§ Dr. Godmanasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what was the number of crimes of violence against the person in Scotland (a) in the 12 months ended April 1979 and (b) in the most recent 12 months for which figures are available.
§ Mr. LangFor the purpose of this reply, the term "violence against the person" is taken to include all non-sexual crimes of violence (group 1 of the standard classification) apart from robbery, those crimes of indecency (group 2) which contain a violent element, and certain crimes involving malicious and reckless conduct.
Following the revision, with effect from 1980, of the classification of crimes and offences, recorded crime figures for earlier years are available on a calendar year basis only. For this reason, figures for the 12 months to April 1979 are not available. However, in 1978 there were 7,466 crimes of violence against the person recorded in Scotland. In the period December 1985 to November 1986, 13,091 crimes of violence against the person were recorded in Scotland.
745WThe figure for 1985–86 is not precisely comparable with published figures for calendar years as the latter incorporate amendments that arise in the course of the year, including the deletion of incidents found on investigation not to be crimes.