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Good morning. I welcome everyone to the fourth meeting of the Justice 2 Sub-Committee. Today we will continue to take evidence on our child sex offenders inquiry. This morning I welcome to the committee our first and rather large panel of witnesses. Alan Baird is the director of social work at Dundee City Council and is convener of the Association of Directors of Social Work's criminal justice standing committee. Next to him is Jane Martin, who is manager of criminal justice services at Dundee City Council. Both witnesses are representing the Association of Directors of Social Work. Detective Superintendent James Cameron is chair of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland's risk management working group, and Detective Inspector Ailsa Farmer is the lead on the ACPOS violent and sex offenders register implementation team. Both are under the ACPOS crime business area offender management portfolio and are representing ACPOS. My goodness—the titles are impressive. Last but not least, I turn to Derek McGill, who is deputy director of prisons, and Ewan Lundie, the Scottish Prison Service's psychology adviser.
I recently discussed the issue with the Scottish Executive. Clearly, there are big challenges in the implementation of MAPPA. It is important for me to say how much we support the new arrangements, which tighten further the controls relating to assessment and management of high-risk offenders. However, they are a bit of an unknown quantity as far as resources are concerned. We have agreed with the Scottish Executive that there will be co-ordinators in each of the eight community justice authorities and that there will be an additional co-ordinator in three authorities where the number of registered sex offenders is higher.
Has the Executive agreed to hold such a review?
Up to this point, the Executive has said that it is intended that the Social Work Inspection Agency will take sex offenders as one of the themes that it will review over the next 12 months. I am concerned that, with so much going on in the area—MAPPA is one small but important component of that activity—the detail of the arrangements may be overlooked.
Those comments are helpful. I move on to notification. A number of people—about 3 per cent of the total—do not comply with the requirements of the sex offender register. Should they be treated differently as far as public notification is concerned?
The ADSW is strongly opposed to public notification at any level. I was interested to hear the strong comments that were made at the committee's meeting of 3 October—there is nothing worse than being a parent in a situation such as those that were described.
Would public notification improve the management of the 3 per cent of sex offenders who do not comply with the registration requirements?
What difference would public notification make in relation to those offenders? Although sex offenders are among the most compliant of offender groups that we work with, there will always be a number of people who do not want to comply. The issue is more to do with finding better ways of tracking offenders so that the 3 per cent figure is reduced to zero.
Is there merit in the proposal to have two classifications of sex offenders—those who target adults and those who target children? Could the approach be supported by specific assessment tools and would it assist in management of sex offenders in the community?
The straight answer is similar to the answer that I gave to the previous question: we do not support such classification. That proposal contains a dangerous assumption that a person who is convicted of an offence against an adult will not offend against a child. I would be concerned that such classification could lead to a concentration of effort that might create weakness in the system, because we might forget the potential risk to children from someone who had offended against an adult. Gaps in the system could open up and create problems. It is surely safer to maintain the current arrangements and to continue to build on the frameworks about which the committee has heard and will hear more during the meeting.
Do sex offenders co-operate adequately with the authorities during assessment and management of risk? Can more be done to improve the situation?
I will give a broad answer, because my colleagues are more in touch with the operational side of things. When I was a criminal justice manager in Scotland, I found that sex offenders were compliant and would attend appointments and programmes as requested. The question is what lies behind their compliance and what happens when professionals are not actively engaged with them.
The conditions around registration are very limited and offenders are required to provide only certain details. There is therefore no ability to attach restrictive conditions to registration as there is in relation to probation orders. The application of restrictions would strengthen arrangements. We must ensure that breach procedures are followed robustly. Whether people breach a probation order or licence conditions, the breach should be acted on swiftly and robustly.
How would conditions be attached to registration? Would you do that at your discretion, or would the court do it at the outset?
Either approach could be taken. Some conditions on probation orders are applied from the outset, but a standard condition is also applied to probation orders, which gives the supervising officer a reasonable ability to instruct. That approach allows some flexibility in placing restrictions around risk factors; for example, a person can be required to stay at home at certain times or to stay out of certain areas.
Would there be merit in making it an offence for the offender not to co-operate with risk assessment or in having a requirement for probation to be ended if it could be demonstrated to the Parole Board for Scotland or to the court that the offender was not co-operating? There is breach of licence but there is also obstructiveness, such as saying nothing. Could there be a mechanism for defining that?
Some offenders will not fully comply with the risk assessment process but will comply with all the other elements of the treatment programme and keep all their appointments, so such a system would need to be balanced against the overall context of the offender's behaviour.
As Mr Baird rightly noted, the committee's existence is due largely to the efforts of Margaret Ann Cummings, who petitioned Parliament and gave very emotional evidence to the committee at our previous meeting. She feels that her son might—I emphasise "might"—still be alive today had there been public notification. I hear what Mr Baird says about being against a general public notification scheme, but is there no case to be made for such a scheme for child sex offenders? I think that the question has largely been answered, but I want to tie you down on it.
I do not feel that there is a case to be made and that has been my position as a director and practitioner over many years. In fact, I worked in the area from which Ms Cummings comes. General public notification is not the answer to the problems. We must work openly with sex offenders—society cannot afford for them to be driven underground, but we know that that will happen if such a scheme is introduced. We know about the networks that exist in prison and the community, and the ability of sex offenders to disappear vexes all the agencies that are working together. I understand and sincerely sympathise with the view that public notification is a good thing, but I have to say that there is no evidence for that.
I assume that you have nothing against the degree of notification that is currently used, which the police and social work services operate in cases in which it is deemed necessary.
That is the point. Powers are available to chief constables and other staff within the police service that are used. That is done jointly with social work services. That is how we have worked for a long time. It would be worth while to evaluate the use and effectiveness of the chief constables' powers in cases in which a risk assessment says that there are high risks to a particular individual, street or community. We need to build on that and not go for a high-risk strategy.
You mentioned the joint working between social work services and police in cases in which a degree of public notification is used. In your experience, is that joint working uniform throughout the country or could it be improved?
It can always be improved. About six years ago, partly in response to the Sex Offenders Act 1997, Detective Superintendent Cameron and I were instrumental in the co-location of police and social work services in a facility that was the first of its kind in Scotland. Different models work well in different parts of the country. Dundee is a comfortable size for such co-location, but Strathclyde's having 12 police divisions might pose challenges.
I will take a slightly different tack, although it is still related to sexual offences against children. We have all become aware of the large number of sexual offences against children that originate within their domestic, or close, surroundings. You mentioned risk matrix 2000. How do your department and profession go about protecting children from potential sex offenders? How different is that aspect of your work from protecting the public from people who are already on the sex offenders register?
The other side of the coin from dealing with sex offenders is the child protection agenda. Members of the committee will know about the important work of the national reform programme over the past three years. Our submission is a joint submission from the children and families and criminal justice standing committees of the ADSW. I chair the child protection committee in Dundee.
So it is about education, communication and information.
I believe that those are essential.
I move on to treatment, if we can call it that. The written evidence that we received from the ADSW said:
Each local authority will have developed its own response to sexual offending, which will depend on the size of the authority and its ability to deliver group work programmes. We now have an accredited programme called the community sexual offending group work programme, which I think was accredited about two years ago and which is now running in 11 local authorities throughout Scotland and is being further rolled out as we speak. The programme, which is a group work programme for adult males, has been proven to work; it is founded in research. Some sexual offenders will not be appropriate for it, but the vast majority of people with whom we work are. The programme will provide a measure of consistency in terms of sheriffs being aware of what the programmes do. It will also tie in closely with the programmes that are delivered in prison. Offenders who have done programmes within prison will be able to come out and do part of it in the community.
How is the programme funded?
It is funded through the Scottish Executive's 100 per cent funding of criminal justice social work services.
What is the timeframe for making the programme available in all local authority areas? So far, it is available in less than a third of them.
The group work programme may not become available in all local authority areas because some local authorities will not be able to deliver it. They will have to consider the geography of their areas. A clear timescale has not been set but, as I said, the programme is being rolled out in some of the bigger authorities as we speak.
We can raise that with the Executive.
The programme is for convicted adult males—an individual needs to meet that specification before he is offered a place. We would try to work with the type of people you describe in another way, probably on a one-to-one basis.
Do all local authorities have the capacity to do that?
