Chamber and committees

We engage regularly with victim support organisations, which will be an integral part of this journey as we move forward to establish the victim contact team.

We would have those discussions—and that was a hypothetical question. I would hope that we would all be moving forward together and that I would be working with the victim support organisations.

Yes. I would envisage that, as well as having the victim contact team, the family would also be signposted to organisations that might be able to give support in future if that is needed.

At the moment, the VNS is formed of three schemes.

The victims of offenders who have been sentenced to more than 18 months of imprisonment have the right to receive information about the release of the offender, and some of those victims have the right to make recommendations when decisions are being made about release. That is referred to as the criminal justice VNS. As of 2 December, there are 3,057 victims on that VNS.

The second scheme involves victims of patients in the forensic mental health system who are subject to a compulsion order and restriction order. Those victims are similarly entitled to rights of information and the making of recommendations. That scheme is referred to as the CORO VNS. As of 2 December, 34 victims are registered on that.

Victims of offenders who are sentenced to fewer than 18 months are entitled, on request, to more limited information about the offender’s release. That is known as the victim information scheme—the VIS. Currently, 58 people are registered on that scheme.

A lot of organisations are involved in the VNS. It is complex, so I will give you some background: the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service plays a role at the start of the process by distributing registration packs to victims; the Scottish Prison Service sends written information to victims; the Parole Board for Scotland and the Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland facilitate victim representations; and the Scottish Government sends written information to victims of mentally disordered offenders and also provides release information to the registered victims of offenders detained in secure accommodation. In addition, victim support organisations provide support and assistance to victims registered on the VNS and to victims who can request information under the VIS. Some victim support organisations also now have proxy rights to information.

I hope that that gives you some background in relation to all the organisations that are involved and with which the victim contact team will need to engage.

To go back to your original question, as we move to stage 2, we are not only considering underpinning the victim contact team. We are looking at including the CORO VNS in the standards of service, as set out in recommendation 2 of the review. We are looking at applying discretion to the list of relatives eligible to register for the scheme, as set out in recommendation 11, with that discretion applying across the three schemes. We are looking at children over the age of 12 being able to authorise an adult to receive information on their behalf, which would be done on a case-by-case basis, according to the child’s capacity and choice, as set out in recommendation 14, and that would also apply to all three schemes. We are looking at taking a power to expand the information available under the victim information scheme, as set out in recommendation 15. The power to amend the VIS would bring that scheme more generally into line with what is happening with the VNS. We are also looking at data sharing and a duty to co-operate in order to establish the victim contact team, which covers recommendations 17, 20 and 21 and would apply across all schemes.

We do not have a timescale for that at the moment, because we are still engaging with all the organisations that are involved. It is a work in progress.

Would you like me to set out what the recommendations on the victim contact team were and what it should ultimately look like, even though I do not have a timescale at the moment?

I cannot speak to a timescale at the moment. Obviously, we want to do this at pace—that is why we will be lodging these amendments at stage 2 and, indeed, why we are using this bill as the vehicle to try to get things in place within this parliamentary session. If we waited and tried to do this through another bill, it would not happen in this session. We are keen to do this at pace and to expedite things, but the date on which the scheme will be reformed will depend on the passage of the bill and how things end up at the end of the process. That said, we are keen to make progress.

Absolutely. The review recommendations will not be in place by the time of the second emergency release. With the first early release, I do not believe that victims were an afterthought. I know that victims were at the forefront of the cabinet secretary’s mind when she took through the emergency release legislation, as well as the issue of how we could increase uptake of the VNS, which we know has been a challenge. That is why we need the reform. At that stage, she opened up the process so that the victim support organisations and the Scottish Prison Service could be contacted.

We would encourage anybody to get in touch and get on the victim notification scheme now. That can be done. The victim notification scheme is still set up and people can still apply for it. The reform that we are discussing will not be online by the time of the next early release.

To go back to what you said about victim support, we do not want anyone to reoffend, but the return to custody rate for those who were released under the early release scheme was substantially lower than the average reconviction rate for prisoners who have served a sentence of four years or less. The most recent statistic was on the 2020-21 cohort. That was during Covid, when 40.6 per cent were returned to custody, but, last time, that was not the case.

At the moment, there are discussions regarding how the victim contact team will be set up—and I will bring in Lucy Smith on this. The team is at the very early stages. I do not know whether it would be helpful to go through the recommendations in the report and what the victim contact team could look like.

I will bring in Lucy Smith on that.

Absolutely. If an improvement needs to be made, we want to make it, which is why we are reforming the scheme.