There’s a universal human truth; at some point, we all find ourselves miles from a toilet, knees slightly bent, weighing up the consequences of hopping behind a bush. Sometimes it’s desperation, sometimes it’s drink, and sometime… well, let’s just say some people aren’t too shy about making the pavement their porcelain.

What begins as relief sometimes ends in regret; public urination is a criminal offence in Scotland. As it turns out, the act of a hasty outdoor wee leaves behind more than damp patches; it can leave behind a police report, or even a criminal record. What’s important here, is that it leaves behind data!

Where is Scotland… Going?

Open data from Police Scotland recorded crimes for 2024-2025 financial year, gives us the number of crimes by local authority area. Taking population estimates for each council, we can create a map showing how many crimes were recorded per 100,000 head of population.

Spoiler alert: not all areas are equal. Some have suspiciously active bladders, or at the least, more police reports.

Before we cast judgement on the likes of Aberdeen, Glasgow and Shetland, we should ask: what might explain these local variations?

Could it be a particularly boisterous nightlife (Shetland – I’m looking at you!)? Differences in policing? A lack of public toilets? Or maybe just better lighting or more CCTV in some areas than others?

Whatever the cause, this regional snapshot only tells us part of the story.

Stop taking the P**S

Here we show a line chart showing that public urination offences across Scotland have dropped significantly over the past decade. This isn’t a modest trickle of progress; it’s a proper flush! The biggest driver of change? Glasgow City!

For years, Glasgow City topped the leader board in the peeing-in-public league, but in recent years, its number have fallen sharply; pulling the national average down with it.

Why Glasgow?

What happened in Glasgow to stop so many people from being caught peeing where they shouldn’t?

There’s no single obvious answer. Areas for further investigation could be:

• Minimum Unit Pricing? In 2018, Scotland introduced minimum unit pricing to eliminate cheap, high-strength alcohol
• Old Firm matchday changes? Tighter match operations and a change in away allocations and arrival/exit plans for the Rangers/Celtic derby matches may have cut post-match disorder.
• Targeted policing and matchday tactics? A change in policing strategy could have had a deterrence effect on low-level public-order offences.
• Public toilets and urban design? Whilst Glasgow’s formal 2025-35 toilet strategy won’t have had a historical impact, it could point to some changes already being implemented by the city authority.
• Nightlife management? Cultural shifts or changes in nightlife operation may have had an effect.
• Changes to police reporting? It could simply be that Police Scotland has made operational changes to reporting this type of offence.

Booze and Bladders: A Strong Correlation

Here we’ll drop in a chart showing the number of drunken and disorderly offences alongside urination etc. Both offences have plummeted in Glasgow

And guess what? The trend here lines up quite neatly.

While we always need to be careful not to interpret correlation with causation, in this case it feels like an intuitive explanation. Alcohol lowers inhibition, including the one that says “maybe don’t urinate against that war memorial”. So it makes sense that if fewer people are getting drunk enough to be done for disorderly conduct, fewer are relieving themselves on the high street.

If we look at the same statistics for Scotland as a whole, the trend is even clearer.

But again, this conclusion is more slippery than a Glasgow alleyway on a Saturday night in 2014. Have drinking habits actually changed? Are younger people shunning pints for protein shakes? Has the cost of a night out made the pavement pee crowd stay at home? Has our police force been stretched to bursting point so that petty piddling is no longer a priority?

What the Data Leaves Behind

Data journalism, in fact data in general, isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about knowing which questions to ask, and chasing down the next dataset, to obtain the next piece of insight. Here the numbers point to a big change, and suggest some links to broader social trends, policing, and booze culture.

While some will say this is just overanalysing people taking a leak, the truth is, even the wee-est of crimes can reveal big shifts in a how a city works, and how it changes.

Just don’t get caught short doing your own field work, yeah?