Racist Incidents Recorded by the Police in Scotland, 2010-11

1. Introduction

This bulletin is part of a series of bulletins produced by the Scottish Government on the criminal justice system. It presents statistics on racist incidents recorded and cleared up by the eight Scottish police forces in 2010-11. Any racist incident reported to the police may involve one or more victims, one or more perpetrators, and result in one or more crimes or offences being recorded. This bulletin reports details of all incidents, crimes and offences associated with each incident and, where possible, details of the victims and perpetrators. It is also important to note that these statistics only cover racist incidents reported to the police, and not all racist incidents.

The definition of a racist incident, as given by Sir William MacPherson in his report on the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, is "any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person".

The number of racist incidents recorded by the police in Scotland has reduced for the fourth consecutive year, with 4,907 racist incidents recorded in 2010-11, an eight per cent reduction on the 5,322 incidents recorded in 2006-07.

Chart 1 Racist incidents recorded by the police in Scotland, 2004-05 to 2010-11