Justice and Home Affairs Committee, 31 Oct 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 31, 2000

Official Report 125KB pdf

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Social Partnership Funding

The next item concerns an inquiry into alternatives to custody and sentencing and an application for funds for that inquiry. Before I became convener, the committee decided to explore ways in which we could sound out public attitudes to custody and sentencing. The Scottish Parliament information centre has prepared two alternative ways in which we could do that. Connie Smith and Denis Oag from SPICe are here to talk to those two suggestions. Is there anything that you wish to say as an introduction?

Most of what we want to say is in the paper—I am happy to go through it, but I am also happy simply to answer questions.

Members should have read the papers, which are very clear. Does anyone wish to express their views on the alternatives given?

I like the first suggestion better, in that it will do the job that we want it to do, although it is more expensive. The only advantage of the second one is that it is cheaper. Does SPICe see any advantage in the second one, other than that it would cost less?

The second one contains a dynamic and fairly new open-space exercise, which I think was originally designed to help organisations—rather than public bodies—to consider an issue and to come up with solutions to problems. A conference could be seen as a more passive activity, where people listen more than they contribute. The idea of the open-space exercise was that people would participate more as equals than as passive recipients of wisdom handed down from others.

Obviously, the open-space suggestion is broader. How would we select which members of the public would attend that event?

We would probably do that in tandem with whoever gets the contract to organise the event. There are ways of selecting a broad sample of the population. The sample would not be representative, but it might be a reasonably broad cross-section, including people with recent experience of the criminal justice system and people who work in that system. There would be a range of knowledge in the group.

So the group would be selected in much the same way as focus groups might be selected.

The method would be very similar. The group could be seen as a focus group writ large.

I am grateful to you, because I did not see that distinction. I thought that the conference under the first proposal would have allowed such a dynamic of discussion, with people putting forward their views.

That was the original idea—it still is. I am not saying that the second idea is better, but it is certainly cheaper. It represents a new way of obtaining similar results more cheaply. The conference is directed at getting feedback from people, but it tends to be more difficult at conferences to get people's direct input.

I concur with Gordon Jackson on this. I appreciate that the first option is slightly more expensive, but I like the fact that there are three separate stages to it. We could track how people were thinking during the process. Having been involved in something similar in my previous job, albeit on a much smaller scale, I think that that can be useful. When we first discussed this in February, we were keen not only to have a snapshot to find out what people were thinking but to understand what informs people's views. If we want to inform the committee about what the wider public think and how they came to those views, option 1 is better, as it breaks that process down into its constituent parts.

We could combine the best parts of both proposals. If the committee is still keen to have the focus groups, we could have the omnibus survey and the focus groups, which could feed into a more dynamic, open-space consultation event—provided that the committee is happy to apply for resources for all three.

Will that not put the budget even higher than the current highest option?

Not hugely. It is for the committee to decide the most appropriate package. We will then try to access the resources.

Given that the civic participation event has the same number of participants, why is it so much more expensive?

The event is facilitated by professionals who are experts in the specific techniques and the structures used for them.

There would be six facilitators at the conference. How many would we have at the open-space event?

At the conference, the facilitators would be conveners for the groups—we would draw them from Parliament staff. The open-space event involves more expertise; as Denis Oag mentioned, identifying the range of people takes more planning and professional input from the word go.

I like the open-space idea, but we could make the conference as participatory as we wanted. I am impressed by Scott Barrie's idea of three stages. If we did only the second stage, as it were, we would be left hanging. However, we could have the second stage—with the focus groups—then, with some idea of what we are doing, we could have the third stage: the conference. We can have any dynamic we want for that. I prefer the three-stage option; although it is more expensive it is not, in terms of Government budget, hugely more expensive.

Would it be attractive to members if we took up Connie Smith's suggestion of trying to bring the two suggestions together, so that the event was in three parts, with elements of the open-space option?

Members indicated agreement.

We can come back to that at a future meeting. I thank Connie Smith and Denis Oag for attending.