Professor John Robertson OBA

From – Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please provide the following details: The number of non-crime hate incidents recorded by the police force every year, and by year, from 2009 to 2024, published today, we seen that non-crime hate incidents have fallen from 1066 in 2022 and 1296 in 2023 to 1054 in 2024.¹

What is a non-crime hate incident?

A non-crime hate incident is any incident perceived by the victim, or any other person, to be motivated either entirely or partly by malice and ill-will towards a person or group based on the victim’s actual or perceived membership of one or more of the characteristics, but which does not constitute a criminal offence.²

This is an encouraging trend in the light of falling hate crimes. See:

Latest – Hate crime in Scotland falls and is TWICE as common in England and Wales

Source:

1. https://www.scotland.police.uk/access-to-information/freedom-of-information/disclosure-log/disclosure-log-2025/february/25-0132-incident-stats-non-crime-hate-2009-td/
2. https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2024/04/27/what-police-scotland-data-on-hate-crime-reveals-about-non-crime-hate-incidents/#:~:text=A%20non-crime%20hate%20incident%20is%20any%20incident%20perceived,but%20which%20does%20not%20constitute%20a%20criminal%20offence.%E2%80%99