-accused level.

If a case has been fully disposed the ‘main disposal’ for a case will usually be a custody, community or financial disposal. However, for cases that take longer to reach conclusion (e.g sexual crimes) an ‘other’ disposal (e.g. PVG, Sexual Offences Prevention Order, Non Harassment Order) is often given at an earlier stage while the case is on-going.

The result of this is that (especially in more recent years and especially for sexual crimes) it can appear that there are an excess of ‘other’ disposals issued. For example, in the answer to this FoI, of the 65 accused with rape or attempted rape as a main charge in 2024-25, 86% of cases are marked active meaning that it is likely that there will be another disposal for that charge in the future. Note that the status of a case is not available for earlier years so we are not able to supply a consistent time series using this variable.

The numbers here may differ from those in the published official statistics (Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2022-23 - gov.scot) as the Criminal Disposals Dashboard uses management information extracted at a specific point in time and the counting rules differ slightly from those used in Criminal Proceedings.

I enclose a copy of the information you requested in an attached excel spreadsheet.

• Table 1 worksheet contains information to answer points 1 and 2 of your request.
• Table 2 worksheet contains information to answer points 3 and 4 of your request.
• Table 3 worksheet contains information to answer points 5 and 6 of your request.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202500468535 - Information Released - Spreadsheet

File type

Excel document

File size

26.7 kB