How much crime does each Scottish council area record?

Highest areas

Lowest areas

Ranked by change over a year, per cent, highest first; ties in alphabetical order. Areas without a value are not ranked.

What this map shows

32 of 32 local authority areas have a current value for all recorded crime and offences (change over a year, per cent), Change over a year: Year ending March 2025 to Year ending March 2026. Classes are quantiles of the areas with data, computed on the server, so the same link always gives the same legend.

Every crime and offence group the bulletin counts, as its Total Crimes row.

Take the data

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<iframe src="https://civometry.com/embed/maps/scotland-recorded-crime/all/change-1y?level=lad&measure=change" width="720" height="700" style="border:0;max-width:100%" title="All recorded crime and offences, change over a year, per cent, by local authority: Change over a year: Year ending March 2025 to Year ending March 2026 | Civometry" loading="lazy"></iframe>

Source and method

Data

Recorded Crime in Scotland: bulletin tables (Scottish Government).

Denominator

None is applied here. The Scottish Government divides its own count by the National Records of Scotland mid-year population estimate and publishes the rate; this layer draws that published figure. Recorded Crime in Scotland: bulletin tables.

Coverage

The Scottish Government publishes recorded crime for all 32 Scottish council areas. England and Wales are drawn by the police-recorded crime layer from a different collection, and Northern Ireland is published separately by the PSNI; neither appears here, because the three sets of figures are not comparable.

Boundaries

ONS Open Geography Portal generalised boundaries, Open Government Licence v3.0 (2025-05 BGC v2 LAD_MAY_2025_UK_BGC_V2).

Basemap

Ordnance Survey Maps API (Light), used under the OS Data Hub terms.

Formula

(newest published rate − the rate a year earlier) ÷ the rate a year earlier

Stale areas

An area whose newest published year is earlier than the newest any area carries is shown as no current data, with both years named. Nothing is carried forward.

Method

Methodology

What this does not measure

Crime that was not reported to or recorded by the police, the risk to any individual, or crime in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. The denominator is the resident population, not the number of people present in an area during the day.

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.

A recorded crime is one the police recorded, so a change can reflect reporting and recording as much as crime itself. Scottish counting rules differ from the Home Office rules used in England and Wales: common assault is a crime here and the crime groups are drawn differently, so this map and the police-recorded crime map must not be read as one series. The rate for the latest year uses the mid-2024 population estimate, because the mid-2025 estimate was published after the bulletin. No direction is set for this layer: more recorded crime can mean more crime or more of it reported.

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