This Official Statistics bulletin presents information on the number of crimes and offences recorded by the police in Scotland during August 2021 and offers comparisons with the same month in 2020 and 2019. I appreciate that these data are almost certainly an under-estimation of actual crime levels but the trends remain of interest.

Given that August 2020 was unusual, a period of lockdown, it seems more informative to use the comparison with August 2019.

Reported crime in almost every category has fallen since 2019. you can read the full detail at the link above.

Perhaps most encouraging are the 13% and 6% falls in rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault after increases in 2020. Also encouraging are the 7% fall in domestic abuse, the 6% fall in attempted murder and serious assault and the fall in homicide from to 5, from 8 in 2019 and 10 in 2020.

Less positive are the increases in the handling of offensive weapons.

Drug offenses are down sharply by 28% from 2019. This, in particular, may represent shifting practice by police officers as Scotland moves away from the ineffective application of the laws on possession.

Overall, reported crime is down 8% from 2019.