Way back in 2011 when I started this website, I took the plunge and decided to call it UKCrimeStats.com although there was no data for Scotland or Northern Ireland. About a year later, NI data appeared and then for years after there was nothing for Sotland until they released some not very good data at all – annual crime total/not any category – by datazone. And it always come through years late too.
Fast forward to today and I’m delighted to say that Scottish data is now much better and we are publishing it on 2 pages here;
Crime by Scottish Council – see and compare crime across 32 different councils
and
Crime by Scottish Electoral Ward – see and compare crime across 350 wards
The data is much improved on several levels to crime by datazone, namely;
i) There are now 7 categories versus just 1 before (Non-sexual crimes of violence), Other, Sexual, Micellaneous offences, crimes of dishonesty, Motor vehicle offences, Fire-raising/vandalism)
ii) The data is monthly – the latest available month is June 2023 (yes, still slow and 15 months behind everywhere else but better)
iii) It is matched to Scottish Electoral Wards also known as Multi Member Wards – that’s not as good geospatially as Datazone of which there were nearly 7000. But we now have crime categories.
iv) There is even superior granularity in that if you drill down further, they will actually tell you which specific criminal offence – out of approx 1400. That is way better than www.police.uk – I’m still thinking about how to integrate that.
Anyway, caveats apply – notably that Scotland has a different legal/criminal system and you can’t really compare. But you could certainly compare crime rates for the same periods.