Racist Incidents Recorded by the Police in Scotland, 2013-14
This bulletin presents statistics on racist incidents recorded by Police Scotland in 2013-14.
Racist incidents reported to the police may involve one or more victims/ complainers, one or more perpetrators, and may result in one or more crimes or offences being recorded.
Annex 2: Quality of the Statistics
Reporting and Quality Assurance of Racist Incidents Recorded by the police:
6.25. Police Scotland's Annual Police Plan has racist abuse (and Hate Crime specifically) as a high priority. The plan can be obtained from the Police Scotland website:
http://www.scotland.police.uk/about-us/police-scotland/strategic-planning/
6.26. The data provided by Police Scotland go through a process of quality assurance in which data received are checked against previous years and comparable sources. Anything unusual or which we feel requires further explanation is then fed back to Police Scotland for their attention. Any amendments are carried out and the final data is used to produce a set of data tables which can be used to check the final dataset. If the police are content that the figures are an accurate reflection of the dataset, then the data is officially signed off for use in the publication.
6.27. During the quality assurance checking process, it is possible for errors to be found in data for previous years. While we do not routinely revise figures, we are committed to correcting errors in the data and providing suitable explanations for any changes made to previously published data.
6.28. Police Scotland record complete information for all incidents. There is however a challenge in retrieving and linking the captured information to meet the specific data requirements for this publication. As a result some values for key variables are marked 'missing' or 'unknown'. The percentage of racist incidents where information is recorded as missing or unknown is contained below. Missing data has been analysed where possible to look for trends and patterns that would affect the quality of the statistics in this bulletin.
Table 18: Percentage of missing values for each variable, by financial year, 2004-05 to 2013-14
|
|
|
Percentage of Missing |
|||||||||
|
|
Variable |
2004-05 |
2005-06 |
2006-07 |
2007-08 |
2008-09 |
2009-10 |
2010-11 |
2011-12 |
2012-13 |
2013-14 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Incidents |
Location of Incident |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.1% |
0.3% |
23.0% |
0.0% |
1.4% |
1.0% |
1.3% |
| Person making initial report |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.1% |
0.3% |
23.3% |
22.1% |
24.8% |
26.1% |
5.6% |
|
| Crimes |
Crimes recorded |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.1% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
| Victim/ complainer |
Ethnic group of victim/complainer |
2.9% |
5.9% |
3.7% |
3.1% |
3.8% |
3.2% |
4.5% |
6.7% |
5.8% |
7.0% |
| Launguage of victim/complainer |
3.3% |
5.5% |
4.5% |
6.0% |
22.4% |
29.7% |
34.0% |
28.2% |
31.5% |
31.6% |
|
| Gender/Age of victim/complainer |
4.6% |
7.2% |
5.4% |
6.1% |
5.0% |
4.4% |
4.2% |
5.5% |
5.2% |
5.2% |
|
| No. of previously reported incidents by victim/complainer |
1.7% |
2.5% |
0.4% |
0.3% |
0.4% |
1.7% |
5.4% |
6.1% |
6.8% |
31.9% |
|
| Perpetrator |
Ethnic group of perpetrator |
2.3% |
3.3% |
7.9% |
8.7% |
17.1% |
17.0% |
7.9% |
7.4% |
5.8% |
7.7% |
| Launguage of perpetrator |
2.7% |
2.2% |
7.7% |
7.0% |
35.6% |
42.1% |
38.5% |
32.6% |
32.1% |
16.1% |
|
| Gender/Age of perpetrator |
4.3% |
3.0% |
7.3% |
10.8% |
10.1% |
7.0% |
8.1% |
7.1% |
6.0% |
5.8% |
|
| Action taken by Police |
2.6% |
2.8% |
3.9% |
0.6% |
0.8% |
37.2% |
34.0% |
28.3% |
28.6% |
2.5% |
|
6.29. Only 68.1% of records in 2013-14 contained information on the number of repeat racist incidents that the victim/complainer has raised with the police. A large proportion of records from Lothian & Borders, Dumfries & Galloway, Central and Grampian legacy forces were unable to be supplied with this information. As a result, care should be taken when comparing across years in Table 11.
6.30. A number of other variables are affected by missing data over the past ten years for various reasons. Footnotes for each table contain information for users when making comparisons across years.
6.31. Throughout 2013-14, Police Scotland rolled out the iVPD (interim Vulnerable Person Database) to the 14 Police Divisions in Scotland. This new national database will collect racist (and other hate crime) incidents for 2014-15 onwards. See Annex 7: Future Considerations for more information.
Changes in Methodology & Legislation
6.32. There have been no major legislative changes throughout 2013-14 which impact on the comparability of the statistics.
6.33. Threatening or abusive behaviour and Stalking were introduced on 6 October 2010 when the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 was implemented. These offences are included in the 'Breach of the peace etc.' category
6.34. Offensive behaviour at football and threatening communication crimes were introduced when the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Act 2012 was implemented on 1 March 2012. These offences are included in the 'Breach of the peace etc.' category
Mid-year Population Estimates
6.35. The Mid-year estimates used in this publication to calculate the rates per 10,000 population were obtained from the National Records of Scotland (NRS). NRS have recently alerted users to errors contained within the age groups for 2002 to 2014. These errors will be corrected by NRS in April 2016. The errors discovered are small and as such, the overall impact on the data in this publication will be minimal. Further information on the errors found are documented on the NRS website:
http://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/population
Contact
Email: Alan Sloan
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