Justice Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Official Report 573KB pdf

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Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service

Agenda item 7 is an evidence session in our Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service inquiry. Before we start, Mary Fee has a brief comment.

I thought that it would be useful to make members aware that I convene the cross-party group on families affected by imprisonment and, as such, I work closely with Nancy Loucks and Families Outside. Although that is not a registrable interest, I thought that it would be prudent to mention it prior to the evidence session.

Thank you, Mary.

It is my pleasure to welcome the witnesses. This is our second week of taking evidence in our inquiry. We have with us Liz Dahl, who is the chief executive of Circle; Steve Farrell, who is the lead organiser for Community Scotland—or should that be lead organiser for Scotland Community? Which way round?

Any way.

Good.

We also have Professor Nancy Loucks, who is the chief executive of Families Outside, and Audrey Howard from Social Work Scotland. I thank Audrey Howard in particular for stepping in at very short notice. It is important that we hear from Social Work Scotland, so the committee is grateful to you.

Without further ado, I open up the session to questions from members.

Who is going to be first? It is unusual that members are not all wanting in.

Go for it, Douglas.

I thank the witnesses for their written submissions. Liz Dahl’s submission said:

“As an organisation we have developed a specific service to promote greater use of restriction of liberty orders amongst women who face custodial sentences”.

Could you tell us a little more about that?

We have a new service in Lanarkshire. Our intention is to go to court with the women so that they get a non-custodial sentence rather than a custodial one. That has been working very effectively, to date.

Could you explain how that works? Do you speak on the women’s behalf?

We provide a family support service. Women are referred to us through the community payback order system. The service is for women who are not managing their community sentences. We provide a service with the whole family to help women to manage their community sentence and to prevent them from getting a custodial sentence.

That is of particular interest, because people often default on a community payback order for good reasons, such as that the times are unsuitable for allowing them to manage childcare. If it is a choice between the children and the order, women sometimes opt for the children and thereby default on the order. In that situation, the only solution or sanction seems to be a custodial sentence. In effect, your service bridges the gap, which is useful.

I also have a question for Steve Farrell. Can technology be used to a greater extent? Your organisation did not make a written submission, but one of the other written submissions expresses the view that we could do more in that regard to save money and to save the hassle of transporting prisoners and people on remand.

As far as our members are concerned, particularly those in escort services—we escort prisoners from the Borders right up to the Highlands and Islands—there are a lot of wasted resources and wasted transit trips. There is also the risk factor. Within the prison sector, risk is apparent every day of the week. Many people would argue that, especially with longer-term prisoners, while they are within the prison walls the risk is less but it becomes greater the minute they get into an escort vehicle and start travelling on Scotland’s roads. For both those reasons—the risk element in the prison service and the resources issue for our members who do escort work—we would like greater kudos to be given to direct videolinks to courts from prisons.

Sometimes with pre-sentencing procedures, prisoners leave, for example, HMP Kilmarnock at 8 o’clock in the morning and do not return until half past 5 or 6 o’clock at night. Two officers will have sat with them in court all day, and the prisoner may not even have been seen because of court business that day. That is a complete waste of time and resources for all stakeholders.

Indeed it is. Do you think that the barrier is financial? There are systems in place that can be used—they are used to a limited extent in the Highlands and Islands, and I think that they could be used far more. Why do you think that, in this day and age, we are still transporting prisoners great distances for what are often quite short appearances in court?

That is a good question. I noted the use of the word “silo” in some of the written evidence that was submitted by others. I genuinely believe that there needs to be a more collective and collaborative approach on the part of all stakeholders. People who are working in their silos have many good ideas, but we need to enable unions, prison stakeholders, community-based stakeholders and experts in the field to come together to talk about the subject so that we can take a collaborative and joined-up approach with regard to how we move things forward. You are right to say that the facilities exist, but whether they are being used to their maximum potential is a different question.

Is the message that there should be a more holistic approach and better use of technology, as Douglas Ross mentioned?

That is definitely the case from the point of view of our members.

Could you elaborate on the technology that you are thinking of? How would it be used?

