Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2021-22

13. Aggravations

(Tables 11-12)

Please see Annex B for a note on data quality relating to the aggravations data.

Codes can be recorded on the Criminal History System (CHS) by Police Scotland or the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) to provide additional information relating to the nature of a charge. Some of these codes (aggravations) are created by legislation. Although aggravations must be proved in court they can be proven by a single source of evidence, rather than by corroborated evidence. For example, someone who commits a Common assault which is motivated by malice towards the victim as a result of the victim’s religion would have their offence recorded under assault with an aggravation code of religious prejudice. The statutory aggravations are taken into account during sentencing, and a higher penalty may be given as a result.

Other aggravations are not created by legislation, but are identifiers added to a charge to provide additional information for operational purposes. These do not need to be proved in Court.

This publication includes statistics on a subset of the full set of aggravation/identifier codes on the CHS. The set of aggravations this publication covers are: domestic abuse, disability, racial, religious, sexual orientation and transgender. The legislation creating these aggravations is outlined in Annex C. The Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016 created a statutory aggravation of domestic abuse, which came into force on 24 April 2017, making this the fifth year data has been presented on this aggravation. The aggravation for domestic abuse in relation to a child under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 came into effect on 1 April 2019, making this the third year data has been presented on this aggravation.

Please note that statistics on statutory bail aggravations, which identify offences that were committed while the offender was on bail, are not included in this publication but are published alongside this bulletin, under the “Supporting documents” menu on the website for this publication.

Please be aware that a single proceeding can have more than one aggravation recorded against it e.g. “domestic” and “disability”. In these cases, the same proceeding would be counted twice in the aggravation tables but once in the other court tables.

Domestic abuse

The statutory domestic abuse aggravation, used for the first time in 2017-18, was applied to 7,803 or 81% of convictions with a domestic identifier in 2021-22 – it is never applied to a proceeding without the non-statutory identifier, but it is not applied to convictions for the domestic abuse crime under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018. Whilst the statutory aggravation requires to be proven in court for it to apply to a conviction, the non-statutory identifier can be applied when police or COPFS believe there may be a domestic abuse element to a proceeding but it is not appropriate to apply the statutory aggravation. This may be because the date of the offence pre-dates the legislation which introduced the statutory aggravation, or it may be because there is insufficient evidence for the statutory aggravation to be proven in court. The number of convictions with a statutory domestic abuse aggravation in 2021-22 was 20% higher than the number of 6,529 in 2020-21.

In 2021-22 the vast majority of people convicted of an offence with a domestic abuse statutory aggravation were male (6,863 convictions or 88%). This proportion has decreased slightly since it was introduced (90% in 2017-18).

In 2021-22 the most common crime types (see Chart 11) with a domestic abuse statutory aggravation that people were convicted of were:

• Threatening and abusive behaviour, 36% of domestic abuse statutory aggravations (2,842 convictions)
• Crimes against public justice, 28% of domestic abuse statutory aggravations (2,177 convictions)
• Common assault, 22% of domestic abuse statutory aggravations (1,688 convictions)

There were 9,576 convictions with a domestic abuse identifier in 2021-22, a 26% increase from 2020-21 (7,591 convictions).

Note that the introduction of the domestic abuse crime under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act in 2019-20 may have affected the number of convictions with a domestic abuse identifier or statutory aggravation. This crime covers a course of conduct. Before the introduction of the crime, this may have resulted in multiple convictions for different offences at different times, whereas now they may result in a single conviction (with a more severe penalty). COPFS Domestic Abuse and Stalking Charges 2022-23 Statistics on the number of charges reported to them showed that the percentage of charges for stalking with a domestic abuse identifier has fallen since the introduction of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018.

Domestic abuse in relation to a child

There were 139 people with a conviction with a statutory aggravation for domestic abuse in relation to a child in 2021-22, compared to 89 in 2020-21. This is the third year of data for this aggravation, which is only applied to the crime of domestic abuse under Section1 of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act.

Other aggravations

After the domestic abuse aggravation, the next most common types of aggravations recorded in 2021-22 were:

• Racial (550 convictions);
• Sexual orientation (381 convictions); and
• Religious (151 convictions).

The number of convictions with a racial aggravation increased 58% between 2020-21 and 2021-22 (again likely reflecting the increase in court activity in 2021-22), but is 21% lower than in 2012-13 (696 convictions). The number of convictions with a sexual orientation aggravation increased by 49% between 2020-21 and 2021-22, and is 96% higher than in 2012-13 (194 convictions). The increase in convictions with a religion aggravation was 22% between 2020-21 and 2021-22 but is 44% lower than in 2012-13 (272 convictions) .

Disability aggravations in 2021-22 were higher (118) compared to 2020-21 (79), and were at their highest for the most recent 10 years (since 2012-13). Convictions with a transgender aggravation in 2021-22 were higher (14) than 2021-22 (10), but are relatively low and tend to fluctuate year to year, due to the small numbers recorded.