Chamber and committees

No. If anyone has a strong view, please wave at me or put an R in the chat function.

I am afraid that I may open a can of worms here, but I think that we need to step back and look at the bigger picture of what is happening in Scotland and the reality on the ground. The joint submission to the committee from James Chalmers, Vanessa Leverick and Fiona Munro states that

“only ... six per cent of reported rape cases result in a conviction”.

Rape Crisis Scotland’s submission notes that,

“Of those that do”

go to court,

“only 43% result in a conviction”,

which can be compared with an overall crime conviction rate of 88 per cent in Scotland. The same submission goes on to state:

“Rape and attempted rape have the lowest conviction rate of any crime type”

in the country.

We all agree that that is not acceptable—no one disagrees with that. We all know that something needs to change, and we also know that we have been saying that for a long time.

I want to hit the nail on the head a little bit more. What exactly needs to change? What do you need us to do? We are the legislators, lawmakers and policy makers. There is no point in going round in circles, talking about what a terrible world this is and why Scotland should be leading the way. I want you to tell me why we are getting it so wrong. That is perhaps a question for the Crown Office. What is going on in the system that means that the conviction rate is ridiculously low?

I also want to hear from the organisations on the front line. What do you want us to do about this?

I note that, in the prosecution service, a lot of good work takes place with victims in sensitive cases, which is to be commended. I know that you are doing everything that you can at your end to improve outcomes, but the numbers speak for themselves. That is what I am trying to get to the nub of.

We all know that the numbers are unacceptable. It sounds to me as though you are doing as much as you can and going as far as you can, so there must be a blockage somewhere in the system. What is it about cases at a technical level in the prosecution procedure that results in the low conviction rate? Is it the nature of how they are tried? Is it the inherent bias of juries? Is it our three-outcome system? Is it the difficulty in achieving decent and substantial evidence?

I am not talking about specific cases; I am talking about the generality and I ask that you comment on that, because the numbers speak for themselves. Something, somewhere, is not working—what is that something? What do we need to do to help you to increase the conviction rate?

Thank you for what has been a fascinating discussion. I am sure that some of those big-ticket issues will rumble on for many months to come. I probably should have declared an interest, in that I will be bringing forward legislation that will touch on some of those areas. The consultation on that will shortly be published through the official parliamentary process, and I invite the witnesses to take part in that consultation. The views that I have heard today will inform much of that work.

Witnesses will be aware that our next round-table evidence session is about victims’ rights and victim support. We have talked a lot about the process up until the point of conviction and what happens before that, but not much about what happens after that point. Given that you will not be in the next session, do you have any views on how the law best protects, informs, supports and includes the victims of such crimes? For example, should victims have the right to make a statement in a parole hearing for someone who has been convicted of a sexual crime or domestic violence? Should the prosecution service offer a rationale as to why a decision not to prosecute was taken in the first instance? Are exclusion zones being used enough?

Those are all big questions—we could spend all day on them—but, as we segue into the next round table, do you feel that victims of domestic abuse or violent or sexual crime are treated properly after a conviction? Those questions are directed to Rape Crisis Scotland and Scottish Women’s Aid.

That is another can of worms, which we will not open now. It is very much a live discussion. You will be aware that there is to be a statement in the chamber on the topic this afternoon. I am sure that the committee will look at the issue, and I hope to read more written submissions from you on what is and is not working in relation to community sentencing.

Thank you for clarifying that.

On the theme of the modernisation of the prison estate, that comes back to the premise of how we get prison numbers down, what type of prisons we build and how we best use public money to ensure that prisons are places that people can come out of adequately rehabilitated and suitably ready for transition back into the community, which is something that everybody wants.

Does any of the panel members have a view on that? We have some submissions on what we should do. Clearly, there is a limited amount of public money. There were announcements in the programme for government on capital spend on the prison estate, but we know that HMP Greenock and HMP Dumfries, for example, are old Victorian buildings, and it is claimed that they breach human rights by their physical nature. What do you need the Scottish Government to give you to ensure that the prison estate and the general prison environment are conducive to getting numbers down and criminals back on the straight and narrow? That is an open question for any of the panel. Perhaps you could use the chat function.

Sure. Those are important issues.

We also know that 80 per cent or more of the current backlog of court cases relates to sexual crimes or crimes of violence against women and children. I suspect that the average age of the accused may be higher than for other types of crime. We know that such crimes can come from adverse behaviour and experiences at an early age. We aim to prevent violent crime; what is being done to prevent people from going on to commit sexual crimes?

I will try to stick to that general theme, but I have some specific questions. I would like to interrogate Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons. I thank Wendy Sinclair-Gieben for her written submission, which I thought was quite stark. The first page paints a rather grim picture of Scottish prisons. It talks about overcrowding, high levels of substance abuse, mental health challenges, what is described as a

“fragile organisation with aging infrastructure”

and critical inspections. Given what we now know about the endemic problem of drug and substance abuse in Scottish prisons, have we simply got it wrong in Scotland? We have high remand rates and one of the highest incarceration rates in northern Europe, and Scottish prisons seem to be a revolving door of drugs, reoffending and poor mental health outcomes. What are we getting so wrong?

Thank you, convener. I have a supplementary on the line of questioning on parole. I indicated that I also have a question on alternatives to custody, because we have not really discussed that issue today, but I am happy to keep that for later, if we have time.

The number of people involved in the victim notification scheme is dropping year on year. At the moment, it is an opt-in service. I vividly remember from reading the Parole Board for Scotland’s submission that the word “victim” was not used once. Is that not the root of the problem? The entire submission is centred around how we make parole better for those involved in the hearings—in other words, those in prison. None of the submissions says how we can proactively improve the victim notification scheme, so that we tell people who have been affected by serious crimes that those who perpetrated them are back out on the street, in order that they do not bump into them in the queue at the supermarket.