Most local authorities would try to deliver a service to such individuals, but not in a group work setting.
Jeremy Purvis mentioned people who self-refer. Another category of people who may be of concern was drawn to my and Kenny MacAskill's attention during a visit to Lothian and Borders police. Offenders who were convicted prior to the implementation of the 1997 act are not automatically put on the register if the victim was over 18 and the sentence was of less than 30 months. It has been suggested that a batch of people in the system are probably a risk but are not on the register. Obviously, some of them may not self-refer. Are you worried about that? Should we put them on the register and bring them into the system?
The police witnesses will probably speak about that in greater depth than I can. If our opinion as responsible authorities is that such individuals present a risk, we would discuss them and consider what needs to be put in place to manage the risk. From a social work perspective, if we do not have a statutory involvement, our locus is fairly limited.
We will come back to that issue with the police.
Obviously, that depends on the nature of the order and the risk grading. In criminal justice social work, we work to the national objectives and standards for social work services in the criminal justice system, which set out minimum standards of contact with those who are on probation, on licence or on other orders. With sex offenders, frequency of contact far and away exceeds that which is specified in the national standards, probably regardless of whether the offender is low or high risk.
That is a helpful and reassuring answer. Is such a degree of supervision and management in place in every local authority area in Scotland?
It is fair to say that every local authority will be exceeding the national standards.
I represent Galloway, so I am interested in how the system works in rural areas. During a recent visit to Dumfries and Galloway we were told that the way in which funding is delivered for supervision and the other input that you described is based on numbers rather than anything else, which leaves rural authorities and agencies with a resource problem. Is that a fair comment?
It probably is a fair comment. We have been working on funding formulas with the Scottish Executive for many years. The perfect solution does not exist. However, it would be wrong to suggest that allocation of resources is based only on numbers. Many other indicators, such as multiple deprivation, are taken into account.
My question reflected my interpretation of the situation rather than what was said. I was trying to say that the funding formula militates slightly against rural authorities.
During discussions over the past few months, a sub-group again attempted to come up with a better system, although I suspect that the better system is somewhere in the ether and that the current formula is probably the best that we can get. However, I accept that in rural areas in particular there are difficulties to do with economies of scale.
The location and type of accommodation that is suitable for child sex offenders is a very difficult issue. Is higher priority given to locating offenders close to support and monitoring systems, such as social work and police, or is it more important to keep offenders distant from possible targets for attack in schools or playgrounds? I suspect that the authorities take account of both factors.
Perhaps the police representatives want to have a go at answering that.
That is obviously a challenging question.
I have never seen the buck passed so fast.
The vast number of child sex offenders return to where they came from. Local authority housing stock is diminishing throughout Scotland, so authorities and the police face an increasing challenge in identifying suitable accommodation. There is no perfect solution—I am afraid that there is no 100-per-cent-sure system that can prevent offending.
Clearly not, but, how important is it to the agencies that are represented here to have easy access to people? I presume that the location of someone at a considerable distance from a local authority office or police station stretches resources for that person's management.
I will take the buck back from my colleague.
Much store has been set by the need to find locations that are some distance from obvious targets such as schools, play areas and swimming pools. Given that we are dealing with fairly devious people who are likely—and are able—to move around in search of targets, is that such a big deal?
One aspect of that issue is public confidence. As we professionals need to give the public confidence that we are on top of the responsibilities that we have to discharge, we must use every possible tool, mechanism and piece of joint working to ensure that we minimise risk, regardless of where an offender ends up living. Sex offenders who are determined to seek out prey will do so. However, with each sex offender, we have to pick up, where possible, any indicators that might emerge and respond accordingly.
I am not entirely clear from the ADSW's written evidence whether it supports the introduction of specialised courts to process allegations against sex offenders. Although you give good reasons for establishing such a mechanism, you then add a caveat.
That is in section 4 of our submission. We have to be careful about the number of specialised courts that have been introduced in Scotland. For example, although there is good evidence that progress has resulted from the introduction of drugs courts and youth courts, people are now calling for domestic abuse courts and other courts to deal with specific matters. We could go on and on introducing more specialised courts.
I appreciate those comments, but, for the sake of clarity, are you recommending the introduction of specialised courts at this stage?
No.
On your last response, Mr Baird, would it be fair to draw a distinction between how vulnerable witnesses are treated in the courts and how the Procurator Fiscal Service prosecutes some of those cases?
Yes, convener.
I think that the two issues that you raise require separate solutions.
We use the information to form some of the risk assessment, using some of the risk assessment tools that we have. We form the action plans on the back of that.
Would it be fair to say that you prioritise on the basis that something that is current will be dealt with and that anything that is in the past and is no longer a cause for concern will be ignored?
At the moment, that is the case unless something else adds to that.
The convener said that information is ignored—I hope that it is not ignored.
Yes. If there is any concerning behaviour on top of what we already know, we will do that. Some individuals from back then are on the register; however, not all the 30,000 individuals are on VISOR.
Obviously not. We have identified a group of people who are a worry, but you have made the point that there are an awful lot of them. It would probably be physically impossible—and unnecessary—to bring them all into the net at this stage. Is ACPOS or anybody else suggesting that Parliament should consider amending the legislation to address that group of people?
Amendments could be made to the legislation that would harness some of those aspects, although any amendments would have to include registered sex offenders as well. I am strongly of the view that a registered sex offender should be subject to some form of order. As you have heard from our colleagues in social work, after a while, someone's licence for probation drops off, but they can remain on the sex offenders register. A big element of the supervision process drops off, and it is left to the police to monitor sex offenders for two to three years, irrespective of what conditions were previously on their licence.
That deals with people who are on the register. I am asking about the people who were convicted before 1997, whose victim was over 18 and whose sentence was less than 30 months. They are not on the register.
The people that you are talking about are only a small section of the unregistered offenders. This goes far wider than the limited number of people that you are talking about. If someone has a conviction for a sexual offence, we can take out a sexual offences prevention order against them, which will allow us to harness them under the registration process. There are already the means to do that if there are specific concerns about individuals.
I am asking specifically whether there is anything about that group of people that worries you and whether Parliament could help you by giving you the tools that you need to address the risk.
That would require a whole inquiry of its own because of the impact and scale of the issue.
I have a brief supplementary question. Is ACPOS of the view that there are currently people on the sex offenders register who should not be on it?
In 2003, the legislation was extended to cover other categories of offenders. Whenever there is press coverage of any incident, there is a wide-ranging statement about what sex offenders are doing. However, a range of individuals on the sex offenders register, including those who have committed what I would describe as minor sexual offences, pose the lowest level of risk. There is never no risk, but those individuals pose the lowest level of risk to the public. Nevertheless, they all count as sex offenders.
Does that cause a bureaucratic or financial burden, or is it just a misconception by the public that anyone on the sex offenders register poses a risk to society or to children? Do those individuals simply sit latent on the database, requiring no resources, or could resources that are currently spent on managing them be directed better towards those who pose a higher risk?
They are not latent when they are on the register; they are managed irrespective of the level of risk that they pose. They all take time and resources. As I said, there is never no risk. There is always the danger that, as soon as someone is categorised as posing a low level of risk and disregarded because they are taking up resources, they will commit some pretty horrific crime. I do not think that we can afford to allow that.
So, you are comfortable with the categories of people that are currently on the register.
I am not comfortable with the number of people who are on the register because of the resources that are required to manage them. I think that the ones who pose the lowest risk could be managed effectively in another way. The Irving report leads on to that by saying that the ones who pose the lowest risk could have an annual visit from community cops to verify that the situation has not changed. That might help to reduce the pressure on the officers who manage those who pose a higher risk. However, we are not there yet.
Let us move on. Can you give us an explanation of the workings of VISOR, which seems fascinating to us? How will it be introduced into police forces? What are your plans for sharing the system with your social work colleagues and the Scottish Prison Service?
VISOR is already in use in all police services in Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales. It has been in use in Scotland since the end of 2004, and all police forces now use it as their management tool. People who have convictions for sexual offences and who are managed are placed on VISOR, so it is a management tool, although it holds intelligence as well. It holds all the information on the offender's nominal.
That is interesting. I like the idea of one person being in charge of each case and taking lead responsibility, because often people fall through the net. I am very encouraged to hear that it is a joined-up system. I hesitate to ask how it relates to all the other bits of information that are available, such as the sex offenders register. Do they speak to one another? Is there truly one system, or is VISOR one system among many?
