§ Mr. Teddy Taylorasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he now has information on the numbers of convictions for murder, attempted murder, culpable homicide and crimes of violence in 1976; and by what percentage these figures, respectively, exceed or are less than the convictions for each category in 1963, the year before the Bill was introduced to abolish capital punishment.
§ Mr. MillanThe provisional numbers of persons convicted for murder, attempted murder, culpable homicide and crimes of violence in 1976 are 41, 44, 42 and 1,226, respectively. The corresponding 1963 figures are 2, 1, 16 and 834, which the 1976 figures exceed by 1,950 per cent., 4,300 per cent., 162 per cent., and 47 per cent., respectively.
Crimes of violence are defined as murder, attempts to murder, culpable homicide, assaults, threats, rape, assault with intent to ravish and indecent assault.
§ Mr. Teddy Taylorasked the Secretary of State for Scotland, in view of the publication on 20th June of a detailed analysis of offences for drunkenness in Scotland in the first three months of 1977, when he expects to be able to give a comparable figure for crimes of violence and murder in the first three months of 1977.
§ Mr. MillanBecause a significant number of cases originally dealt with by the police as potentially murder are established not to have been murder, it would be inappropriate to publish figures for that crime on other than the present260W annual basis. But I am considering to what extent it would be possible to give earlier information regarding the incidence of other crimes.