I welcome Sheriff Richard Scott, president of the Sheriffs Association, Sheriff Brian Lockhart, vice-president, and Sheriff Hugh Matthews, honorary secretary. Thank you for coming. We are in the interesting position of already having your answers to our questions. We appreciate that there is no statutory requirement for you to come before us; we also appreciate your attendance. We know that we are all treading on interesting ice, if that is not a mixed metaphor, but we will do our best. We understand the remit.
Sheriffs are generally aware of the sentences that the law permits them to impose and of the existence of a range of non-custodial disposals that are available generally or locally. In individual cases, the sheriff is informed mainly through the social inquiry report of the availability of non-custodial disposals and the offender's suitability for them. A social inquiry report is not always necessary. A sheriff may dispose of a case by way of absolute discharge, admonition, deferred sentence, fine or custody without further inquiry into the case. However, in many cases, the law requires the sheriff to obtain a report.
I am having passed to you a letter dated 4 February from Colin Mackenzie, who is the convener of the Association of Directors of Social Work's standing committee on criminal justice. In numbered paragraph 1, he says in relation to the demand for social inquiry reports that
We are certainly aware of the fact that the proportion of cases in which reports are called for has increased. That is attributable partly to the fact that some of the newer disposals require reports on and assessments of suitability. More generally, it implies a readiness on the part of the courts to entertain the possibility of non-custodial alternatives in virtually every case, certainly at our level.
Numbered paragraph 2 of the letter is about whether social work departments are finding it increasingly difficult to meet the time scales for social inquiry reports that the courts have set. I am sorry that you did not see the letter before the meeting, but it is part of our meeting papers, which are in the public domain. The letter refers to
In Glasgow, the social work department is under increasing pressure to make the appropriate reports available. I echo what Sheriff Scott said about a desire on the part of the bench to entertain all possible alternatives before passing sentence. Of necessity, that means that more reports are called for.
How is that impacting on sheriffs' work? Is it causing cases to be continued?
That is right. Because reports are not available, cases require to be continued for, say, another two weeks, which is in no one's interests.
Would any sheriffs from other parts of Scotland care to comment?
Each of the bullet points in the ADSW's letter contains information with which we would not disagree. Another factor that should be borne in mind is that we, like many people outside the courts, are concerned that delays should be kept to a minimum: people should not be kept waiting to find out what is to happen to their case. When I say "their case", I refer to the victims, the accused and anyone who has an interest in the case. There are strict statutory time limits. Social workers are saying that they are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the time limits that are laid down by statute and that are endorsed by us in the interests of getting through cases quickly.
Of what number of reports were half not available?
Probably 20 or 25—I am speaking about half of the reports that I had to deal with on those days.
Does Sheriff Matthews wish to comment?
I am based in Glasgow as well, so my experience is the same as Sheriff Lockhart's.
I think that you say in your written evidence that sheriffs are discouraged from selecting alternatives if there is a problem with the way in which the alternatives are being run. Will you give examples of the type of problems experienced? How do sheriffs become aware of such problems?
Sheriffs in some areas might be discouraged from selecting particular alternatives if there is a perceived problem with the way in which those alternatives are being run. Historically, there has been a problem with a shortage of places on community service schemes. In Edinburgh, recent social inquiry reports have stated that although the offender is suitable for community service, a placement cannot be offered for, say, three months. Sometimes, breach proceedings come before a sheriff long after the breach has taken place. There have been difficulties in some areas in bringing in drug testing and treatment orders because of a lack of necessary specialist staff.
You said that the problems are more acute from time to time in different parts of the country. Which parts of the country—where it is difficult to have alternatives to custody because nothing secure is in place—would you say are top of the league?
We try to keep informed about what is happening in other parts of the country through what our colleagues tell us, but we do not have as detailed a knowledge of what is happening in their courts as we do of what is happening in our courts. It might be hazardous to identify particular areas as being particularly bad. Reference has been made to Edinburgh, where I sit, in connection with community service. We have an excellent domestic violence project, whereby people who have been convicted of domestic violence offences may be put on probation on condition that they attend the project. It came to my attention just last week that the project is now full up and cannot take more referrals. Such difficulties constantly crop up everywhere. When there is an improvement in one area, things begin to sag in another.
The problems that social work departments have in providing social inquiry reports over the new year and Christmas period are a reflection of the time that people who are preparing the reports have to supervise probationers. The people who do not have time to produce reports have to make time to supervise probationers. The issues are connected.