As Douglas Ross said, there are facilities in some prisons that enable a direct link to some courts. To use them, a prison officer would simply escort a prisoner from their residential area to the visits area, where the videolink facilities are situated. At that point, in effect the officer would be there as a known person in court. That would definitely help with regard to the resource issue that I spoke about earlier.

That is helpful.

My question is to Audrey Howard. It is a two-pronged question, but I will ask it all at once.

Could you outline the experience of the accused people whom you work with of the justice system? What is your experience of the justice system? How do you and other social workers liaise with the criminal justice officials and so on?

As has been pointed out, I am a last-minute stand-in, so I have not had the opportunity to consult widely with my Social Work Scotland colleagues. I will, therefore, be drawing largely on my own experience. My authority is part of the North Strathclyde community justice authority, and I am aware of the issues that have been encountered and raised by my colleagues on the CJA.

I am conscious that Social Work Scotland did not provide a written submission to the inquiry, so I have come with some thoughts that I would like to share with you. They are around three areas: diversion from prosecution, bail and remand, and community justice.

Diversion from prosecution provides us with an opportunity to keep out of the system people who, because of the low seriousness of the offence, the low volume of their offending or issues that have triggered the offending in the first place, do not really need to be in the system. If we want to be ambitious in terms of the community justice agenda, early intervention and diversion are critically important.

However, use of diversion varies across the country: for example, in my local authority area it has been in steady decline for decades. That is largely to do with the direct measures that are available to police and procurators fiscal, and the move away from local procurators fiscal marking papers to the centralised system. In the main, direct measures are financial penalties. I am conscious that one of our local justices of the peace, Sam McEwan, has made a submission that speaks to his frustrations about having people appear at the JP court with financial penalties that they have not paid and which, in some instances, they do not have the money to pay, as a result of which they have clocked up a number of financial penalties. There is also the question of people getting access to services that would have addressed their issues. Again, research will show that if you get in early enough with supports, when people’s motivation is high after an incident, you probably have the best chance to move people forward.

As I said, I am bit concerned about the level of use of diversion. Diversion provides the opportunity to provide people with person-centred support. There is concern about direct measures, which is that the financial penalty may be excluding people from that support.

The other thing that I said about diversion concerned the structural arrangements of the Procurator Fiscal Service. Centralised marking has resulted in loss of local knowledge about diversion schemes that would previously have informed decisions about marking. The fiscals who mark papers now do not know about local schemes—which is fair because they are in a central place—and they have not built up confidence about the robustness of the schemes. They do not have that kind of local knowledge.

I am not necessarily saying that we should go back to how things were; I am just saying that that is a problem that needs to be addressed. We are looking within our own local authorities, as part of the community justice agenda, at how we might try to address the situation in terms of the information that goes in police reports to fiscals. That is part of an early intervention diversion strategy that we are looking at with our partners in north Strathclyde.

We need to recognise that papers being marked away from a local base is a problem, so we need to put on our thinking caps and think about how we solve it.

When did centralised marking start?

Do you mean the decrease?

No. I mean—

I can only reflect on what has happened in my own authority. There has been a steady decline since 2000.

I mean the centralised marking process.

I could not put a timeframe on that.

Has it been going on for years or months?

It has been going on for years.

There is also bail and remand. This probably taps into G4S’s comments about people going across the country. You will be aware of how remand can disrupt people’s access to treatment and impact on their housing, benefits, family relationships and so on. Most people who are on remand do not end up with a custodial sentence. It is imperative that the justice system and justice partners ensure that bail information and bail supervision services are available to courts, as an alternative to remanding people.

A critical issue in relation to the efficiency and effectiveness of bail is the communication from the PF service to court social work. We need to know who is in custody. We get the custody list from G4S first thing in the morning—which is not a problem—but we do not know for whom the fiscal is opposing bail and why. It is not enough to know that bail will be opposed; we need to know why. If it is about issues to do with accommodation, we can try to seek alternative accommodation. It might be because somebody has had a court order already: the view could be taken that if the person is already on a community disposal, something must be going wrong for them to be at court again.

If we know what the issues are, we can provide the information. We are not advocates for bail, but we provide information to ensure that the best decision is made. To be honest, that decision has to be based on risk. People should not be remanded rather than granted bail because of their social circumstances or difficulties. We can provide that information and support, and we can provide supervision on bail if we can get in with sufficient time.

