Racist Incidents Recorded by the Police in Scotland

This bulletin presents statistics on racist incidents recorded and cleared up by the eight Scottish police forces in 2008-09. The definition of a racist incident, as given by Sir William MacPherson in his Report on the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, is “any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person”.

Any racist incident reported to the police may involve one or more victims, one or more perpetrators, and result in one or more crimes or offences being recorded. This bulletin reports details of all incidents, all crimes or offences associated with each incident, and, where possible, details of the victims and perpetrators. It is also important to note that these statistics only cover incidents reported to the police, not all racist incidents.