The two tasks are too much for one person.
Yes.
Recently, we have been informed that in Aberdeen there have been difficulties in securing community service placements, and I am aware that in Greenock there has been a difficulty in starting drug treatment and testing orders. The local press indicated that those orders were available before the courts knew about them. Because there are insufficient social workers to implement the orders, they have not yet been able to come into force.
I compliment you on the drugs court, which we visited. We were very impressed by it and its work.
You have made helpful remarks about occasions when the schemes for alternatives to custody are full up and people are required to wait for a long time. Without naming names, can you say whether there are occasions when sheriffs are dissatisfied with the quality of schemes on offer, even if places are available, and do not place people on schemes because they do not regard them as good enough? In such cases, would sheriffs tell the people who were operating the scheme what they thought?
In Glasgow, there is an excellent relationship between sheriffs and social workers, and they meet on a monthly basis. When a probation order is complete, we receive a report on what has been done. From time to time, we point out that there does not appear to have been much supervision and suggest how matters may be administered better in the future.
In your notes, your answer to question 2 is:
The problem tends to come and go. In the past few months, we have had difficulty securing community service placements in Edinburgh. Since we prepared our notes for the committee, the position has improved. The problem crops up in different places at different times. The more recent example that I gave, concerning domestic violence, is hot off the press. I am sure that that problem can be turned around in due course. However, stresses and strains may be transmitted to other parts of the system.
Am I correct in thinking that the sheriffs' strong preference is for consistency of provision the length and breadth of Scotland and availability of the disposals that they wish to apply?
Very much so.
If there is a shortage and a community service placement cannot be offered for three months, for example, is it practically impossible to send the young person concerned further afield? Would you rule that out on the ground of practicality? Would you ever consider such an option?
That option is certainly not open to us, and I do not think that it would be an option for social workers. Local authorities must provide services to residents in their area. If the individual were to move to another area, the order could be transferred. However, there is no provision for us to send them off to do community service elsewhere.
Am I correct in thinking that there have been cases of persistent young offenders being sent to secure accommodation south of the border?
Yes.
Whose decision would that have been?
We do not have much to do with under-16s, but it affects us if a youngster appears from custody and the Crown opposes bail. The question then arises as to what will happen to that person. We are obviously reluctant to remand someone to prison if they are under 16. We ask if anywhere else is available, in which case the court social worker gets in touch with several people to see whether a place can be found. We cannot do anything about that; it is done through the social worker.
Community and probation services work with the address at which the offender is residing at the time the order is made. If he were to move from Edinburgh to Linlithgow, the order would be transferred to the new jurisdiction. As the current law applies, however, there is no provision for a person who lives in Edinburgh to perform work in Linlithgow.
In other words, there is no transfer of cases on the ground of greater resources elsewhere. Thank you.
It is my supposition that if you were to do that, the invoice for it would transfer to the other local authority, which would not be too happy about it.
I cannot imagine other authorities taking on the upkeep of someone from Edinburgh.
Do you have any views on the adequacy of the information received by sheriffs before sentencing? Would you welcome a closer relationship with alternative to custody programmes, perhaps reviewing progress as happens in the drug courts?
In general, we are satisfied with the information provided in social inquiry reports, which give details of the non-custodial options available. However, there is a feeling that certain initiatives—in particular, courses that are designed to address offending behaviour and addiction problems—are not brought to the attention of the court.
I am interested in what you say about the Scottish Executive's proposal to produce a directory for each sheriff court area that gives a full list of available schemes. Have you heard any word about that proposal?
I was the secretary of the Sheriffs Association when the list was proposed, at which point Niall Campbell was the head of the Scottish Executive justice department. The plan was to produce a full directory of the available facilities in each area. We are all sure that various available counselling schemes are not brought to the attention of those who write social inquiry reports, which means that the bench is not alerted to what is available.
I do not imagine that creating such a directory would be terribly difficult. Highland Council has a directory of programmes that are available for young offenders. It would not be difficult to produce an area-by-area directory of the available alternatives to custody for adult offenders.
With respect, I do not think that the matter is up to the sheriffs.
To be fair, I do not think that the sheriffs could take the initiative on that.
I do not expect them to do so, but do you have any idea who might take the initiative at a local level?
No. We cannot suggest who might do that or how they might do it. You say that the scheme should not be too difficult—it sounds as if it should not be—but I think that it would be difficult.
I would imagine that in these days of electronic communications it would be easy to have a database.