Prior to coming to the meeting, I talked with my bail information worker about the fact that although the custody court should be heard at 12, at five to 12 we might still not know whose bail will be opposed or their circumstances. I do not believe for a minute that that is about people not wanting to impart information; I believe that it is about pressures in the system and about resourcing. I am sure that procurator fiscal colleagues could speak to that. I can tell you only what the outcome is at the other end. In some instances, we are not able to provide bail information or put forward a bail supervision case, because we do not know why the person’s bail is being opposed.

Before we move on from that point, do any of the other witnesses want to comment on information from fiscals about what is going to happen with bail and custody, or on the issues that are involved in considering whether to remand a person?

12:15  

The three main issues are the length of time between arrest and prosecution, communication, and the lack of use of technology.

Last year, I was a witness in a child assault case. I was called to court three times, so I spent three half days in court. On the first two, we were sent home after lunch. That involved me, another manager from the next-door organisation and two police officers. All that time and cost were wasted, whereas we could have been sent an email saying that the case would not go ahead on those days.

So there are perhaps some communication issues.

That was helpful. Does Audrey Howard want to add anything?

The community justice agenda is really exciting. It is an opportunity to place communities at the heart of what we do by developing services that best meet their needs. There are two performance indicators on which help from the fiscals is critical. They are about planning and delivering services more strategically and collaboratively and about access to services.

The fiscals are the gatekeepers in relation to the people who come into the system and progress through it or are diverted away from it, and their capacity to engage in the community justice agenda is a real challenge for them. The fiscal service is a national one and there are 32 local authorities, so it will be challenging for fiscals to work out how to have a dialogue with us about how best to support us with the outcomes, but they are certainly up for that. There has been email correspondence between the service and all 32 local authorities about fiscals wanting to engage in that conversation and how they can come up with a fit that best suits being a national service that deals with 32 local authorities.

A lot of issues were raised in that. Perhaps members will pick them up in their questioning.

I thank the witnesses for the evidence that they submitted. My question is for Circle and Families Outside and relates to a couple of points that they made in their submissions.

One thing is clear: the issues that the witnesses are talking about—technology and communication—come up time and again. Families Outside talks in its submission about simple things, such as the use of plain English, which is an important point. In its submission, Circle talks about

“the introduction of Child and Family Impact statements”,

but mentions that there is

“no experience of them being operational”.

When were the statements introduced and what is their potential impact?

Child and family impact assessments have not been introduced yet. They were recommended in a submission from us, Together—Scotland’s Alliance for Children’s Rights and the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland to the United Nations Human Rights Council under the universal periodic review. The recommendation was accepted by the United Kingdom Government as a whole but not implemented in any way.

One of your colleagues ran a member’s bill proposal consultation on child and family impact assessments and received tremendous support for their use. They were introduced in a slightly watered-down fashion through the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 in January, but that provision is on hold because it referred to the sharing of information with the named person. Because that system is not yet up and running, the impact assessments are still not in place. That is a real lost opportunity.

As I say in my submission, there is a common theme of communication and working in silos. Families are not consulted in any way. They are not included in the decision-making process leading up to a prosecution or sentencing. That is a real problem, because the impact, even of a remand into custody, is potentially enormous on the family, but it is not part of the discussion or something that, as far as we are aware, the Procurator Fiscal Service inquires about in making its decisions. The families with whom we work have certainly had very little experience of fiscals, unless they have been called as witnesses. It is a continuing frustration, given that the impact on housing, income, mental health and so on can be severe; certainly, children do not distinguish between remand and a custodial sentence. We are very concerned about the issue.

In your submission, you mention the framework for support to families affected by the criminal justice system, which the CJAs and then the community planning partnerships signed up to. You also talk about the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service’s role and the implementation of the framework. How is the service being made to buy into that system, if you see what I mean? I realise that the framework has been signed up to, but how do you envisage it working and what needs to be done to ensure that it happens?

The main points are about training, ensuring an awareness of the impact on families and the service’s role in supporting those families. Again, we have to ensure that the wider impact of any decision that the service makes is taken into account, including the impact on the families who are left behind.

