Small rise in violent crime after years of decline

The latest police statistics show a small rise in “group one offences”, including robberies and serious assaults in the first half of 2015/16.

At a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) analysts cautioned against thinking the rise was “statistically significant”.

In the current financial year to October 2 there were 3,345 group one offences – up from 3,203 in the same period in 2014/15.

Lesley Bain of Police Scotland explained this was largely a consequence of serious assaults, which had gone up by 18 per cent.

The single force, she added, had “put more effort” into following the letter of the law. As a result, assaults which previously were treated as “common” were now being regarded as serious.

She said: “Analysis indicates that when all violent crimes are considered (i.e. the sum of Group one crimes of violence and crimes of Common Assault) the overall rise in violent crime in 2015/16 is not statistically significant at this time.”

A major trend in the past few years has been an increase in complex cases, especially domestic violence ones. After Sir Stephen House, then Strathclyde chief constable, reformed how the offence was handled, more crimes were recorded following such incidents.

Sir Stephen replicated this strategy when the single force was formed, resulting in increases around Scotland.

But the new data indicate domestic violence is now falling everywhere, with the rest of the nation following Strathclyde.

This was attributed to new means of dealing with the offence. Police Scotland’s quarterly performance report stated: “The number of domestic abuse incidents recorded within Scotland decreased at the end of the second quarter compared with the previous year by 5.3 per cent (at 1,625 incidents).

“There are varying local reasons for this but there is a widespread acknowledgement that one common factor is the effect of the implementation across Scotland of the Domestic Abuse Toolkit.

“Police Scotland’s detection rate for domestic abuse crimes and offences increased by 1.2 per cent to 83 per cent compared to the same period the previous year.”