I do not know.
Of course, some schemes are run by local authorities, whereas others are private.
And others are run by voluntary organisations.
Yes. A lot of work would probably be necessary. It seemed that the work had been started, but for some reason it was not seen through. Anything that your committee could do would be of assistance.
It just struck me that because local authorities do something along the same lines for young people, perhaps people in local authority social work departments would have a handle on what was available, although I notice that in your evidence you say that social workers themselves are often not aware of what is available.
That is true. To be fair to them, social work departments try to ensure that their local bench is well aware of what is on offer. They produce leaflets, some of which are specifically designed for members of the bench to help them with the ins and outs of the various facilities. What we are talking about—and what was talked about in the Scottish Executive justice department—is an all-Scotland compendium of information that is kept up to date, which is a particularly important point. In many areas, the bench is not a local bench but consists of part-time sheriffs, floating sheriffs or people who are flown in, who do not have the same feel for what is happening on the ground that perhaps those of us in the major centres have.
Although the book was a national one, it was adapted locally, with chapters on what was available locally; other parts listed what was available nationally.
I am aware of the problems. I know that some voluntary organisations feel that social work departments do not know what they do and do not use them sufficiently.
I have a couple of questions. When was the group that was going to examine a compendium or directory set up?
Three or four years ago.
Right at the beginning of this Parliament.
Yes.
Who was on it?
Jeanne Freeman, Niall Campbell and Elizabeth Carmichael. It just—
Fizzled out?
It did not come to a conclusion. They came through to Glasgow to have a meeting with the sheriffs there about whether we thought that it was a good idea. We said that we thought that it was a good idea.
And what happened after that?
That was it.
Perhaps we should follow that up. I would like to know what happened.
I do not have any information about that, but it does seem sensible.
I tell you that because we gleaned that information. We were taken aback because there is good stuff out there, which sheriffs and social workers need to know, but things are happening on an ad hoc basis. That is of concern. Things are also happening on a postcode basis, which is also of concern. Somewhere out there, information is available. Prior to this inquiry, we did not know that a committee had examined the issue nearly four years ago. Apparently, here we are, four years later, reinventing the wheel. That is of interest.
Are sheriffs provided with information about sentencing practice and the use of community sanctions throughout Scotland? If not, would such information be useful?
The Scottish Executive issues bulletins that contain a mass of statistical information on criminal proceedings in the Scottish courts, sentencing and the Scottish criminal justice system and social work statistics and costs. The publication that deals with sentencing contains tables that show, among other things, the percentage of cases that are disposed of in various ways in individual sheriff courts. The publication that contains criminal justice social work statistics includes tables that show, for example, how many probation orders are breached. Those papers are sent to sheriff courts. In addition, some social work departments supply such information to sheriffs locally. Such data might be of interest to sheriffs, but in the absence of details of the facts of cases for which sentences were imposed, they are perhaps of limited assistance.
How does the sentencing information system that has been developed by the University of Strathclyde work?
I think that Professor Hutton organises it—perhaps he could answer your question more accurately than I could. I understand that all the relevant factors that are taken into account in sentencing in High Court cases are conveyed to Professor Hutton, with the sentence, and details appear on the web.
If Professor Hutton has any spare time, perhaps we could ask him about the system.
l am curious about the proposal. Is Sheriff Lockhart suggesting that the proposal could be carried out by the justice department? The issue is simply about collecting data.
The data would be available from appeal court decisions, which would have been issued, and from reports written by sheriffs to the High Court in cases where there was an appeal. You will appreciate that not all those cases go ahead, but a large number of sheriffs' reports with the details that are submitted to the High Court would be part of the process in the High Court case and could be transmitted. People would then know that, in a given set of circumstances, a certain sentence was imposed. We think that that would be useful to sheriffs and practitioners.
Have you raised the issue before?
Not formally.
Has it been raised informally?
I have raised it informally with Professor Hutton. We think that there is merit in the proposal.
Your comments will go into the Official Report. We hope that that will help.
Sheriff Matthews mentioned induction, refresher and judicial skills courses that are run by the Judicial Studies Committee. How often do such courses take place? Are they optional or are sheriffs obliged to attend them? Is continuous professional development compulsory for sheriffs, or can they opt in or out of it?