VISOR is truly one system for the management of offenders. Within the application, information is put into what are called attachments—small pockets in the system—so that it can be accessed readily. If you want to access information on risk assessments that have been carried out on an offender, the details can be found in that part of the application. If you want to see what management plan is in place and who is involved in it, you can look at that part of the application. There are different levels of access within the application, because there are celebrity offenders on whom not everyone needs to have information. Within the system, information can be restricted to those who need to know.
When will the link be put in place? We were very encouraged by the evidence that we took from the Scottish Criminal Record Office on that development.
We hope that the link will be in place by spring 2007. It is being tested on test applications. After the finer detail has been dealt with, we will test it on live applications.
You dangled the prospect of VISOR capturing intelligence for the current cohort of sex offenders who are being monitored. What will happen with those who were convicted pre 1997?
As James Cameron mentioned in answer to a previous question, police practice is that when such offenders come to light, a record is automatically created for them on the Scottish intelligence database regardless of whether they are reconvicted. That information causes a marker to be placed on the Scottish Criminal Record Office's criminal history system, so that everyone can see that intelligence is held on that nominal. If the person is convicted or is a cause for greater concern such that they need to be managed in the community, a record will be created on VISOR so that the risk can be managed.
Is the level of risk assessed and a decision then taken on what should be done as a consequence of that?
A record would automatically be created on the Scottish intelligence database. If any subsequent information comes to light that might cause the risk to increase, that can be managed through the Scottish intelligence database.
That is helpful.
I have a question on the links to VISOR. How is a nominal removed from VISOR? Like other MSPs, I have had a constituency case concerning a constituent who denied that an incident took place. Their details were placed on the intelligence database but were subsequently removed from it after a decision by the chief constable. Are such details automatically removed from the whole system? If not, the social work department in the individual's council area will have information that the chief constable has accepted should not be on the intelligence database.
I will cover the VISOR aspect of the question and James Cameron can pick up on the other point.
My question was not about people who have been on the register but about those whose details have been placed on the intelligence database even though they have no conviction. In my constituent's case, an entry was placed on the database after a police report, even though the local procurator fiscal decided that there should be no proceedings. That entry has now been deleted. However, you seem to be saying that, once those details were transferred across to VISOR, they cannot be deleted from VISOR.
Once a record has been created on VISOR, it will always be on VISOR or on the VISOR archive. Information on convictions is separate from intelligence—
Sorry—I probably did not make myself clear.
We have two systems. SID holds intelligence, whereas VISOR generally holds conviction-based information. Therefore, the information to which you refer will be not on VISOR but on SID.
We task chief constables with being brave and I guess that what you said is confirmation that decisions that they make are not archived on VISOR.
Leave VISOR out of it, as it confuses the situation; we are talking about SID. If the chief constable tells me that a record is to come off SID, it will come off SID; it may never have been on VISOR, so VISOR is a bit of a red herring.
Does police assessment of risk include a formal risk assessment, which would seem to require the co-operation of an individual who might not volunteer to co-operate? On what basis is risk assessed and how do you manage to carry out risk assessment? How easy is that for officers? Do they have specialist training or accreditation? Do they undertake risk assessment with social workers? What is the state of play with joint training on common assessment tools for the various agencies?
There is joint training on risk matrix 2000. All the police officers and social work colleagues who are involved have gone through that training, which is of a national standard and is accredited.
It was about the fact that risk assessment requires co-operation from the offender, who might not volunteer such co-operation.
The legislation requires a lot of compliance from the individual who is subject to registration. By and large, such individuals comply, as you heard from the figures that were given earlier. However, the legislation simply says that they will furnish the police with various details on registration and on annual re-registration. There is no compulsion to take part in risk assessments, but the vast majority do so. I have had a number of solicitors' letters telling me to keep my officers away from their clients and that we have no grounds to come and see them, let alone ask them to take part in any risk assessment, but that is in a minority of cases.
Is there any need for additional powers or other legislative changes to address that small minority? It is a minority, but it is clearly of great concern.
If you gave me the orders for the period of registration for which I asked earlier, that issue would be addressed simply.
Are sufficient resources in place to monitor and assess registered sex offenders adequately? Do you have sufficient resources to implement the MAPPA requirements?
There are two answers to that. I have already mentioned that we do not have enough officers to cope with the Evans report's recommendations, but the recent Irving report, which I welcome, makes a specific recommendation—I think that it is recommendation 29—that police forces should review the amount of resource that they have in place for registration. The new MAPPA requirements will force our hand in that regard, but Professor Irving's recommendation also says that we should go back to the Scottish Executive and tell it what is required. I think that a lot will be required.
I apologise that I had to leave the committee briefly—I may have missed answers to some of my questions. What is ACPOS's view on the public notification proposal that has been made to us? I think that I know your answer, having met you in Dundee, but I ask you to expand on it.
I simply mirror the earlier response from my social work colleagues: we are against the idea. We have in place a means by which we can disclose the information. Particularly when a situation relates to a child, there are family protection means, rather than sex offender means, by which to disclose information for the child's protection. That would take care of a large percentage of the cases to which the proposal would apply. We already have the means to disclose information to individuals if we have specific concerns, but they must be specific. There is some case law on that from down south that informs our opinions north of the border.
I hear what you are saying—a pretty clear message is coming from you all on this. Would public notification be a hindrance in assessment and management, or is there any way in which it might help?
It would be a hindrance in terms of knowing where the individuals are. It would also give the community at large a false sense of security.
We have heard that you get a lot of co-operation on the whole, which is encouraging. Can anything be done to increase the amount of co-operation that you get, or do we have to accept that we will have 3 per cent who do not co-operate and that is that?
At the moment, the fact that only 3 per cent do not co-operate is encouraging. There will always be 3 per cent who do not co-operate; we cannot do a lot to improve that. However, we should try to achieve some means by which we can return someone to court swiftly as soon as there are concerns.
Is it possible to identify the 3 per cent of unco-operative offenders? Can you say, "This type of offender will not co-operate," or do those who do not co-operate cover the broad range of offences that lead to people being on the register?
They cover the broad range of offences. There is neither rhyme nor reason as to why someone does not want to comply. However, there are a challenging, critical few for whom we need to find a different approach. When it comes to those who are, and will always be, a high risk, I do not think that we can continue to manage the situation on a day-to-day basis. We need to find something else for them.
I would be very surprised if you did not have an idea of what that something else might be. Do you?
Once a number of agencies or committees decide that a person is an ultimate danger, there needs to be some form of imprisonment or tagging for them. However, that has to be an exceptional decision.
My questions are on the type of disclosure and the circumstances in which it will be provided. The committee was helpfully provided with the decision in the 1999 case of R v a local authority in the midlands and a police authority in the midlands, which I found interesting. Judicial review was granted because the police force and the local authority had disclosed information but had not applied the pressing-needs test. In Scotland today, if allegations had been made against an individual working for a bus operator that was contracted to transport children, that would come up in an enhanced disclosure. The allegations would be on record in perpetuity, because it would take an extremely brave individual to take them off. That would not involve the pressing-needs test; the information would be there. That is the current process under enhanced disclosure in Scotland.
Yes, but the pressing need at the time would be to tell any individual, not necessarily specific organisations—we are talking about something that was pre-enhanced disclosure certificates.
That is my point. In Scotland, do we have a system whereby an employer or potential employer will receive information every day of the week?
Yes. The disclosure for which we are empowered goes further than enhanced disclosure certificates. If we thought that there was a threat to you this afternoon, we would come and tell you, if there was a pressing need to do so.
Indeed. I will come on to the mechanism for doing that in a moment. My question relates to part of the argument from the petitioners and those who are in favour of a more radical change. In the case in England, the pressing-needs test was not applied. Things have moved on in Scotland since 1999. Bichard recommended that we go beyond where we are today with routine disclosure. Disclosure would be relevant, because it would be connected to the type of employment or activity. Are the police comfortable with the routine disclosure in the disclosure system, under which information can be divulged to employers without the type of restriction that we saw in the letter that you gave us, which said that the information was strictly confidential? That does not come with enhanced disclosure.