My question is very similar to the one that Mairi Evans asked. In previous evidence-taking sessions, we have heard a lot about lack of communication and lack of support before, during and after the court process and the impact of delays. Of course, with this morning’s witnesses, we are getting a different perspective, this time in relation to families. Whether we are talking about the victim or the perpetrator of a crime, not just the individual but their whole family is affected. Although the move to child and family impact assessments might help to plug that gap, if you like, small practical things can be done just now. What do you think can practically be done to help and support families? Is it just a matter of including them in the line of communication or offering them support, or can something else practical be done to include them?

Communication is certainly a huge part of this and a good first step would be to identify what issues might be affecting families. There is also a very real recognition that, no matter what information you might have about their family, there are people who need to be remanded or sentenced to custody. That is fair enough. We also need to recognise that community-based decisions also have an impact.

We then need to take the next step and say, “This person has been remanded into custody—what support does the family need?”, instead of just accepting the decision and moving on. We need to ensure that there is some kind of follow through and that those families are receiving support.

Who would be best placed to do that?

That is a very good question. Whether the matter is referred to social work, whether the fiscals might play a role or whether it is a case of simply flagging up that support is available in communities from organisations such as ours and Circle, we need to recognise that, although there is scope for support to be provided, families often do not have any information about what support is available, let alone receive it.

I suppose that we also have to be realistic and recognise that the tariff might well not be high enough for children and family social work teams to get involved, so it will come down to organisations such as ours that provide family support services.

Thank you.

I want to take Audrey Howard back to her reference to Sam McEwan’s evidence on the impact of direct measures. That was in a written submission, but it might be helpful to get some oral evidence on it. As I understand it, the cumulative impact of direct measures can often leave individuals unable to make payments, whereas had they been dealt with in a different and perhaps a little bit more burdensome way at the outset, the measure would have been more effective and appropriate.

It depends on the individual. If you have, say, an alcohol issue or some other chronic—not one-off—condition, you might pick up a number of fixed penalties for being drunk and incapable or for various other activities related to your alcohol use. However, you might be unable to pay because you do not work, you have no income and all your money is going on your addiction. The fact is that direct measures will come nowhere near doing anything for you.

If you have a job and go out one night and there is a one-off incident, a direct measure is probably the most appropriate thing. You have a fixed penalty, you pay it and move on—there are no other issues. However, given the circumstances of certain individuals, direct measures come nowhere close to solving the problem. If you end up repeat offending over a short period of time, you will just accumulate a series of fines that you do not pay and the case will be remitted to the JP court.

I mentioned that, in our CJ area, we were looking at an early intervention diversion strategy through the community justice agenda. I think that we have to help our fiscal colleagues here, because the issue is structural rather than anything else. We think that if we can work with police colleagues—there may be a need for some training for community officers and beat officers—we can agree a strategy with them so that when they see certain issues, they know that we have schemes that it would be helpful for them to highlight in their remarks in the police report that goes to the fiscal. In that way, we would not have to rely on local knowledge, which we are not going to get in a centralised marking system. Instead, the fiscal is given a clear steer from the local police as to where the case needs to go. It is a decision for the fiscal but the fiscal has the information to make that decision. I think that that is one way of resolving the issue.

I have met Sam McEwan to talk about community payback orders and so on, and I know about his frustration with the number of people in who come before his court who, as a result of issues that relate to their addiction, may have problems such as benefits sanctions because they have not turned up for appointments. The issue that really needs to be addressed is their alcohol addiction, or their mental health. For chaotic or vulnerable individuals, direct measures are hopeless.

It also needs to be recognised that the vast majority of people who are caught up in our community justice system are living in poverty and have mental health problems or addiction problems. We are not talking about the minority but about the majority.

That is helpful.

I would like to take us on to the issue of diversion from prosecution. From the bar associations in particular, we heard evidence of a kind of rigidity in the system: if a case had a particular element to it, the options for any discretion to take on board the specific circumstances of that case were immediately limited. Individuals undertaking that decision did not necessarily have the confidence or experience to explore the raft of available options, including diversion away from prosecution. Does that mirror your experience of how the system is working at the moment? If so, are there ways in which the situation can be improved?