You will appreciate that such courses do not happen every day of the week; however, they come round with great regularity. As an aspect of my on-going, in-service training—if you care to call it that—I have been to many sentencing exercises in one forum or another. The Judicial Studies Committee is comparatively recent, although I cannot remember how many years it has been on the go for. I think that there is a perception out there that before the Judicial Studies Committee came into existence, there was no such thing as a judicial education, which is nonsense. When I started my judicial career in 1977, I went on a five-day intensive induction course that was organised by the Sheriffs Association. It had been going for years and sentencing loomed large in it. Such courses have been around for a long time and are fairly comprehensive.
Do you think that everyone attends the courses?
I think that the target is that every sheriff should attend a full Judicial Studies Committee refresher course every three years.
Sheriffs in general, and not just members of our association, are keen on the courses. They want to learn and to get things right. They enjoy the courses because it means that they can bounce ideas off one another, whereas usually they tend to be isolated, working on their own. We are all in favour of the idea.
I appreciate that 99.99 per cent of people will welcome the idea of going on courses. Are there any sanctions for the 0.01 per cent that perhaps would like to duck out of them? I am not saying that that happens, but what would happen if it did?
Whatever we call it—judicial education, training or whatever—it is not part of our job description. We are appointed to the office of sheriff, and we do not have conditions of employment, or anything similar, that oblige us to attend courses.
Is there any peer pressure to attend courses?
Yes.
Should sheriffs have mandatory training programmes?
We do in a de facto sense. The point is hypothetical, because everybody goes on the courses.
But people who go have to be prepared to learn. If the courses were mandatory, people could be bloody-minded about not going. Saying that people have to go would not help; people must go wanting to learn about the job. In my experience, that is my colleagues' approach.
Is there any appraisal of sheriffs' competence after such courses? Am I getting into other territory? I am. I could see that by the shrieval looks that I was getting.
The witnesses talked about maintaining useful contacts with people who are on programmes in support of non-custodial sentences. In conversation, the convener and I wondered how many sheriffs visit prisons to find out what sorts of programmes are available during custodial sentences.
We have not done a census on that, so we cannot give you figures, but it is usual for sheriffs, when they are new to an area, to go to see institutions and to meet social workers. They do the rounds to ensure that they meet all the key players. Many of them keep that up regularly as time goes on.
Very many of us will have been to prisons before we became sheriffs in one capacity or another.
We will not go into that, Mr Matthews.
I have a couple of questions about the availability of alternatives to custody. Which community penalties are available to the courts in Scotland and what are the restrictions on their use?
The Scottish Executive statistical bulletin CJ/2002/9 lists at pages 52 to 53 the measures that were available to the Scottish courts in 2001. They include probation, community service, restriction of liberty orders, drug testing and treatment orders and supervised attendance orders. Probation may be combined with a variety of special conditions, including rehabilitation courses, offending behaviour courses and addiction courses. Courts often defer sentence to allow an offender to take part in a particular project or to participate in a particular programme.
Would it be helpful if the schemes that are available as a diversion from prosecution, which SACRO and others run, were also available to sheriffs as penalties?
That would obviously involve a change in the law. As I understand it, SACRO has a scheme that involves mediation and reparation. I think that it runs in three areas at the moment. Sue Matheson of SACRO has addressed us on the scheme, but you will appreciate that we have no input at all at the moment, because the diversion comes from the procurator fiscal, not sheriffs.
We should pursue that issue.
You say that these sentences are available in three areas. What are those areas?
One is Edinburgh. I am not sure about the other two, but they are also in the east. The scheme has not yet filtered through to the west.
I heard Mr Gorrie say that he would welcome thought being given to reparation and mediation schemes. I have learned that very few such schemes are in operation in the places where you would expect them to exist—England, Australia, Canada, Scotland and so on. Research into their effectiveness and how they work, abstracts of which I have seen, is patchy, because the schemes are all different. As we have explained, ours is a diversion-from-prosecution scheme, usually for young people who have committed fairly minor offences that would not involve custody. It is a bright idea and we hear much about it, but there is no model for it. We would have to invent a model and wait to see whether it worked.
I have just returned from Maryland with a member of the bench, Nigel Morrison. I will submit a paper to the committee on the mediation scheme that has been implemented there. Our successor committee might want to consider that model.
Nigel Morrison told me about your visit.
I do not want to go into it now, although it had its moments. I ought to expand on that, but thankfully we do not have time.
It would be worth pursuing the issue.
In your written evidence, you say that you are concerned that over-enthusiastic use of pilot schemes might lead to postcode justice. Will you expand on those concerns?
