The crime rate recorded in Maryfield in 2024 is four times higher than in Dundee’s “safest” area, official figures reveal.
Our analysis of Police Scotland data shows that the affluent Ferry ward has the lowest crime rate across almost all main crime groups.
The force’s figures offer an indication of how crime is distributed within local authorities.
Incidents are tracked as either recorded or detected crime. Recorded crime is counted by the date the crime is raised, while the latter is by the date it was solved.
We analysed recorded crime in Dundee to find:
- What are the crime hotspots in Dundee according to the rate of incidents?
- What type of crimes dominate in the City of Discovery and each of its wards?
- How have the number of recorded crimes changed since 2020?
Which areas of Dundee have the highest crime rates?
The central Maryfield area had the highest crime rate with 2,014.9 recorded incidents per 10,000 people in 2024.
The ward covers a large part of the city centre and it is perhaps unsurprising it tops the list, but certain crimes are still more common in other areas.
For example, the East End ward was a hotspot for traffic-related offences in 2024.
The area, which has the A92 running through it, saw 310.97 incidents per 10,000 people.
Meanwhile, the West End ward was on the opposite side of the scale for road traffic offences with the lowest rate for the crime in Dundee.
The ward includes the train station and some other city centre locations.
On the other side of the city, the East End also had the highest rate of sexual crimes in 2024, with 45.07 per 10,000.
It was followed by Coldside and only then by Maryfield.
Yet when it comes to antisocial offences, crimes against society and crimes of dishonesty, the city centre is an undeniable hotspot.
Maryfield has a rate of antisocial offences, which include a number of alcohol related crimes, that is double that of any other ward in Dundee.
Crimes of dishonesty, such as shoplifting and housebreaking, are also very common in Lochee.
The rate of 530.95 recorded incidents per 10,000 people is lower than Maryfield (602.95), but it is noticeably higher than other Dundee wards.
On the other hand, the data shows that Ferry residents see the lowest crime rates across almost all categories.
The overall crime rate in The Ferry was less than a quarter of the Maryfield rate. In 2024, it had just 469.97 recorded incidents per 10,000 people.
Road traffic offences was the only category where it did not have the lowest rate.
How have recorded crime totals changed in Dundee?
In the latest available data for 2024, crimes of dishonesty were the most commonly recorded crime group in Dundee.
There were 4,808 recorded incidents last year in the group which also includes crimes such as theft or corruption.
That was a year-on-year drop from 5,758 recorded crimes of dishonesty in 2023.
But it is higher than the two years impacted by Covid-19 restrictions.
Meanwhile, road traffic offences were recorded far more frequently during 2020 and 2021.
The 3,285 recorded incidents in 2024 are almost half that recorded in 2020.
However, 2024 still marked a 30.7% increase from 2023.
The number of recorded non-sexual crimes of violence in Dundee has been falling over the five years up to 2024.
Serious assault, common assault and other violent crimes all fall under the group. Despite declining, recorded incidents remain significantly higher than for the remaining groups.
Police recorded more than 2,000 incidents within a year for only three out of eight crime groups in Dundee.
Crimes against society, which includes possession of drugs or weapons, were recorded more often than damage and reckless behaviour in 2024.
Damage and reckless behaviour rose last year, after falling each year since 2020.
Meanwhile, antisocial offences like threatening or abusive behaviour, have been declining since 2021.
What types of crimes dominate in your Dundee area?
But how are these crime groups distributed more locally?
We checked which group made up for the biggest proportion of recorded incidents within each ward.
The eight wards are split equally between crimes of dishonesty and road traffic offences.
In the Ferry, almost two in five crimes (38.4%) in 2024 were road traffic offences.
By comparison, around one in ten crimes fell under the group in Maryfield (12.8%).
Crime groups are broken down into more precise crime classifications.
With such a high proportion of road traffic offences, it may be unsurprising that the top recorded crime type in the Ferry was related to speeding offences.
But overall vandalism seemed to dominate within Dundee council wards in 2024.
It was the most frequently recorded crime type within four wards.
Those were Coldside with 217 incidents, the East End with 211, Strathmartine with 153 and the North East ward with 142 recorded incidents of vandalism in 2024.
The remaining three wards also shared the same top recorded crime type – shoplifting.
Theft by shoplifting was recorded twice the amount of times of the second most common crime in the West End with 285 incidents.
In Lochee, the 615 recorded shoplifting incidents also double the 236 vandalism incidents within the ward.
Shoplifting was also the top recorded crime in Maryfield in 2024.
Tracking changes over different crime types is not as easy
Shoplifting was the top crime across the whole of Dundee with a total of 1,937 recorded crimes in 2024.
But that did mark a fall from the preceding year where total shoplifting incidents surpassed 2,158.
Unsurprisingly, a smaller number of shoplifting incidents were recorded during 2020 and 2021. Lockdown restrictions put in place to curb the spread of Covid-19 would have seen many retailers closed for long periods impacting the numbers.
Meanwhile, recorded vandalism incidents have dropped year-on-year since 2020.
The high of 1,689 recorded incidents in 2020 has dropped to just about 1,400 in the most recent data.
However, it is important to note that crime classification can change over time.
Legislation changes can introduce new crime sub-groupings or require existing ones to be modified.
That is the case with common assaults in 2024.
Minor assault was previously renamed common assault and the category was broken down further into whether it caused injury.
In 2023, there were 1,739 minor assaults. After the end of the 2023/24 financial year, the data is uploaded as common assaults with or without injury.
Altogether, there were 1,718 recorded common assault incidents in 2024. A total of 738 of those are known to be without injury, while at least 565 resulted in injury.
The latest data also splits assaults on emergency workers with a new grouping for assaults on just police staff.
The 2024 data shows more than 200 common assaults on cops or other police staff. Of those, 28 were injured while 196 suffered no injury.
What is the difference between detected and recorded crimes?
Not all recorded crimes are detected. The Police Scotland operational data is split by whether the incident was just recorded or detected within the year.
Dundee’s top group for recorded crimes is the fourth most commonly detected in 2024.
There were 4,808 recorded crimes of dishonesty in 2024, but just over a third of that were detected – or 1,655 incidents.
Road traffic offences will often be recorded for the first time the moment they are also detected, like speeding.
It is the most commonly detected crime group in Dundee.
In 2024, there were 2,760 recorded non-sexual crimes of violence. By comparison, 1,937 incidents were detected.
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