The enhanced disclosure takes care of a large part of that. The procedure would reveal sex offenders from some time ago, because of their criminal history.
Forgive me for interrupting, but would those who are mentioned in police intelligence or reports also be revealed in that process?
Yes—any intelligence will come up in the enhanced disclosure procedure.
Does that include cases in which no conviction was made?
Yes.
So that is much wider than the sex offenders register.
Yes. The case that you mentioned related to the pressing-needs test, to which I still hold. However, that test is not used for employment matters; it is used when individuals in the community may be at risk from someone.
So you use a mechanism for informing people who are not directly relevant to an offender's activity. That mechanism is outwith the disclosure mechanism that we have under the present law in Scotland for other third parties. Is it used under the authority of the chief constable? Will you outline the mechanism that is used when you think that an individual should be provided with information about an offender?
We assess any information that gives us concern about a risk to an individual—we do that daily. If we consider that a pressing need arises to tell the individual about that, we will do that. However, we can proceed in other ways. For example, we can use the self disclosure process, in which we go along with the offender and they tell the individual whom we think is at risk about themselves. That happens in several types of situation. If an offender refuses to do that, we try other means by which to reduce the risk. Disclosure is the last resort, as was the case under the original guidance. I hold by that. We need to consider other methods. For example, we have asked offenders to move house, which they have done. There are other ways of disclosing or negating the risk before formal disclosure has to come about.
Some members had a visit to Dundee, for which we are grateful, as it was extremely helpful. The sub-committee has been provided with a copy of the letter that is used for notification. What is the mechanism and how is the situation controlled?
If we go to formal disclosure, that must be backed up in writing to the individual to whom the information is disclosed. However, it is not good enough simply to send a letter to someone saying, "By the way, you are at risk." A police officer will hand-deliver the letter and explain what it means and what the risks are. They will not necessarily disclose the convictions that an individual has, but they will disclose sufficient information to allow the person to take reasonable steps to protect themselves. In my view, that is a last resort, because we should try other approaches. We do not have statutory powers to tell people where they can and cannot live, but where a person lives might affect our decision on disclosure.
I have two further brief questions. Do we know how many times third parties have been notified in that way?
In short, no, but it is common practice.
The reason why I ask is that there is pressure for a Megan's law equivalent in Scotland, but we are not aware of how many times police forces—and local authorities, under the child protection route—have decided to disclose such information, say, so far in this calendar year. Does ACPOS collate information on that?
That information is not collated, because we take many actions to avoid having to disclose. Today in Scotland, five people may be asked to do something differently from the way in which they have been doing it. That is part of the disclosure process—it is not as though we have simply written 10 letters today and disclosed information to 10 people. There is a whole process to go through.
We would be glad to have information on that.
I am not aware of ACPOS's current position on the matter.
Could you provide us with more information on that?
Yes.
The penultimate sentence in the letter of notification states:
It is a request, not a command. I should point out that, in that particular case, our approach was very successful, because the individual who received the letter said that they could not limit the risk that the offender posed and asked us to notify another individual who could. We then went through the whole process again to notify another individual. We do not take such decisions lightly, and we fully explain and support the process when we decide to make a formal disclosure.
People seem to adhere to such requests remarkably well. You said that such moves are uncommon but, even so, it appears that people only very rarely blow such information to the media. I take it that the system works purely on trust and that there is no legal comeback against people who spread that information.
Well, we certainly attempt to assess the risk posed by going through the process.
Megan's law forms the background to the inquiry. I think that I am right in saying that, in New Jersey, there are criminal sanctions against people who disclose such information. You are saying that no such sanctions apply here.
There is always civil recourse, but there are no specific sanctions.
You have described the current mechanisms for disclosure in cases in which the police and social work decide that such a move is necessary. I understand that Lothian and Borders police have a protocol with the five local authorities in their area of operation on the sharing and disclosure of information on sex offenders on a need-to-know basis. Is that protocol working well and can we learn any lessons from anywhere else in that regard?
I should point out that there is a difference between disclosure and information sharing. The business of information sharing is a practical matter and happens every day around tables like this one. However, disclosure is what happens when we go beyond the working environment in which information is shared and takes place only on a need-to-know basis. I certainly do not go to Alan Baird and his staff every day and tell them everything that I know about every sex offender.
Is information also shared on a need-to-know basis across Scotland?
With the national concordat on sharing information, the situation is standard across the country.
As we all know, the inquiry was initiated by a petition from Margaret Ann Cummings, who said that, when she reported her son missing, the police who came to her flat did not know that a registered sex offender was living in her block. I am not going to ask you to comment on that case, but I am sure that people would be reassured by a clear statement that if a child is reported missing and the police are aware of a risky sex offender in the immediate neighbourhood, there is a rapid system for transmitting that information to the police officer dealing with the case. Is such a system now in place?
With VISOR, we have come a long way and are now able to access such information. Indeed, the situation before and after its introduction is like night and day. However, we are going further than that by looking at ways of updating our staff. Obviously, we have to balance such considerations with ensuring that such information does not go beyond the police service, but we are working towards ways of letting officers know. Indeed, Professor Irving made some positive recommendations on giving community officers responsibility for managing some of these individuals.
Hold on. You said that you have access to the information. When someone reports a child missing—nine times out of 10 the child has just gone walkabout, but there is still anxiety—do the police routinely check whether there is a known registered child sex offender in the neighbourhood? Should the sex offender's home not immediately be visited in such circumstances? I seek reassurance on that.
As you said, nine times out of 10 the child turns up and is okay. It is difficult to legislate for the 10th case. If sufficient concern is expressed during the initial investigation, the answer is yes, the information will be available. It depends at what stage concern reaches the goalpost.
Time is of the essence in the circumstances that we are talking about. If a risky registered child sex offender lives or works in a particular area and a child goes missing in that area, do you agree that it is important that the police constable who is dealing with the missing child case can put both pieces of information together?
Yes, but when a child goes missing a process must be followed. Given the number of sex offenders who are in the community, which we discussed, where do you want us to start? It is a challenge. The information is there, but I cannot assure you that it is part of the first set of priorities for an officer who is dealing with a missing child case.
We might well want to return to that issue.
The police service has access to the Scottish intelligence database, which includes people who are on VISOR and people about whom there is intelligence to do with sexual offences. A person might not necessarily have been convicted of the offence; there could simply be intelligence that they had been investigated in relation to a sexual offence. There is capability in the intelligence database to put markers on offenders that show their offence type—whether it is car theft or sexual offences—and to plot offenders by area, so it would be possible to look at the geographical location of sex offenders. In VISOR we can search for offenders by police force.
It is almost accepted that sex offenders go missing. What efforts do the police make to trace missing sex offenders?
We make every effort that we can to trace them. We use all national databases, including those of the Benefits Agency and the United Kingdom Passport Agency.
I am trying to unravel that.
The legislation requires people to register their address and the compulsion is on them to do that. If they do not, we have to find where they are. They may decide, "I've had enough of this. I'm going to emigrate to Majorca." If they do that, are they missing? Should we look for them? Do we want to bring them back? There is a foreign travel order, which means that people should tell us if they are travelling abroad, and that is one thing that they would fall foul of. However, we would have to make efforts—depending on where they had gone—to find them in a foreign country and to bring them back, so that we could place them before the court for not telling us that they were going to Iraq, Majorca or wherever. The legislation brings us challenges.
I would have thought that that would be desirable, so that people do not drop out of the system completely and then re-emerge later when they have decided that the sunny climate was not to their liking.
That is in place. We can do that.
That also throws up another aspect that I had not considered—the degree of international co-operation. Suppose that there is a guy in Majorca whom we want to track down and that someone goes to Majorca to find him. What degree of co-operation do you have with similar agencies in other countries, particularly within Europe?
We have good co-operation on confirming where individuals are in Europe, but we struggle beyond Europe, particularly if someone has gone to Iraq.
So the authorities in those countries would not take over the monitoring operations and that type of thing.
The legislation applies only in this country. As soon as someone leaves the country, their period of registration is in abeyance.
Is the system the same in Scotland and in England and Wales, or are there differences in approach? I know that, in some cases, English police forces will advertise for information about an individual about whose whereabouts they are not certain.
The legal process for publishing people's photographs is different here. On a few occasions, we have asked the prosecuting authorities whether we can supply pictures to the press and to the media to try to find individuals, but we have not always been successful. In this country, that decision is made by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.
