Scottish Government · Recorded Crime in Scotland: bulletin tables
Crimes recorded by the police in Scotland
315,357crimes
Crimes recorded by the police in Scotland was 315,357 crimes in the year ending March 2026, up 5.4% (16,246) from 299,111 in the year ending March 2025.
▲ 5.4% · +16,246 against Year ending March 2025 (year on year)
- Scottish Government count
- Year ending March 2026
- published 23 June 2026
- Table 1: Crimes recorded by the police, by local authority
- row “Scotland · Total Crimes · Total”
- column “2025-26”
- cell value 315357
Year ending March 2026 is the highest figure in the published series: 315,357. Rule: highest of the 10 periods published here (Year ending March 2017 to Year ending March 2026).
Year ending March 2017 to Year ending March 2026
What this measures
The number of crimes recorded by the police in each Scottish council area in the financial year, by crime group and crime type, as published in Table 1 of the Recorded Crime in Scotland bulletin.
What this doesn’t measure
Crime that was not reported to or recorded by the police, offences (which Scotland counts separately from crimes), convictions, or crime in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. It is not comparable with police-recorded crime in England and Wales, which is counted under different rules.
Important caveat
Recorded crime in Scotland is counted under Scots law and the Scottish Government's own counting rules, which differ from the Home Office rules used in England and Wales: the crime groups are not the same, common assault is a crime rather than an offence, and some categories exist in one jurisdiction and not the other. The figures are therefore not comparable with police-recorded crime in England and Wales and are never added to it here. A recorded crime is one the police recorded, so a change can reflect reporting or recording as much as crime itself, and crime nobody reported is not in these figures at all. Where the legislation creating an offence came into force part-way through the ten years, earlier years have no figure rather than a zero. Rates per 10,000 are the publisher's own, using National Records of Scotland mid-year population estimates; the 2025-26 rates use the mid-2024 estimate, because the mid-2025 estimate was published after the bulletin.
Revision history
No period of this series has been revised since it was first ingested here. Revisions are recorded automatically when a later release publishes a different figure for the same period.
Source
- Publisher
- Scottish Government
- Publication
- Recorded Crime in Scotland: bulletin tables
- Release
- Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2025-26, published 23 June 2026
- Source file
- rcs2526.xlsx
- File SHA-256
- 67482e0a367cf604dcfb16c1ea9196b46f241104bb534dd63cd3311093cc8691
- Retrieved
- 3 September 2026
- Sheet
- Table_1
- Table
- Table 1: Crimes recorded by the police, by local authority
- Row
- Scotland · Total Crimes · Total
- Column
- 2025-26
- Cell value
- 315357
- Geography
- S92000003
- Unit
- crimes
- API
- /api/metrics/recorded_crime_scotland · /series · /vintages
Government periods
Change during each government, from the level inherited to the last complete period before it left office. Describes the period; does not attribute cause.
| Labour 2024– | 299,790Year ending March 2024 | 315,357Year ending March 2026 | ↑ 5.2% |
| Conservative 2019–2024 | 305,699Year ending March 2019 | 299,790Year ending March 2024 | ↓ 1.9% |
| Conservative 2017–2019 | 298,154Year ending March 2017 | 305,699Year ending March 2019 | ↑ 2.5% |
- Release
- Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2025-26 · publication page
- Last updated
- 23 June 2026
- Next release expected
- Not yet announced (estimated from the usual cadence)