Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2025-26

Key points

This bulletin presents Accredited Official Statistics on crimes and offences recorded by the police in Scotland in 2025-26. Statistics on recorded crimes and offences provide a measure of the volume of criminal activity with which the police are faced. This does not reveal the incidence of all crime committed as not all crimes are reported to the police.

Between 2024-25 and 2025-26:

• Crimes recorded by the police in Scotland increased by 5%, from 299,111 to 315,357. This is the highest level since 2014-15, though remains down 49% from its peak in 1991.
• Non-sexual crimes of violence increased by 6%, from 71,170 to 75,601. Common assault (up 6%) makes up the clear majority (83%) of all Non-sexual crimes of violence recorded in 2025-26.
• Sexual crimes increased by 10%, from 14,892 to 16,430. These crimes are now at the highest level seen since 1971, the first year for which comparable groups are available.
• Crimes of dishonesty increased by 6%, from 110,913 to 118,040. This is the highest level since 2014-15, though remains down 73% from the peak in 1991.
• Damage and reckless behaviour crimes decreased by 1%, from 38,738 to 38,166. The recording of these crimes is at the lowest level seen since 1976.
• Crimes against society increased by 6% from 63,398 to 67,120. Most of these crimes relate to Crimes against public justice (44%) or Drug possession (30%).
• Offences recorded by the police in Scotland collectively increased by 9%, from 175,979 to 192,276. This included increases in Antisocial offences (up 7%) and Road traffic offences (up 11%), whilst Miscellaneous offences decreased by 1%.

Police recorded cyber-crime in Scotland

This bulletin also provides an updated estimate of how many cyber-crimes were recorded in Scotland:

• In 2025-26, an estimated 14,200 cyber-crimes were recorded by the police in Scotland. This was similar to the estimated volume for 2024-25 (up 80 crimes or 1%). Levels remain significantly above the pre-pandemic year of 2019-20 (7,710 cyber-crimes).
• We estimate that cyber-crimes accounted for at least 5% of total recorded crime in 2025-26, including 27% of Sexual crimes, 6% of Crimes of dishonesty and 3% of Non-sexual crimes of violence.

Official Statistics on Clear up rates

In addition to the Accredited Official Statistics on police recorded crimes and offences, this bulletin also presents Official Statistics on crimes and offences cleared up by the police in 2025-26. A definition of clear up rates is provided in the clear up rates chapter.

In 2025-26, the clear up rate was 56.7%, up from 56.0% in 2024-25. This is the second highest clear up rate since comparable records began in 1976, and the highest for a year that wasn’t impacted by the Covid pandemic.

Crimes against society (91.5%), Non-sexual crimes of violence (68.5%) and Sexual crime (61.2%) continued to have higher clear up rates in 2025-26 than Crimes of dishonesty (36.7%) and Damage and reckless behaviour (32.5%).