Thank you. Do not go away. I am sure that we will think of more questions for you.
I think that we are. There is never a situation where we would not welcome more resources and find creative ways to make use of them but, in general, we are pleased with the resources that we have. Over the past three years, we have steadily increased our provision for treatment programmes, and that trend is set to continue into next year. In 2003-04, we were able to complete treatment for only 36 prisoners, whereas 88 prisoners completed the programme last year. We expect that an additional 20 or 30 prisoners will go through the programme next year. Given the number of prisoners who, during the course of their sentence, become ready to participate in the programmes, we feel that we are well placed to meet those needs.
I will explore that with you in more detail in a minute. What about the other kinds of general interventions? What about assessment of risk and case management, including social work provision in prisons? We know that those things all contribute to managing the sex offender effectively. Are you adequately resourced for that?
I will deal first with risk assessment. Those individuals who participate in our accredited standard programmes have a detailed report completed at the end of the programme, and that report constitutes a risk assessment of sorts. We also have a separate mechanism in the form of risk management groups. The groups are multidisciplinary, can be attended by external agencies and can commission in-depth psychological risk assessments. Numerous such assessments are carried out each year.
That answer was very helpful.
By April next year, we will be in a position to deliver more. Just last week, we completed more in-house training and trained more facilitators for Peterhead. Funding is coming through and will come to fruition in April next year. Depending on the type of programme that Peterhead chooses to run, we hope to increase its capacity—which is currently around 43 or 44 a year—to around 60 or 65.
The chief inspector of prisons was also quite critical of throughcare arrangements. How will you ensure that there is adequate throughcare? How will the risk assessments and management plans link to those that will operate in the community?
The introduction of ICM should improve the throughcare arrangements. In the months since its introduction, there has been a high level of attendance from our community colleagues in most of Scotland, even though Peterhead is a long way away.
Our integrated case management systems work well; in those systems, we work together with our social work colleagues. We are quite confident that our throughcare arrangements and our links are good. We sometimes come in for criticism for some cases, but in the main we have thorough arrangements in place for prisoners who are moving back into the community.
I note that you say "in the main". Will every sex offender who leaves prison be picked up in the community? Is the interface in place before they are released in every single case?
I would like to say yes and I think that I could say yes—almost.
Listen—politicians know about language. You are not saying yes to me.
Well, we can never guarantee things. Peterhead certainly caters for around 300 sex offenders, but Dumfries also has some offenders who refuse to acknowledge that they are sex offenders.
We have issues to do with the role of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in this respect. I am keen to explore the interface between prison and release.
Every offender who is sentenced to four years or more will have an allocated social worker from the point of sentence right through the sentence and when they go back into the community. Sex offenders who are sentenced to more than six months will come out under statutory supervision. They will also have a community social worker from the point of sentence.
So it is the category of offenders with sentences of less than six months who are in self-denial that we should perhaps worry about. How big is that category?
Even if their sentences are less than six months, sexual offenders might also be subject to MAPPA, which will further strengthen the existing arrangements. I am not sure what the numbers are for people with sentences of less than six months.
I do not know, but I think that they will be quite low.
I am starting to be reassured.
I think that it is worrying. If you are saying that there are people in prison whom you know to be sex offenders but who are not categorised as such because of a plea bargain, that is something that the fiscals and the police should be worried about. If there is a sexual element in the offence, it is very important that these people should be brought into the prison treatment strategy.
I can speak about the approach to the treatment strategy. Those prisoners certainly are brought into it. We do not have precise figures, but we estimate that, at any one time, in addition to about 450 to 550 registered sex offenders, we have around 100 to 150 prisoners who are not registered as sex offenders but who had a sexual element to their offence. We have notification of those individuals, we take strenuous measures to encourage them to participate and we provide them with opportunities under the treatment programmes.
This was brought to my attention following a meeting in Dumfries and Galloway. Would you care to comment on whether a growing recognition of the European Convention on Human Rights and human rights legislation is increasing the frequency with which you are challenged by people in custody on what you are trying to achieve?
That does not cause us significant problems. Our value base for participation in programmes is not only to try to make Scotland safer but to provide better life opportunities for the sex offender. We genuinely believe that, through participation in programmes, they can have a better life and will be more likely to lead an offence-free life.
The Cosgrove report recommended that every convicted sex offender should benefit from intervention programmes. Is that realistic? Is it appropriate? It concerns only a small number of offenders going by what was mentioned earlier but, in its written submission, the ADSW stated:
I can speak first about accredited programmes and what is known about the amount of time that needs to be spent in treatment. Generally speaking, treatment programmes that use group work will have a research base to show their effectiveness. The research on one-to-one or two-to-one work with offenders does not show that they do not work, but there are insufficient studies to show that they do work. Prison Service policy is very much to move prisoners towards the group work programmes.
How do you flag up sex offenders on your information technology system? Is the proposal to have separate categories for those who target children and those who target adults practical? Your submission states that you already consider schedule 1 offenders to constitute a separate category of offenders against children, although the classification also relates to non-sex offenders. Will you advise us on your categorisation?
We work on the flag system in our prisoner records 2 system. It uses a red flag if the prisoner is subject to live supervision and a grey flag if he or she was previously subject to a requirement to be registered as a sex offender. The system is robust and is available about 99.7 per cent of the time 365 days of the year, which our technical people tell me is very high availability. It allows us to track and monitor prisoners right through the process and allows people who also have access to the database to see at first glance on the first screen that the prisoner is a sex offender or a schedule 1 offender, so I assure you that it would meet other organisations' needs.
A lot of people outside the SPS would assume that its role is purely custodial: I would have been one such person before I became part of the inquiry, so it is quite a relief to find that it is not the case. I think that I am right in saying that you operate part of the victim notification scheme. Will you brief me on what that entails for the victim and what its impact is on the victim?
The victim has to register at the court, which notifies us that the victim is willing to be part of the scheme. We inform the victim should the offender be released, die in custody or be transferred to another jurisdiction. We do not notify the victim if the offender changes prisons or is allowed access to other privileges. Perhaps we could improve the scheme by notifying the victim if the offender is allowed out for a domestic visit for a family bereavement, for example. However, in the main, the victim is informed regularly throughout the sentence.
What percentage of victims take advantage of the scheme?
I am sorry—I do not have figures for that and I would not like to guess.
Could you provide the figures?
I will come back to you on that. I suspect that the percentage will be low, but I will find out, if I can.
Does the SPS have a role in ensuring that sex offenders who are released subject to registration requirements conform to them? If so, what is that role?
Although we do not carry out any treatment programmes or risk assessment beyond the prison walls, we carry out a lot of work in prison to encourage our sex offenders to participate in the process. To that end, our risk assessment reports are very much geared up not only for our police and social work colleagues, but for the prisoners themselves, to highlight to them the factors that make it more likely that they will reoffend. One thing that prisoners are clear about is that they do not want to return to prison. We feel that we have some responsibility for that.
That is interesting. Another thing that interests me from a rural perspective is housing: some offenders need to be re-housed because they cannot go back to whence they came. Do you have any role in ensuring that sex offenders have appropriate housing on release? I have some concerns about what constitutes appropriate housing in rural areas, although that is perhaps another subject to which we may return. What role does the SPS play in that process?
That depends on your definition of appropriate housing. When an offender leaves prison, we work with a number of agencies to ensure that housing is available.
Can you go through those agencies, for my education?
We work with Apex Scotland. When I was the governor at HMP Greenock, we worked with the various local housing initiatives in Renfrewshire, Inverclyde and East Dunbartonshire. Most prisons have such partnership arrangements in place. If the offender is to go to a hostel, we work in conjunction with social work services to ensure that we find somewhere that we deem to be reasonable and appropriate before he is released. Obviously, we look for locations that are not next door to schools and swimming pools.
Does that apply equally to offenders who are on temporary leave—home leave and that sort of thing—or does it not come into play in those circumstances?
That process comes into play very much.
The same procedures apply.
Yes.
Are there any difficulties in working with any of the agencies that you have mentioned?
No. We seem to have good relationships. Everybody works towards the common aim of housing offenders in the safest places possible, both for them and the public.
