NEARLY a fifth of young Scots have experienced stalking, according to grim new figures released by the Scottish Government.

The statistics, included in the 2017-18 Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, also revealed that two-thirds of Scots believe that the justice system is too lenient – despite crime in Scotland falling by 40% over the course of the last decade.

The data, obtained by researchers from interviews with more than 5500 Scots, differs from official crime figures as those who take part detail offences not reported to police.

Overall, crimes are down by 16% over the year to an estimated total of 602,000.

That’s a 42% reduction since 2008-09 and the lowest-ever recorded by the survey.

Violent crime has almost halved over the same period, falling by 46% to an estimated 172,000 offences.

However, the study revealed that one in five young women have been the victim of stalking or harassment in the last year.

While 11.1% of adults said they had suffered the intimidation, it rose to 19% of those aged 16 to 24.

The most common form of harassment was receiving unwanted messages by text, email or social media, with two-thirds (67%) experiencing this.

Some 4% of those who had experienced any form of stalking or harassment said intimate pictures had been shared without their permission, 10% said they had been followed and 11% had spotted someone loitering outside their home.

And while around half of all victims knew the perpetrator in some way, 41% said the offender was someone they had never seen before.

Some 2.3% of Scots said they were the victim of violent crime in 2017-18, with the figure rising to 3.8% for those living in the most deprived communities.

Meanwhile. around 6.2% of women in Scotland reported having experienced at least one type of serious sexual assault, as have 0.8% men.

Victims of serious sexual assault were likely to have experienced more than one incident. Of those who had been raped, just under two-thirds (62%) said they had experienced more than one incident, A total of 31% said that they had experienced “too many incidents to count”.

Just 23% said they had reported rape to the police, with most women who did not stating that they had not done so because they did not want to make “matters worse”.

While 97.4% of adults did not experience violent crime last year, 1.6% of adults experienced one violent crime and 0.7% of adults were repeat victims, experiencing two or more violent crimes.

The survey said this 0.7% “experienced around three-fifths of all violent crime in 2017/18”.

While 57% of people thought police were doing a good or excellent job in their local area, only 38% thought the courts “give sentences which fit the crime”.

Tory shadow justice secretary Liam Kerr said the survey showed “people think the SNP government is too soft on crime”.

“We have a situation in Scotland where dangerous individuals simply don’t fear the law,” he added.

LibDem MSP Liam McArthur said the levels of stalking and harassment experienced by young women was “frighteningly high”.

“Every person should feel confident they can walk down the street or safely have an online profile,” he said.

Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf welcomed the “encouraging findings on long-term crime trends and how safe people feel in their communities” in the survey, but that he remained “concerned about the level of repeat victimisation, and that people in the most deprived communities are more likely to experience violence”.

He said: “While these findings are not new, we must not simply accept them as a ‘fact of life.’”