By Professor John Robertson

The ‘Scottish’ Daily Mail today, front page, has SNP’s pitiful record on crime exposed, based on clear-up rates supposedly ‘plummeting‘.

Mystifying.

From the Scottish Government in January 2024 (24/25 rates not out yet, obviously), the above trend graph and:

In 2023-24 the clear up rate was 54.1%, up from 53.3% in 2022-23 and back to a similar level seen in 2021-22.

The large decrease seen between 2020-21 and 2021-22 likely reflected the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the types of crime recorded, with the volume of those crimes that have relatively lower clear up rates falling more sharply in 2020-21 than those with relatively higher clear up rates. The fall to 54.0% in 2021-22 from 59.3% in 2020-21 reflected a partial return to the volume of different crime types recorded prior to the pandemic (2019-20).

Clear up rates have remained relatively stable in 2023-24, increasing slightly from 53.3% to 54.0%. Crimes against society (91.4%), Non-sexual crimes of violence (68.0%) and Sexual crime (57.2%) continued to have higher clear up rates in 2023-24 than Crimes of dishonesty (33.1%) and Damage and reckless behaviour (29.6%).

Between 2022-23 and 2023-24, the category with the largest increase was Murder and culpable homicide, from 91.7% to 106.9% [homicides from earlier times being cleared-up using DNA]. 

^{https://www.gov.scot/publications/recorded-crime-scotland-2023-24/pages/16/}