Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2022-23

10. Aggravations

(Tables 12-13)

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

Aggravations are a code that can be recorded to provide additional information about a criminal charge. Some aggravations are created by legislation, these are known as statutory aggravations. These must be proved in court but can be proven by a single source of evidence rather than by corroborated evidence. For example, if someone who commits a common assault motivated by malice towards the victim’s religion, this offence would be recorded as assault with an aggravation of religious prejudice. Statutory aggravations can result in a higher penalty. Other aggravations are not created by legislation but are identifiers added for additional information. They do not need to be proved in court.

High-level summary

Aggravations

(Tables 12-13)

In 2022-23 there were 11,525 aggravations recorded against the main charge. Of these:

• the most common were domestic statutory abuse aggravations (7,805)
• 708 were racial aggravations and 588 were related to sexual orientation
• The convictions with the highest number of convictions with domestic statutory abuse aggravations were threatening and abusive behaviours (2,774), Crimes against public justice (2,026) and common assault (1,908).

Year on year change (2021-22 to 2022-23)

• Between 2021-22 and 2022-23 all aggravations recorded increased by 7%
• Aggravations relating to sexual orientation increased by 204 (53%)
• Aggravations relating to race increased by 157 (28%)

Change over the latest 10 years (2013-14 to 2022-23)

• Between 2013-14 and 2022-23, all aggravations recorded decreased by 6%
• Aggravations relating to sexual orientation increased by 361 (159%)
• Aggravations relating to disability increased by 184 (613%)
• Aggravations relation to religion decreased by 48 (19%)

Breakdown by gender

• In 2022-23, the vast majority of people convicted of an offence with an aggravation were male (87%)

Key points to note

• The statutory domestic abuse aggravation was used for the first time in 2017-18. In 2022-23 it was applied to 80% of all domestic aggravations.
• There were also 160 domestic aggravations involving a child, this is the 4^th year that data is available for this category.

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 sixth 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 fourth 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.

Chart 13. The most common crime types with a statutory domestic abuse aggravation are threatening and abusive behaviour, crimes against public justice and common assault.

Convictions in Scottish criminal courts with a domestic abuse statutory aggravation, by crime type, 2022-23