Publication - Statistics
Reconviction Rates in Scotland: 2021-22 Offender Cohort
Statistics on reconvictions in Scotland are presented up to the latest cohort of 2021-22. The latest year’s data is impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and caution should be used when interpreting trends.
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Key Points
- 27.1% of people who left custody or had a community sentence in 2021-22 were reconvicted within 12 months
- this is almost the same as the reconviction rate for the 2020-21 cohort (27.0)
- the average number of reconvictions per person in the 2021-22 cohort was 0.45, an increase of 1% from the previous year
- the reconviction rate has decreased over the last few decades and the figure in 2022-21 is 15% lower than it was in 1997-98
- of the people who offended in 2022-23, 37% did so for the first time in at least 10 years, up from 34% the previous year
- males had a reconviction rate of 27.5% compared to 24.7% for females in the 2021-22 cohort
- as in previous years, offenders who committed a crime of dishonesty had the highest reconviction rate (43.4% in the 2021-22 cohort ), compared to offenders that committed another type of crime
- offenders who committed a sexual crime had the lowest rate (10.6% in the 2021-22 cohort)
- of those released from custody in 2021-22, 42.8% were reconvicted within a year
- of those given a Community Payback Order (CPO, the most common community sentence), 28.4% were reconvicted within a year
- shorter custodial sentences have higher reconviction rates than longer sentences
- in the 2021-22 cohort, those with sentences of three months or less had a reconviction rate of 62.8% compared with 5.6% for those with a sentence over four years