I think that both sides have that experience—in the fiscal service and in criminal justice social work in relation to the assessments that we do of people’s suitability for diversion and whether to pass them to a service that we provide directly or to third sector colleagues. However, there are certain categories of offence, of which domestic violence is one, about which people are quite hesitant about diversion—and rightly so, in some regards. There has been a practice of prosecuting people in order to send a clear message that domestic violence is not acceptable behaviour and needs to be prosecuted and dealt with through the court.

We know that the problem is complex. There will be people at the periphery, where it is not about entrenched attitudes relating to power and control but about individual circumstances that have given rise to an offence.

We have witnessed situations involving two damaged people in a relationship where there have been weekly, if not almost daily, disturbances. The issue is, given the circumstances that they have come through, how do we intervene to sort that out? It is a complicated area that relates to people’s confidence and feeling that there is support to sort things out.

The same applies to sexual crimes—I am talking again about the low-level stuff. The practice—the default position—has been to prosecute, and I understand what has driven that practice. We all know that in such black-and-white situations, there are people at the edges and it is not appropriate to drag them through the court system.

12:30  

Despite all that complexity, is there something that would improve the situation, even if it does not resolve all the issues in the areas that are perhaps less black and white? Might something nudge us towards a situation where fewer of those cases end up in court?

It is about empowering people. I say to my social work staff that we have to move away from automatically returning papers to the fiscal service and saying that we are not going to assess that person. We must look at things case by case—that is our bread-and-butter assessment. We need to see whether there is something that we can offer in such situations.

Fiscals have Lord Advocate’s guidelines for certain offences and there will be presumptions about what happens in those cases, but I think that it is about empowering people to use their skills in terms of making decisions for PFs about the risks and whether it is in the public interest to prosecute.

I want to follow up on that useful exchange between Audrey Howard and Liam McArthur. As you are aware, the domestic violence agenda is very big at the moment, and the Government is committed to tackling the issue. You will have seen that with recent legislation.

With that in mind, what specific programmes can be offered to offenders who have committed acts of domestic violence? What are the different stages at which those programmes can be brought in, including at the level of diversion? My questions are probably for Audrey Howard.

I can speak only from my experience in Inverclyde—or rather for the North Strathclyde CJA. We do not have the Caledonian programme, which is the Government-funded programme for male perpetrators of domestic violence. I understand that the programme is being evaluated, but I do not know what the intention is or whether it will be rolled out. It is quite frustrating that although Inverclyde, Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire have some of the highest rates of domestic violence, we do not have access to that programme. That is a challenge.

I have very dedicated staff who do their best to come up with individual programmes for people—I am talking about people who are on court orders rather than people who have been diverted from prosecution. We have used our own budget to buy in advice and guidance on how we might work with people individually while we wait to see what will happen with the Caledonian programme.

I go back to the issue of the confidence of staff who work in this area. Staff are always concerned about making a situation worse rather than better by starting to explore with somebody what the challenges are for them in relation to their behaviour. The Caledonian programme provides support not only for the perpetrator but for the victim and any children—it takes a whole-system approach—whereas we are trying to do stuff with individuals, and there is a staff confidence issue around how we do that. I think that the area will probably be picked up by the community justice agenda and our partners. What is the offer that we are making to perpetrators and their victims about how we move forward? I am sorry that I do not have a better answer for you.

No, that was the sort of answer that I expected and it covered a wide range of points.

I should declare an interest, as Mary Fee did earlier: I was a social worker and am still registered with the Scottish Social Services Council. I worked in justice until my election in May and had noticed an increasing trend towards community-based disposals for domestic violence. That trend continues to increase and case loads are becoming more weighted towards that approach. Therefore, it strikes me that different levels of programme would be a good way forward not only for people on community payback orders, for whom the Caledonian programme and its predecessor, the change programme, are still being used in South Lanarkshire, for example.

What do the witnesses think about the idea of a smaller programme, perhaps in line with tagging—that is, restriction of liberty orders? Perhaps Liz Dahl can answer that.

The problem with the Caledonian programme is that a person has to be prosecuted to get on it and we want to avoid that.

That is exactly my point. I wonder whether there is scope for smaller programmes.