I have a supplementary question. I am afraid that it is one of my "Can you guarantee this?" questions. The destination of many people on leaving prison used to be the homelessness register. I am not talking about just sex offenders, but offenders in general. Are you telling me that that never happens now?
It should not happen, but I cannot guarantee that it does not. When an offender leaves prison, the destination that he gives us may not be his actual destination. That applies not just to sex offenders, but to everybody; they can go anywhere once they are out. In the main, however, we work with partner agencies to set offenders up with somewhere to go, certainly for the first night.
In the case of sex offenders, are the addresses checked out in advance of their release?
Yes. Everything is done through social work services. Offenders have regular meetings with their appointed social workers and everything is in place long before they leave prison.
Okay. So, would it be fair to say that a sex offender would be released to a known address that had been checked in advance? You are shaking your head, Detective Superintendent Cameron.
That would depend on whether the person was a long-term or short-term prisoner.
It would. It would also depend on whether they had been in prison for a sexual offence or a subsequent offence—there is a distinction between the two. Also, the legislation allows a person to register a park bench as their address or as the place where they can normally be found, but that can change daily. They are required to register, but not necessarily at an address.
So, fixing that part of the law could be helpful in tracking people.
Yes. It is particularly difficult to track down folk who are registered at a park bench.
Indeed. I share that concern.
One of the questions that I was going to ask has been answered, so I have just one brief question for the Prison Service. Is the Prison Service involved in the operation of the violent and sex offenders register? Is any information put into VISOR from the Prison Service, or is it not connected?
The Prison Service is not connected at the minute, but we are in the process of preparing a business case for our being linked to VISOR. That should be funded by early next year—probably by April.
I presume that it will be funded in full by the Executive.
Yes.
And the timeframe is—
It should be funded by about April next year.
Let us turn to sex offenders who suffer from mental illness. The Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Act 2005 has created core partnerships between the Prison Service, the police, criminal justice social work and health authorities in relation to mentally ill sex offenders. Is that going to make a difference?
I think that it will make a difference: it will increase the likelihood of our working together. A forensic psychiatric network has set up a number of committees to examine ways of working with mentally disordered offenders, and it has invited the Prison Service to participate. We have participated in all its subgroups, including one on sex offenders. There are things in place to make that happen.
I am always a little nervous that we are just creating more complicated procedures that might not achieve anything. However, you reckon that that process will be helpful.
Yes.
In June, the Minister for Justice published proposals for sentencing in a paper entitled, "Release and Post Custody Management of Offenders". Specifically, the document says:
I can speak about the risk assessment. Anyone who currently comes into prison receives such case management if they have a sex offence conviction. The processes that would allow us to identify the individuals who need to be referred to the Parole Board for Scotland are already in place.
The process could increase numbers in the short term, but our risk assessment procedures are reasonably robust. We work in a professional manner with offenders and we recognise the people who need to stay. I suspect that they will probably be few in number.
Are you confident that you can conduct the assessments that will be required and that you can cope with the number of prisoners who will have to stay on as a consequence?
Yes.
I suspect that there may be more discussion of that in a week in relation to the Custodial Sentences and Weapons (Scotland) Bill, which will place a huge burden on the limited number of social workers who are currently operating in prisons. I would be happy to pick up more detail on that at a later stage.
I am sure that the Justice 2 Committee will, in its scrutiny of that bill, pick up on that issue.
Although the SPS is able to put in place some processes that would constitute risk assessment of a sort, there is a question about the level of detail that we would ideally like to go into. The Custodial Sentences and Weapons (Scotland) Bill could make us employ a screening approach, which is a basic risk assessment that might mislead people into thinking that we have gone into the detail that we would like. The Cosgrove report, the MacLean committee report and the Risk Management Authority all recommend a structured clinical approach to risk assessment. The bill runs the risk of taking us down the line of being able to use only an actuarial approach, which has limitations.
We will capture both those aspects in our report and I am sure that your comments will be referred to the Justice 2 Committee if not by the clerks, then by me and by Jeremy Purvis, who is also a member of that committee.
That builds on our comments about individuals whose crimes have a sexual element but who have not been convicted of a sex offence. The law on risk assessment specifies a civil level of proof of whether a person poses a risk. Under risk assessment legislation, we see many individuals who we believe should be required to enter treatment but who tell us that because they are not registered sex offenders, they cannot be treated as such. Any developments that would assist our ability to require such individuals to participate would be welcome. As I said, they seem at any time to constitute about 20 per cent of the prisoners who we feel are at risk of sex offending on release.
Is it fair to say that that is not entirely a matter for the sentencing process, as it relates to how the Procurator Fiscal Service operates before that process starts?
Yes.
That is helpful.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I welcome our next panel. We have Diana MacLean, from the Scottish Borders Housing Association; Nick Fletcher, who is the policy and public affairs officer of the Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland; Liz Burns, who is the policy and practice officer for the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations; and Alan McKeown, who is the head of housing at Angus Council and is representing the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers.
The Chartered Institute of Housing is the professional body for people who work in housing. All our members are individual housing professionals, not organisations. We have 19,000 members in the United Kingdom and internationally and more than 2,000 members in Scotland. The CIH tries to enable its members to do their jobs properly by giving them the necessary skills and tools. We also represent the interests of our members in the development of wider strategic policies by giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament or feeding into Scottish Executive policy, for example, to ensure that the work that our members do benefits the well-being of communities.
Excellent.
That was short and sweet.
It was. That was your only easy question.
You will be aware that the sub-committee's purpose is to consider the suggestion in the petition from Margaret Ann Cummings that a public notification scheme should be adopted for registered sex offenders. What impact would that have on your obligations to find and retain appropriate accommodation for sex offenders?
We understand where the concerns come from that prompt the notification and disclosure proposals. We are working on the issue with the Scottish Executive and the other organisations that are members of the Executive's advisory group to develop the national accommodation strategy. However, we have said that we want to get right how we share information and how the responsible authorities, which are criminal justice social work, the police and the Scottish Prison Service, work with local authority housing providers and registered social landlords to share information on risks, so that our members can ensure that proper housing allocations are made that minimise the risk of a person reoffending and therefore minimise the risk to the community.
I am interested in the phrase "address and block profiling" in the draft practice guidance. Will you explain what that is and how it works?
Address and block profiling is a tool that the police have used. When housing a sex offender it can be used to examine who lives in the area. How it is used depends on the sex offence that was committed and the risk that the sex offender poses. It might be used to consider who lives in the area and what in the area might cause concern in relation to housing the sex offender there.
So the main drivers of the tool—if that is the right expression—will be registered social landlords. How difficult will it be for them to use it?
The main drivers of address profiling are the responsible authorities. The police have a history of doing address profiling. The accommodation strategy and the practice guidance will encourage local authority housing services and registered social landlords to feed into that process. When housing a sex offender in a registered social landlord's property is being considered, the RSL will have a better idea of who is living in the area than the police do. The RSL will feed that information to the police, which will help the responsible authorities to decide whether an area is suitable to be allocated a sex offender.
I return to my favourite topic—rurality. In the part of rural Scotland in which I live, often the issue is simply finding a house, not finding a suitable or acceptable house. In such circumstances, how will such a profiling exercise make a blind bit of difference?
Finding suitable housing is an issue in rural areas, but it can also be an issue in urban areas. With the national accommodation strategy for housing sex offenders, we need to be aware that a limited number of properties are available at any one time in the social housing sector. The sector cannot be the panacea for housing sex offenders. Even big urban authorities such as the City of Edinburgh Council can find it difficult to find suitable accommodation. However, I take the point that finding appropriate and available accommodation is even more difficult in rural areas. In those circumstances, consideration needs to be given to cross-boundary liaison between local authorities to enable the accommodation of sex offenders to take place in a different area.
We should also be clear that the social rented sector does not have sole responsibility for rehousing sex offenders. Many such offenders end up in private accommodation or, indeed, back at their family's or a relative's home. We need to keep the issue in proportion.
A lot of work has been put into the draft practice guidance for the strategy, but what will happen if the appropriateness of a location for housing sex offenders changes because of other circumstances? How practical will it be for link officers, working with the police and social work, to keep an area profile under review if its housing make-up changes? It has been suggested that offenders might need to be moved to more appropriate locations. How practical will it be to keep areas under review on a day-to-day basis? How will that happen?
