Chamber and committees

I thank Russell Findlay for bringing those cases to the attention of the committee.

Would you agree that the accounts that you have given seem to cross over into the area of how police officers are treated in the disciplinary process? You have outlined more than one thing. It is a cause of concern to me if it can be two years into an internal process before any allegation is made. I can understand how that would affect officers’ mental health. Is there another element to what you have outlined, which is that the internal processes of disciplinary action against police officers should not take two years?

Good morning. I welcome the minister to her post. I think that I have already welcomed the cabinet secretary.

I totally and whole-heartedly agree with your statement. In the Parliament, I have raised horrible cases in which people took their own lives because they should have been in secure accommodation, so let us be clear that this is something that I support. However, I am concerned—and I wonder whether you will address my concern—about how the Government will achieve this. Do you have a plan?

Given the very strong statement that you made, how will you create the spaces and the funding to make it happen? Will there be a stepped approach—for example, this year, will you create so many additional places? I realise that you cannot do it in one go, but the only way that your statement can have any validity is if you can tell the committee that you have a plan to reach, albeit incrementally, the number of places that you would need.

This has been a controversial issue in Parliament for some time. The cabinet secretary will be well aware of how far back the issues and sensitivities go around who gets a secure place. It is a fundamental question that needs to be addressed by Government.

I am sorry to interrupt, but I want to get a clear answer to the question whether it is a policy change that has resulted in a reduction in custodial sentences and is the reason for our having 12 vacancies. Have I understood that correctly?

But the question that I am asking is: why is that, and are you confident that that trend will continue? What I was trying to get at in my first question was whether you have planned adequately for your policy position, which I fully support. If you are saying in your evidence to the committee, “We’ve got a good starting point, because the policy is resulting in vacancies,” I just want to be clear that that is the case.

Has it been a policy impact?

But I am asking why—is that 93 per cent reduction a coincidence?

I just want to be clear about this. What you are both saying is that, with regard to the number of under-18s in young offenders institutions, there are about 12 vacancies. That has not really been the case before; indeed, I know for certain that William Lindsay or Brown did not go to secure accommodation, because there was no place for him, and he took his own life in Polmont—on remand, I have to add. I also want to ask you whether remand is included in all of this, too. Is it your position that it is the reduction—the policy change, if you like—that has resulted in the vacancies? I just want to be clear about why the vacancies exist.

Your daughter made a very astute observation. People will be divided on it, but with regard to sentencing, it begs the question of whether custody should be the first thought in such cases. I have no further questions. Thank you very much.

Good morning. Some of you said that what the bill does is a good first step, which implies that we should go beyond the age of 18. I am interested in exploring that, because I am open-minded about that, but as you might have heard earlier, I am struggling to understand how we would organise the prison estate. Kate Wallace said that we do not want to reinvent a young offenders institution.

Professor Johnstone, you are talking about children, and we have this bill because we are signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says that someone is a child up to the age of 18, but it does not cover people up to the age of 21. I understand all the research about young people up to the age of 25, which has implications for lots of policy areas. However, if we were to extend this approach for young people beyond the age of 18, how could we make it work with the current configuration of the prison estate? Would extending that approach to people up to the age of 25 mean that we were arguing for the abolition of young offenders institutions? Perhaps we could hear first from the SPS.

Yes, but they are not children. That is what I need to pinpoint: they are not children, and that is the whole basis of the bill. I do not want to sound as though I am against extending that approach beyond the age of 18, but I want clarity. We are not talking about children, so if we support a different policy, I want to be clear about that.