SCOTLAND / RECORDED CRIME / 2022—2026
Shoplifting made up 86.6% of Scotland's recorded-crime rise
In the Scottish Government's current comparable table, police-recorded crimes rose by 30,861 between the years ending June 2023 and June 2026. Shoplifting accounted for 26,718 of that increase. The remainder rose by 1.6%.
What you get: see how much of the total one category represents.
Next: what sits inside the remainder, and why use 2023?
The decisive source is the official 2026 table. “Police-recorded” does not mean “all crime”.
+30,861=+26,718++4,143
The bar is proportional to each category's contribution to the increase, not its total count.
First-screen boundary — the series counts crimes reported and recorded, not everything that happened. Do not use the figure as a causal explanation.
The answer in two lines
The total hides two different movements.
Across the two periods, the total rose from 292,670 to 323,531. Subtract shoplifting from each total and the grouped remainder shows a much smaller increase.
The remainder is not a new official category. It is the total after subtracting the “Shoplifting” row.
Why 2023?
2023 is a benchmark, not a verdict.
The year ending June 2023 is the first complete period after the final legal COVID restrictions ended in April 2022. That makes it a practical comparison point, not a permanent baseline for “normal” crime.
The difference is 32 crimes. Every calculation here uses the current Table 1 value because the 2026 methodology says historical series are extracted again for a like-for-like comparison.
What is being counted
“Recorded” is a measurement boundary.
The official series describes crimes that entered police records. The count can also reflect whether people report incidents, how cases are recorded, how they are classified, and whether records are later cancelled or reclassified.
What you can read
How an administrative total changed, and which numerical share of that change comes from the “Shoplifting” row.
What you cannot read
All incidents, causes of the change, risk to a particular shop, or the experience of a particular person.
The calculation, exposed
You can reproduce the result without the rounded percentage.
These are the two rows used. The remainder is derived by subtraction; the percentage is calculated from the integer inputs and rounded to one decimal place for display.
remainder = recorded total − shopliftingshare of increase = 26,718 ÷ 30,861 × 100 = 86.575…%| Year ending June | Total | Shoplifting | Derived remainder |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 285,975 | 24,877 | 261,098 |
| 2023 | 292,670 | 30,202 | 262,468 |
| 2024 | 300,078 | 40,554 | 259,524 |
| 2025 | 303,343 | 47,381 | 255,962 |
| 2026 | 323,531 | 56,920 | 266,611 |
The official row labels in the workbook are English; the Romanian labels on this page are editorial translations. “Remainder” is not a separate source row.
The interpretation brake
The number separates a headline. It does not explain the world.
It is not everything. Police-recorded crime does not measure every crime or every victim; victimisation has separate sources.
It is not causation. Shoplifting's contribution to the increase does not say why the series changed.
It is not uniform. The grouped remainder can hide rises and falls in different categories.
It is not profiling. This project uses national aggregates only and identifies no people, victims, shops or locations.
Sources, edition, update