SEX crime has fallen in Scotland after years of nearly constant rises.
The number of offences of indecency - anything ranging from rapes to kerb-crawling - dropped just under 5.9 per cent in April-June 2014 compared with the same period a year before.
Preliminary as yet unofficial figures from Police Scotland showed there were 2,187 such crimes recorded, although there was no breakdown of the most serious ones, such as rape.
Figures were up in Edinburgh and Aberdeen but a large drop in Glasgow, from 441 to 341 in the quarter helped push the overall figures down.
Officials from the Scottish Police Authority, which published the figures, urged caution in interpretation of numbers for individual council areas.
The report said: "Seventeen authorities showed decreases in numbers of recorded sexual crimes, the most noteworthy are the larger authorities of Glasgow and Fife.
"The decrease in Glasgow was primarily due to a decrease in rape and sexual assault and prostitution-related crimes."
Sex crime in the quarter, however, remains far higher across Scotland than just a few years ago.
The figure, now 2,187, is up from 1,868 in April-June 2011-12.
The number of serious violent crimes - so-called group 1 offences such as murder, serious assault and robbery - has been falling dramatically in recent years.
Group 1 crimes were down again in the quarter, also by 6.5 per cent, while overall crime was down 6 per cent.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article