Recorded crime in Scotland: robbery 2008-2009 and 2017-2018

1. Introduction

This report presents information about the characteristics of police recorded robbery in Scotland. Robbery is one of four categories Police Scotland use to record non-sexual crimes of violence – the other three being ‘Homicide etc.’, ‘Attempted murder and serious assault’ and ‘Other violence’.

This report provides information about robbery which has come to the attention of the police. It does not provide information on the characteristics of all robbery committed in society, as not all of these crimes are reported to the police.

The information presented is based on a sample of police records (rather than all records), and provides a broad indication of the characteristics of the ‘Robbery’ category, rather than an exact measure.

This report is based on a review of police recorded robberies from both 2008-09 and 2017-18. This approach was chosen to help inform users about the extent to which robbery committed today in Scotland may differ in its character to robbery committed 10 years ago. Over the longer term the number of robberies recorded by the police has fallen substantially, down 69% over the past 20 years or 47% over the past 10 years (from 5,027 in 1998-99 / 2,963 in 2008-09 to 1,556 in 2017-18) ^[1] (Chart 1). This decrease is similar to the overall fall in police recorded non-sexual crimes of violence (down 43% between 2008-09 and 2017-18).

Chart 1: Crimes of Robbery recorded by the Police, 1998-99 to 2017-18

Source: National Statistics on Police Recorded Crime, Scotland