Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2021-22

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 10 years from 2012-13 to 2021-22. The latest two years of data were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.


Errata

An updated version of this publication including court type breakdowns and the updated HTML and PDF

An errata was published on 26th March 2024. During a routine Scottish Government quality assurance process conducted in collaboration with Police Scotland, a number of police disposals were found to be incorrectly listed as Recorded Police Warnings (RPWs) given to under-16s. A total of 153 police disposals have been amended for the 2021-22 data as a result. Of these, the majority (130, or 85%) represent Early and Effective Interventions and of the remaining 15%, 12 were a different type of police warning, three were another type of disposal and another was created in error. These 16 records were not part of the police disposals data set and so have been removed from the total. The final seven records were correctly recorded as RPWs, but incorrectly as under-16 year olds. The ages for these records have been corrected accordingly. The Excel files have been updated to reflect these changes. Changes have been made to Excel Tables 16, 17a, 17b and 17c. The HTML and PDF will be updated to reflect these changes once updated court type data are available. A limited number of older (pre-2021-22) RPWs also appear to be incorrectly assigned to under-16s. However, as police disposals older than two years are automatically removed from the Criminal History System these cannot be investigated further. Consequently these cannot be amended in the Criminal Proceedings data and so some caution should be used in interpreting long term changes in police disposal totals for the years prior to 2021-22.

Contact

Email: Justice_Analysts@gov.scot

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