Many of the families we work with are not ready to go on groupwork programmes, but we use a programme called parents under pressure, which allows us to address issues such as domestic violence, mental health and addiction. Using that programme, we work with the whole family in the family home. Parents under pressure is one of the best programmes that I have found that allows us to work with the individual family to address all the issues that impact on it.

May I clarify what you are asking about the Crown Office’s role, Fulton? Are you saying that, rather than automatically sending somebody to court, it should be aware of such programmes?

I probably did not articulate the question as well as I would have liked. I was looking for the witnesses’ views on whether something like the change programme or the Caledonian programme could be run for a shorter time at an earlier stage—perhaps for somebody who has not committed a series of offences. The change and Caledonian programmes are 13 or 16-week programmes and usually require an order to be in place. I am asking about something that does not really exist at the moment.

Is the issue COPFS’s awareness of the programmes or its ability to consider them as alternatives?

No, I wanted the witnesses’ views on whether a shorter programme would be useful as the number of people who are convicted of domestic violence offences increases. It was a hypothetical. I am happy to leave it at what I heard. The answers have been good.

I have a question for Liz Dahl. First of all, I state that Circle is headquartered in my constituency and I am grateful to Liz and her team for all that they do in my constituency and beyond.

Circle’s written evidence touches on something that came up repeatedly in previous evidence. It concerns the support that Circle provides before the trial process begins, particularly in discussing the different roles of professionals and what to expect in the court setting. I know that Liz Dahl’s evidence will be somewhat anecdotal, but I ask her to elaborate on the submission and highlight any ways in which the court service could be more supportive in terms of communication or introductions—anything that she thinks might be advantageous.

Many of the people we work with are often victims of crime as well as the perpetrators of crime. In fact, that is usually the case with all the families we work with. It is much easier to work with a victim of crime and take them through that process than it is when someone has been charged with a criminal offence, unless you can get in early enough. Again, I think that it is very much the whole silo thing—the different stakeholders working in silos. If there could be much better communication between us and the procurators fiscal, an awful lot of those issues would be resolved.

Do you think that the support and mentoring that you have provided either to victims or to perpetrators throughout that process has made a big impact in easing them through it, particularly in the case of vulnerable witnesses and victims?

Absolutely, and especially when a parent is sent to prison and we are able to continue working with the family through that process and reduce the impact of parental imprisonment on the children. We are often able to negotiate that the children go into a kinship care arrangement rather than into foster care. We are able to negotiate how the parents hold on to their house.

One of the simplest things that would reduce the financial impact and so on would be if no one was put on remand unless it was assured that they were going to get a custodial sentence. That would lead to such a reduction in cost to society as a whole and to the families we work with. The way in which the use of remand has gone up is just unbelievable. It has a huge impact, especially for women.

I think that we know that the work that Circle does on that is superb. It would be helpful to focus more on the impact that COPFS has and the kind of measures that Circle has described in its written submission.

I will just follow that up very quickly.

Thank you for that insight into your experience of dealing with perpetrators. Could you touch briefly on the positive impact that that sort of guidance and communication has for victims? I am thinking in particular of making introductions to professionals and creating greater awareness before the court proceedings begin of what the setting, the scenario and the process will be like.

We often have to work with children who have been victims of abuse, whether that be physical or sexual. If we are able to take the child into court, to organise video links and to sit with the child while the trial is on, it makes the whole process an awful lot less traumatic.

Ben, were you asking whether COPFS could do more of the kind of work that Circle does to fill that gap just now and whether that should be done automatically by COPFS?

Indeed.

I think that it should be offered automatically.

That is very helpful.

I would like to ask Nancy Loucks about something in the evidence that she submitted. She talked about an offender with a learning difficulty who was sentenced and then was not able to contact his mother for three weeks, by which time she thought that he was dead. I just want to be absolutely clear: if, for whatever reason, someone is sentenced to a custodial sentence or is placed on remand, is there no contact at all with the family to tell them that?