The review process will be integrated into the role of the link officer. In a sense, the review process is simply about looking at allocations in an area over time. We also need to take into account what happens to the make-up of housing in an area, given that social housing does not exist in isolation. As Jackie Baillie referred to, any area will include a mix of owner-occupiers and private rented sector tenants, so it is impossible to control exactly who lives there. By keeping an area under review, we can get an idea of who lives there and whether the nature of the risk that the sex offender might pose has changed.
The question was how practical it will be to monitor and review the arrangements. It will be very difficult to do so consistently if the same process has to be used for every registered sex offender regardless of risk. In implementing the strategy, we need to put in place systems that allow better communication so that, for each individual sex offender who is accommodated in social housing, the responsible authorities work with the housing provider in reviewing and monitoring the situation. The higher the risk that is posed by the sex offender, the more frequent should be the review of the surrounding households; the lower the assessed risk, the less frequently such reviews would need to be done. The review and monitoring should depend on the individual situation. There will be resource implications, because of the housing provider's role in the monitoring of sex offenders, but the monitoring should depend on the individual case.
Let me use the example, which is perhaps a cliché, of an offender who is sited near a school. I know that previous witnesses suggested that that is a bad example, because any offender could travel to the school on the bus or another form of transport. However, if a school was relocated or a new school was built in the vicinity of a registered sex offender, would that trigger a case assessment or review for the offender?
We would like to think that cognisance would be taken of the potential risk in moving a facility closer to an offender. However, we need to understand the scale of the problem. Link officers and sex offender liaison officers—SOLOs—do not really exist in Scotland. As far as I am aware, the City of Edinburgh Council is the only authority that has such an officer and I am not sure what that officer's case load is. We do not have link officers either. Such posts would need to be created by shifting resources or by making them part of someone's job.
I hear that, but there is no point in having practice guidance that states that
The practice guidance is designed to focus on housing, which is a different context. However, that does not mean that, in such a situation, we would not as professionals think, "Hold on a second." It would be a corporate information issue in the council. Assuming that a housing person would be involved in the corporate management team, they would say that a number of registered sex offenders are floating around in the area for the proposed school, and we would twig that we needed to think about the matter. However, that is a different process, which would need to be developed. We are talking about housing issues, but you are talking about something that is a broader corporate responsibility. The First Minister has written to local authority chief executives asking them to ensure that they are aware of their corporate responsibility. I know that they are fully aware of that.
I agree that the issue that Jeremy Purvis raises is a wider responsibility.
Absolutely—we are aware of that.
As far as I am aware, all our members are prepared to house sex offenders. However, not all registered social landlords in Scotland are SFHA members. I hope that that is not too much sophistry. We consulted widely among our membership on the draft national accommodation strategy for sex offenders. I am confident that the vast majority of our members endorse that strategy and understand fully their responsibilities in housing sex offenders in their housing stock. In all honesty, a minority of our members have reservations about housing sex offenders. Some of them are based in areas where the matter is sensitive and the community has serious concerns. We need to have in place arrangements that give communities confidence that we are co-operating well with the responsible authorities and that, importantly, they are co-operating with us, as landlords.
While accepting that the national accommodation strategy is a draft document and that there may not be the link officers on the ground that we all assumed there would be, does the framework have the right ingredients to be successful? Because it has at its heart the ability for people to communicate and share information, will it resolve the challenges that you will face?
The national accommodation strategy must be seen as one step in a framework that needs to be established. It is an important first step in that framework which, for the first time, clearly establishes the roles and responsibilities of the various parties involved in the management and minimisation of risk, and puts clearly the case for stable housing, as it minimises risk. However, in itself, it is only a document that tells people what they ought to be doing. The development of local authority SOLOs is an important part of the strategy, because they will enable information sharing to be developed consistently and coherently, which is not the case now, and enable better links and through flow. That will make much more sense for the responsible authorities. That is an important aspect of the strategy.
Resources for whom?
Resources for the local authorities to develop SOLOs and for some of the larger housing associations, which will be involved in much closer liaison in monitoring sex offenders within their stock. It is important to be able to say confidently to communities that the police and social work have resources to monitor and supervise sex offenders within communities. Specific resources are required for housing, but resources must be allocated to other agencies, because we are all working towards the same aim: to improve the monitoring and supervision arrangements. Even if we have massive resources for the work in the housing sector, it will be pointless if police and social work, which are the principal agencies involved, do not have the necessary resources.
Do you have any initial views—apart from having to depend on the amount that is directed to you—on the resource implications?
The implications will be different in different areas. Obviously, the need in areas such as Glasgow that have higher concentrations and numbers of sex offenders will be greater than it is in smaller, more rural areas. A proper assessment must take place. The role of local authorities will vary according to how many landlords they have to deal with. Glasgow City Council might deal with more than 100 landlords, so its role will be much more intense than that of, for example, Scottish Borders Council, which will deal with fewer landlords. However, the information will still be required.
I am fairly familiar with the bargaining that goes on in developing a national resource framework. We do not have such a framework in the national strategy that Nick Fletcher prepared. The City of Edinburgh Council is the only council that has a SOLO. I am not sure of the exact costs, but we can get them for the committee. However, including on-costs, the cost of a SOLO could be 40 grand to 45 grand a year. If there are 32 SOLOs across Scotland, we could be looking at a cost of around £1.5 million, and that does not include link officers. We would need to trade-off on that, because Clackmannan, Stirling and Falkirk might be able to share one and a half officers, and Angus and Dundee might be able to come to a similar arrangement. We could examine possible efficiencies—and that is before we talk about what the police might come back with.
Presumably the cost relates not simply to link officers. Will it be possible to maintain an active role in monitoring sex offenders while keeping an eye on the composition of housing, or will everything depend on resources?
It will be possible to a lesser extent if we do not have the resources, but there will be serious gaps in the ability to manage risk on an on-going basis. Risk could probably be managed at the point of entry into the system, when an offender leaves an institution and enters the local community, but it would be difficult to manage the risk going forward. The success of the programme depends on responsible authorities and their partners developing processes, procedures and checks that have quality built in at the start. The Scottish Executive might say, "We developed legislation, a national strategy and guidance to provide you with all the tools—over to you," but that is a different debate. If that happened, we would have to go back to the Executive and say, "Well, if you haven't provided us with enough resources, we can deliver only to a certain extent." We have to be clear about the outcomes that we can deliver from the resources that we have, and that is a more sophisticated debate than simply saying, "Give us the cash and we'll deliver."
What do you see as your boundaries and parameters, so that we do not duplicate efforts with social work, police and housing professionals, who all handle these matters? What do you see as your responsibility?
We have not had that discussion yet, but you are absolutely right to ask the question. In a discussion about the efficient use of public resources, we would need to work with local partners, and perhaps across boundaries, to decide what resources we have, what resources we need, how we close the gaps and how we ensure that we efficiently use what we have got. I dare say we can always be more efficient if we examine our systems closely. Our first point is not simply to say, "We need more money." Our first point must be to ask, "What have we got and are we using it properly?" Then we must look to plug the gap. Our arguments are much more sophisticated than they were five or 10 years ago.
I would like to say something that is based on my personal experience. I work as a SOLO in the Scottish Borders, so Edinburgh is not the only place that has SOLOs. I do that on an informal basis, as I am employed in another job, but my interest in the national accommodation strategy has led me to try to put such a system in place in the Scottish Borders within a level 2 MAPPA. Working closely with the CJAs, we are trying to include what is happening in the strategy.
The draft strategy clearly delineates roles and responsibilities. Our role in housing is to contribute to the management of risk; it is not to take over the roles of social workers and the police, who clearly have the principal responsibility. Ours is a supporting role and, because the draft strategy makes the role of housing clear, we should not overstep the mark. The strategy makes it clearer where the mark is.
I was trying to come up with a question that would not lead to an answer involving resource implications, but I have probably failed.
At present, arrangements for information sharing are patchy. Your question is topical, because the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Act 2005 imposed on registered social landlords and others a duty to co-operate. Questions have arisen over what is the relevant information that has to be shared. There should be national guidance on that.
Feel free.
