Sexual crime conviction statistics: FOI release

Information requested

1. In each of the last five years, how many people in total were convicted of sexual crimes.

2. In each of the last five years, please provide the number of people convicted of sexual crimes who had previous convictions.

Please provide a breakdown by year, and by type of sexual offence on the charge sheet.

Response

1. Some of the information you have requested is available in the "Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2021-22" report, specifically in the 'Main bulletin tables - updated,' which can be accessed at Supporting documents - Supporting documents - Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2021-22 – Updated - gov.scot (www.gov.scot). Table 4(b) provides the number of people convicted by main crime or offence, including a breakdown of Sexual crimes group at the crime level.

Please note: the latest available data is for 2021-22. Information for 2022-23 will not be available until publication of the Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2022-23 Statistical Bulletin. This is planned to be published in late 2024.

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

2. Answer to your second question is provided in the table below.

Number of people convicted of sexual crimes, broken down by sexual crime type, who had a previous conviction of any crime within the last 10 years.

	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22
Rape & attempted rape	45	61	49	36	67
Sexual assault	64	77	80	44	82
Causing to view sexual activity or images	47	55	67	58	70
Communicating indecently	21	37	42	20	43
Threatening to or disclosing intimate images	9	19	19	14	30
Indecent photos of children	55	57	48	32	59
Crimes associated with prostitution	18	10	13	1	1
Other sexual crimes	47	41	53	49	46

Please note: If an offender had more than one conviction in the year, then the most recent conviction was counted as the reference conviction, and the earlier convictions were counted as previous convictions.

Comparison Across Years: To ensure comparability between years, we use a standard 10-year window for considering previous convictions. This approach prevents distortions when comparing earlier years (e.g., 1999, where we have only 10 years of prior data) to more recent years (e.g., 2019, where 40 years of prior data is available).

Counting Reconvictions vs Criminal Proceedings: The way reconvictions are counted differs from how convictions are counted in Criminal Proceedings. Therefore, the percentage of people with previous convictions cannot be calculated using the first part of the answer as the denominator. If an offender had more than one conviction in a given year, the most recent conviction is considered the reference conviction, while earlier convictions are treated as previous convictions. For example, if there were two sexual crime convictions in 2022, Criminal Proceedings would count both, whereas the reconviction data would count the most recent as the crime and the earlier one as the 'previous conviction'.

You can find the Reconviction rates in Scotland publications at Reconviction rates in Scotland statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot). The table provided above is a more detailed breakdown of the sexual crimes data published in Table 20 of the annual Reconvictions publication.

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