Male conviction statistics: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for available data on cases where the main penalty imposed was an extended sentence for males in Scotland, broken down by:

• offence category, using standard Scottish Government groupings, including:
• crimes of violence (non-sexual)
• sexual crimes

For each financial year from 2012/13 to the most recent year available.

If further breakdown by sentence length bands is readily available within existing datasets, I would be grateful if this could also be included.

To reduce cost, I am content to receive:

• data as held for published statistical outputs
• aggregated categories where necessary

Please provide the information in Excel or CSV format where possible.

Response

I enclose a copy of all of the information you requested in the format (MS Excel) you asked for.

Some important background for interpreting this data are laid out below.

Data on people prosecuted and convicted in Scottish courts is published as Criminal Proceedings in Scotland. The most recent data are for the financial year 2023-2024. This data set counts people by main charge. The main charge is the one that conferred the most severe penalty. As per your request, the enclosed data includes the crime group to which the main charge belongs. It should be noted, however, that there may have been additional convicted charges and these may be categorised in a different crime group. Additionally, as per your request, data are further broken down by sentence length bands. You will know that an extended sentence has two parts, a custodial part which is served in prison and a supervised part which is served in the community. Criminal Proceedings in Scotland only holds data on this custodial part and the sentence bands presented are based solely on the custodial part. Finally, data from 2020-21 onwards were affected by the pandemic, including: court closures, reduced court capacities due to physical distancing measures, delays to cases where key participants were forced to self-isolate following positive COVID-19 tests and re-prioritisation of cases to deal with the resulting backlogs. Data from this period should not be considered indicative of long-term trends.

It should also be noted that the sentencing council state that "For a violent crime or abduction, the custodial term of the sentence must be four years or more". Despite this, a small number of records in the attached spreadsheet show extended sentences for a main charge of Non-sexual violence with a custodial portion of less than four years. We have checked a sample of these records with our justice partners and it appears that some are recorded correctly. This may reflect differences between the way that sentencing guidelines and statistics define a "violent" crime. However, some other records do appear to have been misrecorded as shorter than the aggregate sentence. We are currently investigating this matter further. Therefore, for now we would urge caution in  interpreting extended sentences for Non-sexual violence with a custodial sentence of less than four years as being accurate.

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 202600515244 - Information Released - Spreadsheet

File type

Excel document

File size

15.5 kB