Domestic abuse: statistics recorded by the police in Scotland - 2019/20

5.2. Notes for tables

1. Domestic abuse information earlier than 2014-15 was recorded using different systems for each legacy police force. Police practice in deciding when behaviour would justify the recording of a crime or offence may also differ. These differences influenced the number and proportion of incidents which led to the recording of a crime or offence. Between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2014, the interim Vulnerable Person Database (iVPD) system was adopted nationally across all police divisions via a phased roll out. See Chapter 1 and Annex 2 for more details. The vertical dashed line in the table between 2013-14 and 2014-15 indicates this change in data source. See Section 6.9 for more information on historical changes in methodology.

2. Some caution should be exercised when interpreting the statistics on the number of Miscellaneous offences recorded before and after 1 April 2019 – due to the changes in the legislative and operational landscape used by police to record these crimes. See Section 1.2 for more information on how crimes and offences might have changed due to the introduction of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018.

3. Threatening or abusive behaviour and Stalking are included in the sub-group Breach of the peace etc.

4. Mid-2019 population estimates from the National Records of Scotland are used in this bulletin.

5. The category 'Not recorded or other' includes both incidents where gender has not been recorded and is therefore unknown (almost 100% of cases) and incidents where the victim or accused was recorded as transgender. Since 2017-18 there has been an increase in the number of incidents where the gender of the victim and/or the accused was unknown. For further information about this change see Annex 2.

6. Due to data with no age and gender rates per 10,000 population will be lower than expected. See Annex 4 for more details of missing data.

7. A victim/accused can appear in the iVPD multiple times in one reporting year. See Section 2.9 for more details on repeat victims and accused.

8. More than one crime or offence may be recorded in one incident.

9. Please note that 2015-16 data in Table 5 has been revised to correct inaccuracies in the rates per 10,000 population by local authority. The rate for Scotland overall has not been affected by the error.

10. Percentage calculated where the relationship between victim and accused was known.