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Racist incidents in Scotland
31/03/2009
Scotland's Chief Statistician today published Racist Incidents Recorded by the Police in Scotland, 2004-05 to 2007-08. This publication presents statistics on racist incidents recorded by the eight Scottish police forces for financial years 2006-07 and 2007-08 along with slightly revised figures relating to previously published information for financial years 2004-05 and 2005-06.
The main findings are:
- There were 5,243 racist incidents recorded in 2007-08, compared to the 5,321 incidents recorded in 2006/07. This equates to a 1 per cent decrease on 2006-07, which is the first decrease in any year over the four year period covered by the bulletin
- The number of crimes recorded increased in 2007-08 (from 6,653 crimes in 2006-07 to 6,672 crimes in 2007-08), which equates to an increase of less than half of one per cent
- In the four years covered by this bulletin, around 95 per cent of incidents reported resulted in one or more crimes being recorded
- The most frequently recorded crime was racially aggravated conduct, accounting for over half of all racist related crimes recorded over the four year period covered by this publication
- In each year, around 50 per cent of victims were of Asian origin (that is, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or other Asian), with the majority being Pakistani
- For those incidents where perpetrator information was available, approximately 95 per cent of perpetrators, in each year, were of white origin
Statistical data in this Bulletin is reported on a financial year basis. Statistics from April 2004 to March 2008 is available in the Bulletin, with statistics for financial year 2003-04 available on request.
In response to the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, the then Scottish Executive produced an action plan to progress the recommendations set out in the MacPherson report, which included the setting up of a statistical collection covering racist incidents.
The definition of a racist incident, as given by Sir William MacPherson in his Report on the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, is:
"A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person."
In the context of the data for this bulletin, the above definition was used.
The statistics reported today are based on a simple count of the number of racist incidents recorded by the police and the crimes, victims and perpetrators arising from these incidents. Only returns from the eight Scottish home forces are included in this bulletin.
In one incident, one or more victims may be involved, and one or more perpetrators. There may be no criminal element, or several crimes or offences may occur e.g. a house may be broken into and vandalised and the occupants assaulted. All of the offences are counted.
The detailed classification of crimes and offences used by the Scottish Government to collect criminal statistics contains about 360 codes.
In Scotland, assault is a common law offence. In order to distinguish between serious and minor assaults, police forces use a common definition of what constitutes a serious assault.
'Minor assault', as defined by the Scottish Government, is any assault which does not fall into the following definition of Serious Assault:
'An assault or attack in which the victim sustains injury resulting in detention in hospital as an inpatient, for the treatment of that injury, or any of the following injuries whether or not detained in hospital: fractures, internal injuries, severe concussion, loss of consciousness, lacerations requiring sutures which may lead to impairment or disfigurement, or any other injury which may lead to impairment or disfigurement.'
Official statistics are produced by professionally independent statistical staff.