Recorded crime set to rise for first time since 1970s in next parliament, predicts former police chief and MSP

Recorded crime rates in Scotland will rise for the first time in more than 40 years under the next Scottish Government, irrespective of who wins in May, a former police chief and MSP has predicted.

Graeme Pearson, who used to head up the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency and served as Scottish Labour’s shadow justice secretary in the last parliament, said Scotland’s 41-year crime low is on borrowed time.

His comments came as each of the parties set out their stall for Scotland’s justice system at a Holyrood magazine hustings in association with the Law Society of Scotland earlier this week.

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Latest police figures show group 1 offences - which capture the likes of serious assault and robbery - were up 5 per cent in the nine months to December 31 compared to the same period a year earlier. Sexual crimes saw a rise closer to eight per cent over the same timeframe.

“I think you could anticipate in the next period of parliament crime will go up again,” said Pearson, who stepped down as an MSP last week after four years at Holyrood.

“We’re already seeing signs of that elsewhere in the western world, that there is an indication of a slight upturn. We’ve heard the upturn in terms of some violent crime. We know of the new reporting levels for sex crimes and so forth, but I think you will see that more generally there will be an upturn in recorded crime.

“Government policy in this area doesn’t suddenly turn crime down or turn it up again. But what communities are looking for is effective services being delivered.”

Legal aid also featured heavily after Christine McLintock, president of the Law Society, claimed that across Scotland there are “vast deserts now of advice, particularly for family law issues”. 

Margaret Mitchell, justice spokesperson for the Scottish Conservatives, said the legal aid budget has “stood still” and claimed that family law courts are “long overdue” in Scotland as part of moves towards a preventative spend.

She said: “There has been a cash terms increase from the UK Government to the Scottish Parliament so these savage cuts to the criminal justice budget are entirely decisions made by the SNP government.”

SNP candidate Rod Campbell, who sat on the Scottish Parliament’s justice committee, said that the legal aid budget has been “hacked to pieces” by the UK Government after the scope of civil legal aid was significantly narrowed.

“Clearly the legal aid budget here is very challenging,” he added. “I do think we need to think outside the box, we do need to think about how we can deliver efficiently and local advice centres are certainly one way forward.

“But there is no two ways about it: the legal aid budget is under threat and we must always be mindful of that tip-over point when access to justice is being denied. I would be expecting any government to continue to look at that carefully.”

Meanwhile, John Finnie of the Scottish Greens said that power within Police Scotland must be devolved further down amid controversies over national policies implemented across Scotland.

“We have a situation where there is next to nothing that is within the control of the divisional commander and that’s because of the separation of all the specialist services,” he added.

Alex Cole-Hamilton, who is running for the Scottish Liberal Democrats in Edinburgh Western, said the Scottish Government failed to live up to a commitment to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on raising the age of criminal responsibility.

“We have lied to the United Nations because we have failed to do that,” he said. “As a result children and young people will go throughout the rest of their lives with criminal records which will impact upon their ability to get jobs.”