Pilot schemes involve certain non-custodial sentences being available in one part of the country and not in others. Offenders who are not in the pilot scheme area are disadvantaged, as a possible alternative to custody is not available to them. If they lived in an area in which a pilot was taking place, they might escape custody. The imbalance in the disposals that are available in different parts of the country is a cause for concern.
I understand that you would like the situation to be fair throughout the country, but we might want to promote more imaginative ways of dealing with a problem. Often it is a good idea to try those out in a particular area before imposing them on the whole of Scotland. How do we make progress without arousing the concern that you have expressed about the erratic effect of having different disposals in different areas?
That is a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, if you carry out a trial, you have the opportunity to find out whether something works or is a complete non-starter. On the other hand, if you do that with criminal justice, you must ask whether you are being fair to people. In medical terms, for example, would it be fair if one group of patients could get access to a wonder drug but another group could not? In my enthusiasm for drug treatment and testing orders, I asked for an assessment in one man's case and got a letter back saying, "You haven't noticed, you silly sheriff, that this chap lives in Dalkeith and is therefore not eligible for a drug treatment and testing order." That is what I mean when I talk about postcode justice. Because we are bred to fairness, there is something that sticks in our gullet about that sort of thing.
I would go slightly further than that. I agree with what the president said, but I am concerned about what happens once a pilot scheme has run its course. If a decision is made to roll out the disposal, it should be rolled out throughout the country. As we mentioned, that is not happening with drug treatment and testing orders. That leads to unfairness.
We appreciate the necessity of testing a disposal, but, if it is decided to have it throughout the country, it must be available everywhere in the country or there will be clear unfairness.
An interesting seam has obviously been opened up.
It has been suggested to the committee in previous evidence that we should have a minimum number of alternatives to custody available for each sheriffdom. For example, a visiting sheriff could open up a directory and see that five alternatives are available in that area although only three were available in the sheriffdom that he was in previously. Should we have a minimum threshold to which disposals could be added following a pilot project?
That becomes a political question, because one would have to say who would provide the minimum level. For instance, in a small court, everything is different from in a large court in Edinburgh. One difference is that there is no intensive probation scheme. Another is that there is no domestic violence scheme. Because of the volume of people in a city or a large area, it is possible to have specialised provision, but that is not possible in smaller areas. That is not postcode justice; it is a simple fact of life. In small areas, you must have a generic criminal justice social worker who, with the help of others, can attempt to mount equivalent provision. Because of the way in which our population is distributed, it might not be helpful to declare that there has to be a minimum level of provision or a series of tiers.
The issue is more to do with the quality of the disposals than with their number. Rightly, community service is available throughout Scotland, as is probation, but the availability of drug testing and treatment orders is patchy. That is unfair, as it is clearly an excellent disposal that is much used. To not make drug treatment and testing orders available in Peterhead would be unfair to people in Peterhead, regardless of whether a threshold number of alternative disposals had been met.
Minimum standards are superficially attractive, but I cannot get rid of the notion—perhaps it is the cynic in me speaking—that some people would make the minimum their target. Once they reached the minimum, they might be satisfied with that and not strive to keep improving. Without a minimum, they would get on with the job anyway.
What has been said shows that inconsistent provision is a major problem. Where is the greatest need or problem? Sheriff Lockhart mentioned drug testing and treatment orders, but he said that community service orders and probation orders are available throughout Scotland. I assume and hope that, by now, supervised attendance orders are also available throughout Scotland. Apart from drug testing and treatment orders, what other forms of provision are greatly lacking?
The problem will be exacerbated if and when—it rather looks like when—a so-called youth court is established. The youth court will be designed to deal with persistent young offenders—"persistent" means that they have committed a handful of offences, so it will include quite a lot of people. On the one hand, it will include a significant proportion of the people who appear before the court, because young men tend to commit crimes that bring them before court. They are a difficult lot of people to deal with, because we do not want to be over-punitive with people who are at a formative stage of their lives, when time can be a healer and they might grow out of criminal activity after a while. On the other hand, as members know, the public are concerned about the damage that such people cause. We must balance all those factors.
That example is good. I echo what Sheriff Scott said. If a youth court is established in Hamilton, as it probably will be, Hamilton will have a vast input of resources. All the programmes will be available, so youths there will be seriously advantaged compared with youths in other areas, to whom such a facility will not be available. That is our concern.
I would like resources for bail supervision schemes to be increased. Such schemes are an alternative to custody not post-conviction but pre-conviction. Some people on remand could benefit from bail supervision.
