The Gender of Justice: When Narrative Shapes the Verdict in Scotland

Why a victim-centred system must pair empathy with evidential neutrality in Scotland’s justice debate.

The Sunday Post's recent front page featured a stark gallery of the faces of close to 200 women killed by men in Scotland over the last 16 years. Many were murdered in the one place they should feel completely safe—their own home. Each face represents a real, irreplaceable loss. Each life mattered.

A serious justice system can honour that truth while still asking a harder question: what happens when violence is framed predominantly through one gender lens, and that framing becomes the cultural atmosphere in which policing, charging decisions, and juries operate? Justice requires empathy for victims. It also requires balance and completeness.

There is no need to deny the data: men commit the majority of serious violent crime, including domestic abuse. Police Scotland's 2023/24 figures record 63,867 incidents of domestic abuse, with 81% involving a female victim and male suspected perpetrator.

But asymmetry is not an absolute. The same figures record that around 15 percent of incidents involved a male victim and female suspected perpetrator. UK-wide survey data similarly shows substantial numbers of male victims each year. These realities do not diminish female suffering. They complete the picture.

In justice systems, a recognised phenomenon is the "chilling effect": people stay silent when the social, legal, or professional cost of seeking help feels higher than the benefit.

• Media Saturation: Public discourse frequently foregrounds male offending as the dominant narrative of domestic and sexual harm.

• Policy Focus: Campaigns and funding frameworks understandably prioritise reducing male violence, reflecting majority patterns in recorded incidents.

• Internalised Stigma: A male victim may assume disbelief, ridicule, or minimisation.

• Underreporting: Silence produces lower reporting figures.

• Statistical Reinforcement: Policymakers cite those figures when shaping services and funding models.

This is not a conspiracy. It is a feedback loop. If we accept that stigma suppresses reporting for women—rightly leading to reforms—intellectual consistency requires us to examine if similar dynamics suppress reporting for men.

Public narrative does not remain outside the justice system. It influences police starting assumptions, prosecutorial decisions, jury psychology, and legislative reform.

In Scotland, evidential restrictions under Sections 274 and 275 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 limit the extent to which relationship history and certain contextual material may be explored in sexual offence trials.

These safeguards are designed to protect complainers from unfair intrusion. They also operate within a wider cultural environment.

If that environment heavily foregrounds male aggression as the default frame, restrictions on contextual defence evidence may carry greater practical weight.

A presumption of innocence must withstand cultural pressure. If it bends too easily, it ceases to function as a presumption.

The claim that false allegations are “rare” is often presented as settled fact. In reality, prevalence depends heavily on definitions, recording practices, and auditing standards.

Complaints may be categorised as “no crime,” “no further action,” or withdrawn. Very few are formally designated malicious.

The absence of a conviction for perverting the course of justice does not automatically establish the truth of the original allegation, nor does it automatically establish falsity. It establishes only that malicious prosecution was not pursued.

That uncertainty matters.

A justice system does not require a high rate of error to justify safeguards. It requires only recognition that error is possible and that the cost of error is severe.

None of this diminishes the seriousness of violence against women. It affirms a principle.

A victim-centred system must centre victims as individuals, not categories. A presumption of innocence must apply neutrally, not culturally.

A media landscape that foregrounds one pattern of harm while rarely acknowledging others may unintentionally weaken the justice it seeks to strengthen.