The Scottish Government released a statistical bulletin on the homicide recorded by the police in Scotland in 2017-18. The bulletin accounts for the number of cases involving homicide but not the number of victims in each case.
Some of the key points of the report include:
- There were 59 homicides recorded in Scotland in the 2017-18 period, which is the lowest number in any twelve-month period since 1976, the first year when comparable data has become available.
- Between 2008 and 2018 the number of homicides fell by almost 40%. This means that the number of victims per million population dropped to 11 from 19 ten years ago. The highest percentage of decrease happened in Glasgow, even though between 2017 and 2018 almost 20% of homicides still happened there.
- Data on the victims: 75% of the victims of homicides were men (45) and 59 victims were recorded overall, while the number was 65 last year. Most female victims were killed by their partner or ex-partner, while an acquaintance killed most male victims.
- 81 people were accused of homicide in 2017-18, and 95% of those were male. The reason for the higher number of people accused than the number of victims is that some of those homicides were committed by more than one person or in a different year.
- There is only one homicide case that is currently unsolved.
- The most common method of killing was with a sharp object, which most commonly involves a knife.
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