Chamber and committees

The reports titled Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland 2014-15 and Charges reported under the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 in 2014-15 were published on 12 June 2015 and presented information on the number of charges that were reported to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) by the police in 2014-15 under section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 and section 1 and section 6 of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012.

The following table shows religious aggravation charges that were reported to COPFS in 2014-15 for conduct which was derogatory to each religion under the two pieces of legislation. The final column presents the number of charges per 1,000 members of each, as recorded in the 2011 census.

It is important to note that reported charges only contain information about the nature of the offensive conduct and not about the religious affiliation of the victims of incidents. In 41% of charges, the victim of the conduct was a police officer (a proportional decrease from 48% in 2013-14), and in 15% of charges the victim was a worker (a proportional increase from 11% in 2013-14). The occasions when religious abuse targeted people within the ‘general community’, and not a particular individual, represented 36% of all charges (a proportional increase from 26% in 2013-14).

This suggests that for many of the charges it is unlikely the accused knew the religious affiliation/belief of the victim at the time of incident, and that the attacks were more arbitrary in nature.

Table: Religious aggravation and offensive behaviour at football charges derogatory to religions in Scotland in 2014-15 per 1,000 members

Table notes:

1. Information on religious aggravations is taken from Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland 2014-15 and information on offensive behaviour at football charges is taken from Charges reported under the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 in 2014-15, published on the Scottish Government website on 12 June 2015.

2. The number of charges refers to the religion that the conduct was derogatory towards and not the number of charges where victims had the relevant affiliation. Information about victims’ religious affiliations is not recorded by the police.

3. Religious group membership information data for this parliamentary question and in 2013-14 (S4W-24173 on 9 February 2015) were taken from the 2011 census. These were published in census release 2A, on 26 September 2013. Previous calculations of the number of incidents per 1,000 members for 2011-12 and 2012-13, presented in response to previous parliamentary questions (S4W-15809 on 7 July 2013 and S4W-11536 on 12 December 2012), were based on membership data as presented in the 2001 census:

http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/documents/censusresults/release2a/StatsBulletin2A.pdf

4. There are six charges in the Christianity total for religious aggravations charges that referred to conduct which was offensive to Christianity in general and were not directed towards Protestantism or Roman Catholicism.

5. Religious group membership data is based on self-reported affiliation in the 2011 census. Christian denominations are presented in the census under three categories: ‘Roman Catholic’, ‘Church of Scotland’ and ‘other Christian.’ For the purpose of this table only ‘Church of Scotland’ membership has been attributed as ‘Protestant’ because ‘other Christian’ may include a mixture of Protestant and non-Protestant denominations. As a consequence this may lead to an under-reporting of the ‘charges per 1,000 members’ in the Protestant category.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.