SCOTLAND's hospitals are experiencing dramatic drops in admissions from assault victims.

New official figures from the Scottish Government show serious violent crime has more halved in the last decade and dropped six per cent in 2014-15 alone.

Such numbers never capture the full extent of real violence - since not all assaults are reported to - or discovered by - the police.

But numbers from hospitals suggest the official statistics are corroborated by those from accident and emergency wards.

NHS Lothian saw admissions drop eight per cent between the first half of 2014 and the first half of this year, from 1,799 to 1,649.

Police figures for the same period found a tiny rise in reported serious violent crime in the same area.

Similar injury surveillance in 2013 in NHS Lanarkshire also supported official trends showing crime down.

National statistics for so-called Group 1 crimes - serious violence such as robbery, murder or serious assaults and some child mistreatment cases - have been declining for a decade.

So too has the carrying of knives or other weapons. And overall crime was down five per cent last year to its lowest level since 1974 with the detection rate - just over half of all crimes were solved - at the third highest level since 1976.

However, reported sex crimes continued their rise, up 11 per cent in the year and 46 per cent in a decade.

Karyn McCluskey director of the Violence Reduction Unit said, stressed real violence remained higher than that reported by the police and the government.

She said: “The VRU recognises there is a gap between recorded violence and what our A&E departments see. So we have been working with our health colleagues in Lanarkshire, Fife and the Lothians to capture anonymised data about the presentations at hospital for violence. These statistics also show a decrease in violence, a trend mirrored by the decline in admissions for violence across Scotland in the most recent 2013/2014 data.

“Nevertheless, we cannot be complacent. Police Scotland’s daily crime reports highlight the extraordinary levels of violence perpetrated in homes around the country, women and children whose lives are being destroyed by domestic abuse.

"There cannot be any diminution of our efforts - we must be better, we can be better, but it will take all of us. No one is safe until we are all safe."

An increasing focus on domestic violence since the creation of Police Scotland is thought to be behind continued high levels of reported violence, especially in Edinburgh.

Justice Secretary Michael Matheson said: "The falling figures around violent crime are especially encouraging and are testament to increased policing and to the huge amount of groundbreaking work being done by the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) and the Scottish Government’s No Knives, Better Lives programme amongst others to educate our young people about the dangers and consequences of becoming involved in any form of violence."

Deputy Chief Constable Rose Fitzpatrick said: "The reality is that fewer people are becoming victims of crime. The clear-up rate remains high which I believe provides communities with reassurance that where crime does take place, Police Scotland is committed to tracing offenders and reporting them for prosecution."