CRIME motivated by racial and religious hatred is at its highest recorded level in Scotland.

Racial prejudice remains the biggest driver of hate crime in Scotland, with police reporting 4518 such charges in 2011-12 – up 8% on the year before and the highest level since 2006 when recording began. Of the latest offences, 81% of the charges resulted in a court action.

A further 897 charges with a religious aggravation were also recorded – up almost one-third on the previous 12 months with the Crown Office claiming a number of high-profile cases of sectarianism may have encouraged others to have come forward. Court action went ahead in 86% of these cases.

Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, QC, said the increases in charges brought by police were partly due to a higher awareness of the laws in place to tackle the crimes and the greater confidence of victims to come forward. However, one equality council claimed yesterday the true figures on race crime would be much higher but some victims still feared going to the police.

Mr Mulholland said: "We would urge the public to report all hate crimes to the police. They can have confidence all such crimes will be investigated carefully and prosecuted robustly."

The figures on crimes linked to religious prejudice do not include offences charged under the Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2010 – the flagship policy to stamp out sectarianism which was rushed through Parliament earlier this year.

It was announced yesterday that 42 charges had already been made under the new legislation since it was brought into force on March 1.

The overall figures include crimes dealt with by the The Offences (Aggravation by Prejudice) (Scotland) Act 2009, which extended powers to deal with hate crimes against the gay and transgender community and those living with a disability.

Police made 652 charges related to homophobic crimes in 2011-2012 – up from 447 the year before. In addition, police reported 68 charges motivated by an aggravation of disability, up from 48 in 2010-11.

Mohammed Razaq, executive director of the West of Scotland Regional Equality Council, said he believed the level of race crime in Scotland remained far higher than reported. He said a lack of funds for casework with hate crime victims was likely to have led to less people contacting police.

Mr Razaq also said the rise could be blamed on the recession. He added: "The first people they see that are different from them become the target. These are the people who are labelled as those who are taking away jobs. Hate crimes against visible ethnic minorities will be the highest."

Jenny Marra, Labour's Shadow Community Safety Minister, said: "The fact that hate crime has increased across the board will in part be due to improved reporting, but I fear these statistics, for the first time, begin to shine a light on the true scale of hate crime in Scotland."

Strathclyde Police said on Wednesday five men and a teenager from Glasgow and East Renfrewshire had been charged in connection with anti-Semitic comments on a Facebook site.