Chamber and committees

The reports titled Religiously aggravated offending in Scotland 2012-13 and ‘Charges reported under the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 were published on 14 June 2013 and presented information on the number of charges that were reported to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) by the police in 2012-13 under section 74 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 and section 1 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 2012-13 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 2001 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 40% of charges, the victim of the conduct was a police officer and in 12% of charges the victim was a worker. This suggests that many of the charges were not directed towards members of religious groups and were more arbitrary in nature.

Table: Religious aggravation and offensive behaviour at football charges derogatory to religions in Scotland in 2011-12 per 1,000 members

Table notes:

1. Information on religious aggravations is taken from Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland 2012-13 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, published on the Scottish Government website on 14 June 2013.

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 are not recorded by the police.

3 Religious group membership information data are taken from the 2001 census. Available online at: http://scotland.gov.uk/publications/2005/02/20757/53570.

4 There are 5 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 2001 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.