No. There is no automatic contact. Sometimes, if the person is fortunate, their solicitor will make that contact, but that does not usually happen. Families ring our helpline at Families Outside to say that their family member has been sentenced but that they have no idea where they are. There are data protection restrictions on prisons so, if you contact a prison, it cannot say whether someone is there. It is a real problem. No questions are asked automatically. It is hoped that the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 will help with that. No questions are asked automatically about family members, or who to contact or whether to contact someone. There is a new requirement under the UN minimum standards for prisons; the Nelson Mandela rules that were agreed in 2015—rule 7, in fact—say that we must gather information about the family members of people going into custody. At the moment, we are not doing that.

12:45  

If an individual cannot request information from a prison, can an organisation do that?

We can ask, but data protection restrictions prevent the prisons from telling us. There are ways of doing it; for example, we encourage families to write to the Scottish Prison Service headquarters, which can forward that information and ask the person in prison to contact the family. However, it is quite a process and it can mean a long time for families not to have any idea what is going on.

Has Liz Dahl come across similar situations?

Yes. Often we have parents who go to court not expecting to get a custodial sentence and who therefore have not made prior arrangements for their children. None of that is taken into consideration on the day.

There are themes coming through that are very helpful for our inquiry: the central marking of papers, the lack of local knowledge sometimes, and the lack of knowledge about the diversions or referrals that could stop people defaulting on fixed-penalty fines and ending up in court with a measure that does not address their reoffending. There are communication issues.

To finish off, I ask Steve Farrell whether there are other practical measures that would reduce delays in court.

It has been an interesting debate. I will break my answer into two parts.

As a former prison officer, I think that this country is fantastic at retrospective rehabilitation; I ask you to park that thought. Prison officers are asked to work retrospectively when people are convicted and come into prison. I was born and raised in the famous scheme that was on the TV. Without naming names, I would say that one of the people in that scheme has probably been in prison more than 30 times in the past 10 years. We have to ask whether there is any merit to a conviction: it is the same old, same old, same old. I tell you as a prison officer that the chance of purposeful meaningful rehabilitation is very low because, frankly, it is too late. When some of those people—particularly short-term prisoners—reach their mid-20s and commit the same crime again and again, retrospective rehabilitation is almost impossible.

With regard to earlier prevention, I met the minister two weeks ago and he asked for the trade union’s view on tagging and monitoring. We are the only trade union in this country that represents members who are currently doing tagging and monitoring. Tagging and monitoring is an alternative to imprisonment and it relieves a burden from our members, but it needs to be better than it is at present. At the moment, somebody is put on a tag but there is no joined-up approach to evaluation and monitoring. Tagging and monitoring is a way forward and is a real alternative to imprisonment, but what matters is what that model will look like in the future. We told the minister that a complete joined-up approach is needed, and a debate.

There is a place for tagging and monitoring in society, both for prevention and for potential rehabilitation. Where better to rehabilitate a person than at home when they are with their family—but it needs to be a different model than what we have now.

That is very helpful.

That is why we set up the project in Lanarkshire. That is where most tagging is done, and it does not work unless there is proper family support to go along with it.

We would have to be careful that tagging does not become the alternative direct measure. It needs to have person-centred support around it or that is what it will become.

Being a glass-half-full person, I will also say that we must resource or support the Procurator Fiscal Service to be a full partner in the community justice agenda. The aim is to consider every stage of somebody’s journey, what services do, what the gaps are and what people say about their lived experiences and how we could improve them. We need the Procurator Fiscal Service to be a full member round the table.

However, it has to be resourced to play that part.

Yes.

I will summarise the tone of the conversation. Communication is essential. Staff need to be given confidence, but they need the training to give them that confidence. Staff need to be willing to consult beyond their own circles to make decisions that have an impact on other people. Following on from Fulton MacGregor’s point, I think that there needs to be universal—or at least wider—availability of services to help staff to make those decisions. We see that particularly in relation to women who offend. There are huge gaps in what is available for them and, therefore, they are usually pressed into a custodial sentence rather than an alternative that might be available in the community somewhere else. We need collaboration, even if it means collaboration between local authorities to share services so that they do not each have to provide their own.

That concludes our questioning. I thank the witnesses very much for their contributions, which were extremely helpful.

That concludes this week’s business. There will be no formal meeting next Tuesday. Instead, the committee will be in Lanarkshire meeting criminal justice stakeholders.

Meeting closed at 12:51.