ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the available information on trends in crime in Scotland from 1950 to 1995 from the recorded crime statistics and the crime surveys, and compares crime rates and trends between Scotland and its closest neighbour, England and Wales. There have been striking increases in recorded crime since 1950 in all developed countries except Japan. There are essentially three patterns. In Japan, recorded crime was at much the same level in 1950 as in many European countries, but thereafter it remained level, or declined slightly. The central problem in discussing crime trends is that crime is not an uncontested social fact: instead, it arises from moral judgements, from a legal code, and from a multitude of decisions taken by officials and citizens about whether to invoke the legal process on a particular occasion. Victim surveys provide a complementary description of the extent and pattern of crime.
