SCOTLAND: A COUNTRY WITH NO CRIMINAL RECORD

Abstract

Ina recent and extremely useful survey of recent writings on crime in England in the modern period, Clive Emsley acknowledged, 'my failure to say anything about Scotland or Ireland is not deliberate English myopia; there has been very little work done on Scotland while disorder and the have been the focus of much of the research on Ireland'.1 Disorder and troubles might also seem to be the main concern ofmodern Scottish historians; crime, law and policing hardly feature except in a short-term political context like the 1745 rebellion, or as part of the general history oflabour unrest. Even basic statistical tools are lacking: Gatrell and Hadden, presenting their meticulous survey of the English judicial statistics, noted that the Scots organised theirs differently, requiring separate treatment.2 The underlying explanation for such diffidence among historians is nervousness about the separate institutions of Scots law, preserved by the Act of Union. On the face of it, Scottish crime seems exotically different: strange offences such as hamesucken and stouthriefappear in the list ofserious crimes; the panoply of the law, with the procurators fiscal, sheriff-substitutes, advocates-depute and the like, defies easy comparison with the English system. Familiar titles