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Crime and safety overview

Crime and safety infographic.Click here to download the crime and safety infographic.

  • Glasgow tends to have a higher level of recorded crimes and incidents than other neighbouring local authorities and other Scottish cities, although reported levels of crime have declined from around 70,000 in 2007/8 to just under 45,000 in 2018/19.
  • In 2018/19 the number of crimes recorded in Glasgow was 35% lower than a decade before.  
  • Despite decreases in reported violent crime in the last decade, Glasgow experiences a level of violent crime that is 81% higher than the national average.
  • In the last four years to 2018/19, rates of violent crime have risen in Scottish cities and in most local authorities in the Glasgow City Region.
  • The rate of domestic abuse incidents in Glasgow is higher than the Scottish average (32% higher in 2018/19).  

Community safety can be defined as a broad range of issues impacting on personal safety, community safety and perceptions of safety within a defined area. These issues are often complex to understand and can be influenced by a range of social-demographic factors such as poor health, education and unemployment.

The major community safety challenges lie within Glasgow’s deeply embedded culture of violence, territorialism, and domestic abuse – each having clear links to alcohol and drug misuse. The areas where community safety problems exist have remained the same for decades and are generally concentrated within and around the most deprived areas. Although some of these locations have experienced significant investment in terms of regeneration, underlying issues in terms of health, education and unemployment still exist – issues that are closely connected with community safety.

Although, Glasgow experiences a disproportionately high level of community safety issues compared with other Scottish local authority areas, the general trends suggest there has been a significant improvement over the past decade. In recent years, a significant emphasis has been placed on multi-agency partnerships, which have subsequently had a positive impact on major community safety issues such as anti-social behaviour, violent crime, road, fire and home safety.

The children's indicators section of Understanding Glasgow contains related information on aspects of children's safety and children's health within Glasgow.

The data on this website come from a variety of administrative sources and surveys, and the frequency of updates to these sources varies. The graphs and text on each page should indicate the period to which an indicator refers. In some cases, where more recently published data is not available, we still use older published sources, such as the 2011 Census.