Police recorded hate crime - characteristics: updated study

Future production of data on hate crime

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 received royal assent on the 23 April 2021. Section 15 of the Act provides for the publication of future reports on hate crime recorded by the police in Scotland, including on offences aggravated by prejudice within the meaning of section 1 (of the Act) and offences under the Act. This should also detail, to the extent that this information has been recorded by the police, the age, sex and ethnic or national origins of any person recorded as being the victim, perpetrator or suspected perpetrator of the offence. Furthermore the report must include, again to the extent that this has been recorded, information on the specific prejudice being shown by the perpetrator across the different aggravators. Further information on the content of the Act is available from the Scottish Parliament website.

In order to implement Section 15 (and Section 14 on publication of reports on hate crime convictions), justice partners will be required to complete a number of IT change programmes in advance in order to comply. For example, Police Scotland systems will need to be updated to allow police officers to record further information about the victims of hate crime beyond the characteristics listed in the Act. Prior to full roll-out of these changes and the release of the first results under the Act, Scottish Government statisticians will keep the publication of further updates on the volume of recorded hate crime under review and will inform users of future developments through the Scotstat network.

Finally, to support the work above, we would welcome any feedback on the value of the information provided in this report. Please contact us at:

Justice_Analysts@gov.scot