Resources are at the root of the problem.
Yes.
Is there a flip-side? If the Executive rolled out a programme without a pilot study, and it went terribly wrong, the Executive could be accused of not having tested the programme. The Executive might be expected to say that it had been asked not to undertake a pilot because of legitimate concerns about postcode provision, but how would we deal with testing? The Executive is always being accused—sometimes rightly—of rolling out what it perceives to be a great programme, with which several problems are later discovered to be the result of not testing the programme properly. How do we avoid that?
We acknowledge that the balance is difficult.
Are there issues about how we identify where pilot studies should be undertaken? For example, the youth court pilot is to be launched in Glasgow because of the high number of cases there.
I will answer the second question because it is easier. Thought is given to where pilots should be held. I am involved in a steering group on victim statements, which are not yet on the statute book. If they are going to be on the statute book, they will have to be piloted. The question is, where?
You are being so helpful to us and the information is intriguing so, if the committee agrees, I would like to continue until 4 o'clock. We have many questions to get through and the subject is extremely interesting.
The witnesses' submission says:
As we explained in the written evidence, the court must be confident that a community service order will commence, that a probationer will be supervised and that the offender will attend the rehabilitation course or do whatever else is required of him or her. If alternatives are not adequately supervised, monitored and breached at the appropriate time, they will lose credibility. In addition, the nature of the alternative sentence must be such that it is capable of being seen by the victim and the public as an appropriate disposal in all the circumstances.
You appear to be saying that there is a need for the offender to be willing to address their offending behaviour through the alternative-to-custody programme that they are put on. The quality of the programme that they are put on is another issue.
I think that we might have answered that when we talked about when someone commits another offence and a social inquiry report is done while they are on a scheme. The report would say that the offender was not obtempering properly to what was required of him under the scheme.
I can give an example. It is an historic example so members need not concern themselves about it.
A recently welcomed appointment is that of part-time Sheriff Finlayson, who, as members are probably aware, has just been appointed as head of the accreditation panel. As I understand it, the panel will assess offender programmes. Sheriff Finlayson was in Glasgow recently, and was enthusiastic about the role that he and his committee will have in assessing whether offender programmes are suitable to be put into practice. Whether the panel will monitor schemes once they are up and running is a matter for consideration.
Yes. I confess that I was unaware that such a committee had been established.
It has only just started.
I am conscious of that, but after the committee has evaluated a particular programme in a sheriffdom, would it be helpful if sheriffs in that area received copies of the report?
I am sure that that will happen.
We may touch on the point about getting information and evaluations later.
Can we do that? I think that we are taken aback; I was unaware of the committee, too.
The submission says:
The words must be taken in the context in which they were used in our written evidence. We noted that scepticism about imposing a further alternative to imprisonment is often
I am aware that it is difficult not to generalise, but I get the impression that after someone has been given one chance, by being put on an alternative-to-custody programme, often they will be sent to prison if they find themselves back in court. Whether that is a true reflection of what happens is another matter. How many alternatives to custody will someone go through before a sheriff decides that he has to impose imprisonment?
That depends on the case. In my experience, sometimes people have pages of previous convictions with no custodial disposals. They are given various attempts at probation, community service, deferred sentences and fines and all sorts of things before they ultimately receive a prison sentence. In some cases, people are eventually given a prison sentence and someone then decides, "Let's have another go." Prison sentences are not the end of it; often people will go to jail, but when it is discovered that that has not stopped the offending, another attempt will be made at non-custodial alternatives. It is not true to say that once someone goes to jail, they will always go to jail.
Would it be helpful if a mandatory prison sentence were applied after there have been two or three shots at alternatives to custody? That has been suggested
No. A couple of weeks ago I had to deal with a situation in which an offender disputed that he was in breach of a probation order. The supervising officer gave evidence for about two hours and was harangued at great length. I took the view that the offender had not co-operated at all with the lady. The breach was so flagrant that it was appropriate that he be sent to prison, because he had absolute disrespect for the order of the court and for the lady who was supervising him. In that case, a custodial sentence was immediately appropriate.
Historically, there might not have been programmes available to address an offender's problem. If he had been given probation in 1992, for example, that might not have worked, but there may now be a suitable programme. We must take that into account as well.
Earlier, I heard a considerable amount of evidence to the effect that short-term prison sentences do not have an adequate rehabilitative dimension to them. In that light, and depending on the circumstances of the case, is there a tendency among sheriffs and judges to concentrate much more either on alternatives to custody or on longer sentences?
