ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the most persistent and most commonly reported type of non-violent property crime throughout Scottish history: theft and its allied offences. Many variants of the non-violent illegal appropriation of goods have existed in history, but in Scotland at least, only a few offences have warranted separate legal categorisation from theft during the 1660 to 1960 period. The simplicity of Scots Law extended to consideration of more obvious forms of the theft of goods from another person too. In England and elsewhere in Europe, especially during the premodern period, various elaborate distinctions were made in law, depending on the time, place, amount stolen, and degree of force used. The chapter shows that theftuous activity in Scotland was relatively mundane in nature rather than serious. It was increasingly perpetrated by men and it typically involved first-time offenders rather than recidivists.
