At first glance, amendments 1 and 98 look similar, but they differ in the detail. After careful consideration, I cannot support them for three main reasons. The first and primary reason is that I understand that local authorities already have the powers to organise a range of community payback order requirements, and the courts already have the ability to order such requirements as part of sentencing.
Secondly, I am not sure that it is necessary, or that it would be a justifiable use of resources, to oblige the Government to make community payback order programme requirements of the detailed type that is described available to all offenders who are convicted of the full range of animal welfare or wildlife offences.
Thirdly, I cannot support the amendments because of the extent to which they could constitute interference with the long-established principle that Government should not interfere in judicial decision making.
To take the first point, we should consider what the community payback orders that are run by local authorities involve at present. Before a sheriff or judge can sentence someone to a community payback order, they must first obtain a report from a criminal justice social worker. That report will give the sheriff or judge background information on the person, such as any offences that they have previously committed, their risk of offending again, their health and living situation and so on.
The criminal justice social worker is assigned by the local authority to supervise the different requirements of the community payback order. Nine different requirements can be imposed, and it is for the sheriff or judge to decide which ones should be selected for each sentence. Examples of possible requirements are an unpaid work requirement, a drug treatment requirement or a programme requirement, which is what we are considering here.
If a programme requirement is attached to the community payback order, the person who is convicted of the offence could be ordered to attend a programme arranged by a social worker. Such programmes deal with offending behaviour and can cover a range of issues, but there is very little evidence that specific animal welfare empathy programmes are beneficial in such circumstances. Without that crucial evidence on effectiveness, I am not convinced that it would be a good use of national or local authority resources to develop and provide the highly specific programmes that amendments 1 and 98 would require.
The powers already exist for local authorities to develop relevant programmes on a non-statutory basis, and it could be argued that that is a more appropriate approach. Evidence could be gathered on the impact on the organisations involved and their capacity to deliver, as well as on the priority and effectiveness of such measures. Such programmes would be designed and offered by local authorities in collaboration with partners, and their use would remain a matter for the courts, which consider the individual circumstances of each offender.
Such programmes could already include the restorative justice approach that is referred to in Claudia Beamish’s amendment 98, whereby the offender and the victim—or, in animal-related cases, the animal’s owner or other representative—agree to participate voluntarily to understand and acknowledge the harm that the offence has caused. In that regard, the Scottish Government has already set out a clear vision for having restorative justice services, with the interests of victims at their heart, widely available across Scotland by 2023. The Government provided £300,000 to support the delivery of such services when the restorative justice action plan was published in June last year, and additional funding will be available in the current financial year.
In any case, a person who is sentenced to a community payback order with supervision as a result of conviction for an animal welfare offence—or indeed most other offences—will have a risk assessment and an action plan that focuses on addressing the offending behaviour, attitudes to offending and so on, without the requirement for a programme as such.
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The Scottish Government strongly supports the provision of empathy training as a preventative measure—that is an important area on which to focus. There are a number of initiatives that teach children empathy and are centred on kindness to people and/or animals. In particular, we have supported the Roots of Empathy programme in some Scottish schools, which is an evidence-based classroom programme that has shown significant effects in reducing aggression levels in schoolchildren, by increasing social and emotional competence and empathy. Scotland was the first country in the world to deliver the Roots of Empathy programme in every council area, through funding of £1.2 million.
The Scottish SPCA has done significant work in the area, through school visits and programmes that intervene with children and young people who are starting to display potentially offending behaviour towards animals. I am thinking of the Scottish SPCA’s animal guardians programme, for example.
The point that I made about judicial interference is particularly relevant in relation to Claudia Beamish’s amendment 98, which would require guidance to be issued to the courts. It is a long-established and important principle that sentencing, in any case, is a matter for the court alone. The court takes account of all the facts and circumstances of a case before it reaches a decision, in the overall legal framework, and guidance to the courts about how they undertake their sentencing responsibilities should be a matter for the judiciary or the independent, Scottish judiciary-led Scottish Sentencing Council. The placing of an obligation on the Scottish ministers to provide guidance to the courts on sentencing matters would run the risk of threatening judicial independence and should be strongly resisted.
It is worth noting that the independent Scottish Sentencing Council has indicated that, as part of its current business plan, it intends to consider sentencing guidelines in the area of wildlife and environmental offending. If and when changes to the overall sentencing legal framework proposed in the bill come into force, the Scottish Sentencing Council will consider issuing guidelines. That is the correct order in which matters should be considered.
Having said all that, I think that there is scope for us to give further consideration to restorative justice in the context of animal welfare and wildlife cases. We could undertake a project to look at the most recent evidence from other countries in that regard. I do not know whether Mark Ruskell and Claudia Beamish will be content respectively to seek leave to withdraw amendment 1 and not move amendment 98 on the basis that we can commit to further investigation, so that we can discuss what that would look like.