With respect, we cannot talk about tendencies among judges, but we consider which factors are to be taken into account. Rehabilitation is one factor; there are many others. We take into account what the chap—if it is a chap—has done. Quite often, it is something pretty unpleasant that has done a lot of damage. We must also take into account what the person at the immediate receiving end of the damage thought about it, not to mention what the offender's friends would think if we were to give the dear little chap a fourth community-based penalty. We must also consider the wider public, and their confidence in the system. Every case is judged on its merits.
Do you have any views or evidence to provide on the numbers of offenders sent to prison as a result of fine default?
I suspect that it is not appropriate to ask for views on persons sent to prison for fine default.
There seems to have been little research into the effectiveness of alternatives to custody. How do sheriffs assess the effectiveness of such disposals?
What is meant by effectiveness? A sentence could be regarded as effective if the offender never offended again; if it prevented the offender from reoffending for a period, which is the principal benefit of incarceration; or, in the case of very persistent offenders, if it resulted in no further offences for a quite short period, slowing their rate of reoffending.
A pager or phone is going off—naughty, naughty. I ask the person concerned to deal with it.
The Scottish Executive statistical bulletin CJ/2001/1 deals with reconviction of offenders who have been discharged from custody—[Interruption.]
I can tell who the offender is, because the colour of her face now matches the colour of her jacket.
The bulletin to which I referred deals with reconviction of offenders who have been discharged from custody or were given non-custodial sentences in 1995. The key points are set out on page 3 of the bulletin, which states:
A number of organisations that provide programmes for alternatives to custody advised the committee of the success of their programmes. However, they were unable to provide details based on having tracked individuals who had participated in the programmes. Does it concern sheriffs that the organisations that advocate the programmes cannot prove their efficacy, because the individuals who take part in the programmes are not tracked?
We have all noticed that, when schemes are evaluated, many of the data are subjective. That has been the case for the drugs court and will be the case for the youth court. Evaluations consist of asking the people who have been managing the scheme whether they think that it has worked well. Offenders are also asked what they think about it and are given an opportunity to say that they like it a lot.
Yes, but there are two different strands to the issue.
I have said what I propose to say on the matter.
It is difficult to gauge effectiveness in the sense of preventing people from reoffending. Sheriffs send people to prison only if no credible and appropriate alternative is available. The people who are sent to prison are likely to commit other crimes when they are released, because they have already reached the end of the line. There is no question of reforming an offender's behaviour during a short custodial sentence. Such a sentence is seen as a punishment for failure to co-operate with the other facilities that are available. The reconviction figures of those who receive a custodial sentence are bound to be bad. We are talking about people who are in no mood to co-operate with society.
Is it a concern that we do not track offenders to ascertain from reoffending rates how effective a scheme has been? No organisation could provide a snapshot of where its clients were now.
I think that Apex Scotland is building a database of all the people that it has had through its books, with the objective of tracking them over a protracted period. Mr Martin should ask Apex about that.
That is a fair point. The drugs court has been mentioned. We started a drugs court just over a year and three months ago and the interim evaluations are positive. However, the people who appear before the drugs court get intensive support. I do not know what such people will be like in three or four years' time, when they will no longer be under the court's auspices. It is important that we get a full picture to ascertain whether the drugs court is a credible disposal.
I disagree with your point that people who have been in custody reoffend when they come out because they are the bad guys anyway.
The point is that we would not send them to prison if we thought that there was another way of dealing with them.
Having seen that short-term sentences give little or no opportunity for any kind of rehabilitation, the committee is examining whether the situation might be turned around if, instead of just saying that reoffenders are bad anyway, something else were done. Is that prospect worth examining?
Certainly. However, you must understand that when we impose a sentence, we imagine that we have in the court a victim—
The sentence must be seen as worth while by the community at large.
We must be seen to strike that balance.
I was just not content with what you said about reoffenders being bad guys anyway.
That point arises purely from the statistics. The people whom we send to prison are those who have committed many offences.
We understand that, but the point is about trying to break that cycle by doing something else.
I think that we have covered the issue raised by the next question, but we need to ask it for the record. Have you any suggestions about how information on the effectiveness of alternative disposals could be improved? If national data on the effectiveness of such disposals were available, would they be widely used by sheriffs?
Further study of reconviction rates might yield new knowledge. Work, including the piloting of new forms of non-custodial alternatives, continues in several areas. The reports of such studies tend to be enthusiastic, perhaps because the people who take part in setting up new programmes are able and enthusiastic. It would be useful if programmes were revisited after the novelty had worn off.
