Overview

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 heath, education and unemployment.

Some key points related to crime and young people in Glasgow are summarised below:

  • 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 many crimes have been declining since 2006.
  • In relation to anti-social behaviour (ASB), youth-related incidents make up 16% of all ASB incidents in Glasgow.
  • Just over 7,500 crimes were commited by youths (children under the age of 18) in Glasgow in 2011/12 with offending levels rising rapidly in teenage years.
  • Despite decreases in reported violent crime, Glasgow experiences a level of violent crime that is still twice the national average.
  • There were 150 crimes of violence perpetrated by young people (under the age of 18), accounting for 2% of all youth crime.
  • The likelihood of being a victim of violence or of committing a violent offence rises rapidly in the teenage years.
  • In 2012, in Glasgow, there were on average 280 domestic abuse incidents reported each month where children were present.

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, emphasis has been placed 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.

This section highlights trends in selected crimes and offences involving, or having a particular relevance for, children and young people in Glasgow: -

  • Youth Crime
  • Antisocial behaviour, including the fear of crime and youth related
  • Violent crime
  • Domestic abuse
  • Vandalism