wilful fire raising

{{Short description|Common law offence under Scots law}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2019}}

{{Use British English|date=June 2019}}

Wilful fire-raising is a common law offence under Scots law applicable to deliberately starting fires with intent to cause damage to property.

The offence is not fully equivalent to the offence of arson in England and Wales. The difference is that wilful fire-raising only covers fires that were started deliberately. The English-Welsh offence of arson can include cases where the fire was not entirely deliberate but made possible through malicious or reckless behaviour. In Scots law, if a fire is the result of an act of recklessness, then the offence of culpable and reckless conduct applies.{{cite web|url=http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2002/05/14636/3945|title=Fire: Raising the Standard|work=scotland.gov.uk}} It is common to find both offences charged together where criminal events involve fire and both offences carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. In practice, wilful fire-raising is often treated as being equivalent to arson for some purposes such as statistics.

Prior to the case of Byrne v H.M. Advocate (No. 2)2000 JC 155; 2000 SCCR 77; 2000 SLT 233 there was a distinction between "wilful fire-raising" and "culpable and reckless fire-raising".A Draft Criminal Code for Scotland with Commentary, pub. Scottish Law Commission 2003 The former dealt with heritable property (e.g. buildings, trees, crops) while the latter dealt with other property. That case determined that fire-raising (in a criminal context) would be either wilful or reckless (distinct from English statute law s.1 Criminal Damage Act 1971 which places both together).