Criminal proceedings in Scotland: 2020-2021

Statistics on criminal proceedings concluded in Scottish courts and alternative measures to prosecution issued by the police and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service are presented for the ten years from 2011-12 to 2020-21. The latest year’s data is impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.


Errata

An errata was published on 1st May 2024. Police Scotland previously identified that figures supplied for Recorded Police Warnings (RPWs) presented in Tables 18a, 18b, 18c contained some classification errors with respect to “Other sexual crimes”. Updated figures for 2020-21 have now been prepared with 16 records now correctly reclassified as “Other miscellaneous offences”. In addition, two of these records were incorrectly recorded as RPWs. These have now been correctly reclassified as Formal Adult Warnings. The HTML, PDF and Excel have been updated to reflect these changes. Changes have been made on PDF pages 8, 13, 55 and 58 and Excel Tables 17, 18a, 18b and 18c, as well as Youth convictions Table 4.

Whilst a review of older data is not possible it is likely that no RPWs were issued for “Other sexual crimes” in the two preceding years. Data prior to 2020-21 should therefore be treated with caution.

An earlier errata was published on 6th April 2023 as a result of changes to Table 9b of the “Criminal Proceedings in Scotland 2020-21 - Final Main Bulletin tables”. The supporting file was updated to reflect these changes.

Contact

Email: justice_analysts@gov.scot

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