Housing associations are housing sex offenders now; it is not a new responsibility, but it is happening quietly in communities and nobody is quite sure who is doing what and who is responsible for what. Questions have been asked about reservations that some of our members have about this type of work. We need a more public debate about how we can house people who are deemed to be a danger. That debate has to involve communities, because they need knowledge of the policies and processes. I am not talking about individual notifications of who is living where, but about a debate that could lift the veil somewhat and address some of communities' fears about the housing of people who could threaten their children.
Sort of.
Our members are professionals so I am confident that that information would not seep out if we took on that role. Members can take comfort from the fact that, as far as I am aware, no inspection by our regulator has identified confidentiality as an issue in any association.
I am interested that you have identified a need for communities to be more involved in and knowledgeable about what is going on. The committee probably agrees with you. How do you draw the line between informing communities and limiting information sharing as required?
We can do that in exactly the same way as we do in relation to other issues. Housing association management committees in Scotland are, in the main, made up of members of the community. In general, management committee members decide on the allocations policy, but they have no involvement in individual allocations. The same approach can be taken to housing sex offenders. Management committees need to be informed of the policy and the processes that are under way and they must have confidence in the processes, but they should not be involved in discussions or decisions about individual placements, which should remain the responsibility of the organisation's staff. Communities have a right to feel confident about the policies and processes that their landlords, the police and social work departments are putting in place, but it would not be helpful for them to know individual details.
That was a superb response—
We will be the judges of that.
A good question gets a good answer.
It was the kind of question that I got in my job interview.
A bit like this sub-committee.
The current arrangements tend to work, although they are informal. As Liz Burns said, the strategy formalises existing practice and puts it into a good housekeeping guide. The corollary is that committees and council committees are required to consider the issue and to come up with formal policies, procedures and check lists. How do we do that without exposing the issue to public debate and without therefore raising consciousness of the discussion?
Some offenders are categorised as presenting so high a risk of reoffending that it is not appropriate to house them in communities. What does the SFHA think is the most appropriate way of housing such individuals?
That question strays a bit beyond our remit, but I concede that it refers to comments that we made in our submission. On monitoring and supervision of sex offenders, we, like other social housing providers, operate under the premise that has been outlined by experts on sex offending: that a stable housing environment increases community safety and minimises risk to communities. However, if a risk assessment indicates that the likelihood of reoffending is so high that a stable housing environment will not minimise risk, what happens if we then ask communities to house those people? Agencies are basically saying that they do not know how to manage them.
Nick Fletcher has already outlined two classifications for sex offenders: those who target adults and those who are more likely to target children. Are those two categories useful in making decisions on the most appropriate accommodation for different types of offender?
I did not intend to suggest that.
I was not putting words in your mouth; I simply referred to the fact that you had mentioned those categories.
In my response, because it is part of the sub-committee's remit, I focused on people who offend against children. However, we must treat each sex offender as an individual who poses a different type of risk, depending on the nature of their offence, their character and so on. It is difficult to put sex offenders into particular categories and we should take care in attempting to do so. As the evidence from ACPOS and the Scottish Prison Service made clear, some sex offenders do not engage with treatment programmes or monitoring, but not even they can be classified as a particular type of sex offender.
We have asked everyone else this question, so we had better put it to you, too. As you know, the inquiry was triggered by a petition calling for public notification of, and disclosure of, information about the location of registered sex offenders. What is your view of that proposal?
As I said in my response to the committee's first question, we do not support such a move. We said earlier that there is still a big communications job to be done to convince communities that—with the various proposals that have been made and the recently passed Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Act 2005—the Scottish Executive, Parliament and organisations that are involved in supervising sex offenders and managing the risks that they pose to communities have taken note of communities' concerns and are trying to address them.
That is helpful. I take it that the witnesses would not support the case for public disclosure across the board, over and above the disclosure system that already exists.
There is now a duty to co-operate and share information, to which Liz Burns referred. What are the essential pieces of information about sex offenders that your member organisations require to know?
We discussed that this morning before we came here.
Come on—include us in your discussions.
Information sharing.
Absolutely. As part of the duty to co-operate working party, we are considering that very question so that we can identify relevant information. I will consider a case with which I have dealt and find out what the relevant information was in it. For me, such information would include whether there was any risk to staff and the community. I would not need to know the ins and outs of the person's offence, but I would need to know what risks were posed to anybody who might come into contact with that person through my organisation.
Perhaps you could send us the information when you have concluded your work.
Yes.
I have a question for Alan McKeown, which I am sure others will supplement. What difficulties do your local authority colleagues face in trying to provide housing for sex offenders? Some local authorities have transferred all their housing stock to registered social landlords.
That depends on the quality of the relationships and understanding between authorities and RSLs, which will vary depending on the area. The process of allocating a house should be pretty straightforward. We would discharge our statutory duties as normal. The big issue is identifying the right property and the right area. If we left a property void for a while, which would have a resource implication, we would draw attention to it. If we put a sex offender in a block of flats, would we be preventing other people from accessing that block, given their circumstances? There are subtleties involved. We would need to track the implications of an allocations process and we would have to consider at what point we would depart from the normal allocations process and simply say, "That's where you're going. You don't get a choice." We are working through those implications, which we will know more about when the duty to co-operate is implemented.
I take it that Liz Burns agrees with everything that Alan McKeown has just said.
Every word of it.
I am conscious that you have statutory duties to provide accommodation for people who need housing and that there may be supply pressures in parts of Scotland. Do you think that the housing of sex offenders will present difficulties, given the wonderful relationships that exist?
I do. I am not sure how great those problems will be on a scale of one to 10, but there are places in urban and rural areas where it would be unwise to house a sex offender. Like ACPOS, I can foresee circumstances in which someone will have to be removed. There will have to be constant negotiation and people will have to be aware of the impacts of their decisions at all times. As has been mentioned, that will be resource intensive and stressful for staff. It is a tough question, but I do foresee difficulties arising.
Will the new statutory duty—
I am sorry, but some of the witnesses want to come in.
Do you all want to come in? I thought that you all agreed with everything that Alan McKeown said.
We would like to provide additional information.
It is not a disagreement.
It is not a disagreement; it is evidence of a mutually beneficial partnership.
Our understanding is that a significant number of sex offenders do not go into the social rented sector, but into owner occupation or former family homes. If we make that explicit in our report, it might assist the debate that you will have.
I want to build on what Alan McKeown said about finding appropriate accommodation. Once the strategy is in place, some work might need to be done to examine how easy it is to find accommodation that is deemed to be appropriate for sex offenders. We must investigate whether we have enough appropriate accommodation or whether we need to consider building more housing.
I accept what you say about appropriateness but, as you have said, you already house sex offenders.
We do. Some of our members house sex offenders without realising that that is what they are doing, which is why we need a national strategy.
Absolutely. It is not necessarily that we need a host of new accommodation; we just need to sharpen up what we do.
We need to ensure that provision is appropriate.
Will the new statutory duty to co-operate make it easier to find appropriate accommodation for sex offenders? Has the inclusion of local authorities as responsible authorities imposed additional duties on you?
The duty will not make it easier or harder. It formalises what we already do, and we accept that that is helpful. It will, however, make more difficult the continuing responsibilities that go with that. Having started the work, we will have to see it through, which will, as we said earlier, require on-going staffing resources and resources for information management and analysis. It seems to me that there is a gap because we are information poor in relation to things that we have talked about: the number of offenders who are in and around communities; the number of times we have had to disclose information; the number of offenders we are housing; and what types of areas they are housed in. We need to get much sharper on such matters to allow us to interrogate our systems properly and then to target resources where they are most needed.
I was going to ask how the draft national accommodation strategy for sex offenders in Scotland will affect you. I presume that you are affected by the on-going requirement, but I do not know whether there is anything in addition to that. Where do you stand, as chief housing officers, on the new community justice authorities and the management plans for reducing reoffending?
We stand shoulder to shoulder in that work. We are key partners in its organisation, planning and delivery.
Our remaining questions were answered earlier. I have one more question, though. You said that stable housing is a key part of managing sex offenders. Do you consider a park bench to be an appropriate definition of a home?
No.
Absolutely not. We need more resources for affordable housing in appropriate areas. Our rural areas are starved of affordable housing and we are simply not getting the resources to build housing. Thank you for that opportunity, convener. [Laughter.]
I did not intend to give you that opportunity. I think that there is something here that we need to fix: we have noted your comments.
Meeting continued in private until 12:58.