On a different point, is there a case for having a database that would provide details of organisations? If I were going to a restaurant this evening, for example, I could find out the best restaurants in Edinburgh for a variety of cuisines. Should a guide be available to sheriffs about the effectiveness of different kinds of alternatives-to-custody programmes? Such a guide could indicate not only that a programme was available, but that, for example, a Glasgow drug addict could be sent to a specific, tailored programme.
We agree that such a guide would be helpful. I referred earlier to my attempt, when I was the chairman of the SASD, to create a similar register to the one that the justice department was trying to set up. I used to call it—with no analogy in mind—the "Good Schemes Guide". We want such a guide, if it is possible.
That is what we are all looking for. In the short term, I think that the aim should be to assist everybody out there by providing a good schemes guide that is available in electronic form and that is accredited so far as that is possible. That might be the first of our targets.
How are community penalties allocated?
Sheriffs are not opposed to the application of such penalties, provided that various conditions are met. For example, a social inquiry report might need to state that the offender is suitable. Sheriffs may impose whatever measure they think most appropriate, but their choice of penalty is affected by such factors as how well a particular scheme is perceived to be working. One example of that relates to the difficulties that have been mentioned about community service orders.
What is the average length of time for dealing with a case of that nature? If a social inquiry report has to be ordered, does that mean that the case needs to be continued for many weeks, or can it be dealt with speedily?
Do you mean from the time of conviction?
Yes.
The statute says that the report should be made within four weeks, but there can be up to eight weeks between the time of ordering the report and the receipt of the report. Sometimes the process can go on for longer than that, but I have found that it normally takes about four weeks to get the report.
Is the weight of work on social workers and the courts so great that it causes a problem?
The time taken for such reports used to be three weeks—sometimes it took only two weeks—so it is increasing.
So it is not too bad.
It is not too bad, but I think that the time taken has increased by about 30 per cent over the past year or so.
Four weeks is quite a long time for someone to await their fate. It has always been a matter of concern to me that it can take three and a half weeks before somebody comes to see the person, who will have been released on bail while the case continues. The question is about the resources that are available. It must be in the interests of justice that a person should be dealt with quickly. If the case has to be continued because a report is not available, that is a further matter of concern.
As was said earlier, the issue comes back to the resources that are available for social work departments. We need to ensure that there is a sufficiency of social workers to produce the reports timeously.
The report will often throw up another avenue of investigation, such that a particular type of disposal might be indicated. For example, the report might recommend the access project in Glasgow for people with mental health difficulties, the partnership project for youths or the Clyde Quay project for sex offenders. If the report recommends something like that, we might need to continue with the case further until we get more details about the disposal.
What obstacles hinder the process of applying the right sanctions to the right offenders?
The question assumes that it is known what the right sanctions are. As we have tried to explain, we try to identify the most appropriate way of dealing with a case, but it is often difficult to reconcile the various factors that must be taken into account. No one can say with certainty that custody or an alternative to custody is the right sentence in any particular case; each case must be considered on its merits.
I think that that is the fundamental point: each case must be considered on its merits.
I have found that the biggest difficulty in dealing with breaches is the length of time that it takes for the breach to come to my notice. For example, I have had cases—it has happened more than once—in which breaches of probation have been intimated to me after the probation order has run out. Unless one strikes while the iron is hot, as it were, one can find that, for one reason or another, circumstances have changed considerably and the offender is not the same as he was when he breached the sanction—he may be worse or he may be better. Apart from that, we just deal with each case on its merits.
Again, there is presumably a strong case for ensuring that there are sufficient resources to allow the cases to be brought before the sheriff with all possible speed.
By whom should sheriffs be told about such things and why are sheriffs not told timeously?
We should be told by the supervising officer, who is a social worker.
Why does that not happen? Is it simply pressure of work?
I think so.
Another full report is involved.
We come back to the pressure of work, because another full report is required for a breach.
Please believe us that we did not discuss things with the social workers before we came here. Sheriffs are generally sympathetic to the plight of social workers, because the social workers must not only complete the reports but supervise everything. When there is a breach, the social worker must also make a further detailed report and come and give evidence, which is a time-consuming job. We feel that social workers are under-resourced.
The committee would agree with that. We are well aware of the issue.
Meeting suspended until 16:10 and thereafter continued in private until 16:40.
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