Criminal Justice Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Official Report 675KB pdf

---

Reducing Youth Offending, Offering Community Justice Solutions and Alternatives to Custody

Our next item is a round-table discussion on reducing youth offending, offering community justice solutions and alternatives to custody. I refer members to papers 5 and 6. We will take evidence in a round-table format from witnesses who join us remotely. I am sorry that you cannot join us in person due to the current rules on social distancing.

I warmly welcome our panel of witnesses: Fiona Dyer, who is the interim director of the Children’s and Young People’s Centre for Justice; Gemma Fraser, who is a senior reporting officer for recovery, renewal and transform at Community Justice Scotland; Ashley Cameron, who is a member of The Promise Scotland oversight board and who worked on the independent care review; Superintendent Colin Convery, who is from Police Scotland’s partnerships, prevention and community wellbeing team; Diane Dobbie, who is on Social Work Scotland’s justice standing committee; Professor Lesley McAra, who is from the University of Edinburgh; Dr Hannah Graham, who is a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Stirling; and Niven Rennie, who is the director of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit. We very much appreciate your time in joining us this morning. I thank the witnesses who have provided written submissions, which are now available online.

I intend to allow about an hour or so for questions and discussion. If witnesses wish to respond to a question, I ask that you request to speak by typing an R in the BlueJeans chat function. I will bring you in if time permits. If you merely agree with what another witness is saying, there is no need to intervene to say so. Comments that you make in the chat function will not be visible to committee members and will not be recorded anywhere, so, if you would like to make a comment, please do so by requesting to speak.

We will move directly to questions. As ever, I ask members and our invited guests to keep questions and comments as succinct as you can. I am keen to encourage as free flowing a discussion as possible.

I will start with a question for Gemma Fraser from Community Justice Scotland. I would then like to bring in Fiona Dyer, if I may. This morning, the Scottish Sentencing Council published a new proposed guideline on the sentencing of young people. If it is approved, the guideline will apply to the sentencing of all young people under the age of 25 and will require the courts to consider rehabilitation issues and the availability of a range of non-custodial options. I appreciate that members and witnesses might not have had a great deal of time to consider the guideline, but I am interested in whether our representative from Community Justice Scotland, in the first instance, welcomes the report. What difference, if any, would the guideline make?

We happily welcome what has been proposed, both for use by Community Justice Scotland and for wider community justice delivery.

For a long time, we have put forward the case that individuals are exactly that. They are individual and bring their own offending experience to the table as a product of that. If that could be considered in the sentencing of young people—or people across the adult population—it would be of huge benefit. It would provide support through the ability to access the correct services in the system at the correct time.

The more community that we can put into justice, the better. We already understand that networks, relationships and connections truly change lives. That is as true for young people—more so, probably—as it is for others. If the guideline results in more individuals with community orders and in more access to education and early support, that would be hugely welcome.

12:00  

Thank you very much. Ms Dyer, do you have any comments to make?

I echo what Gemma Fraser has said. We welcome the proposals, especially in relation to remittal to the children’s hearings system. Currently, an average of only 7 or 8 per cent of children who appear in adult courts are remitted to the children’s hearings system, in which, as members will know, children can participate and have their needs taken into account. We especially welcome that move.

Moreover, we feel that young people’s needs must be recognised up to the age of 25. We have seen the evidence on brain development and know the complexities faced by many young people in our justice system. Issues such as language and communication needs, brain development and injury and the trauma in young people’s lives need to be taken into account, and the decision to do so when sentences are handed down is definitely welcome.

I have a follow-up question for Ms Fraser and Ms Dyer. How can the important principle of judicial independence be implemented throughout Scotland instead of only in a few areas or sheriffdoms? As we have seen from Audit Scotland’s work, sentencing data show some geographical variation in the use of community sentences. For example, in 2019-20, the number of community payback orders per 10,000 of the population ranged from 16 in East Renfrewshire to 69 in Clackmannanshire. Do you have any comments on or response to that?

As far as geographical variation is concerned, it is important to note that areas do not experience the same types of crime and offending and therefore do not need to employ the same responses. We should put those figures in the context of the number of individuals who are in custody; who are diverted, thus getting earlier access to the system; or who could be brought closer to the system.

Judicial impartiality is hugely important in Scotland and should be preserved, because it supports a system that is hugely admired across the world. However, ensuring that not just the judiciary but the public have confidence in what is being delivered in our communities will require our effective communication of what underpins community justice. If we are to ensure that such things come through and are not used for only a small subset of individuals, we will have to keep lines of communication open with not only our community justice deliverers but the individuals who experience community sentences, so that we hear the benefits that they get from them. That would go a long way towards helping such things get promoted and put into place at the right times, and we in Community Justice Scotland are supporting an information project to achieve that. The question, though, is how we influence the Crown Office, defence agents and other individuals in their decision making and their thinking about what might be suitable for individuals who receive such sentences.

Thank you very much. I will bring in Ms Dyer, after which I will ask Hannah Graham to respond.

Again, I agree with Gemma Fraser. There are differences in decision making, as we have seen in some of our research at the Children’s and Young People’s Centre for Justice on bail and remand, supervised bail, what sentencers believe is appropriate and the number of chances some young people might or might not get. I hope that the sentencing guidelines will be supported by training and that there are other guidelines for the judiciary to ensure that there is some consistency in decision making. That is also important.

I will bring in Ms Graham at this point and then Professor McAra. I am trying to keep things moving smoothly.

In today’s round-table session, I am expressing views as a criminologist who works in academia, so I am not officially speaking for the Scottish Sentencing Council, but I declare an interest in that I hold a public appointment as a member of the Scottish Sentencing Council.

Many of the points that I wanted to raise have already been raised by witnesses in the earlier round-table session and in this session. The council’s development of the guideline on sentencing for young people has been informed by a range of evidence: research has been commissioned and there has been public and judicial consultation. Therefore, the experience and expertise of not only organisations and people with lived experiences—such as those represented today—but a much wider range of groups, bodies, academics and members of the public have contributed towards that consultation.

Gemma Fraser summarised some of the key issues and opportunities quite well. I will add some points to what has already been said. The guideline has been drafted quite carefully not to limit judicial discretion but to guide the determination of an appropriate sentence. It requires sentencers to consider the purpose of rehabilitation in sentencing young people, but it does not preclude consideration by the judiciary of other sentencing purposes, such as public protection or punishment, if they are relevant.

If it is approved by the High Court, the guideline will apply to approximately 14,000 cases involving young people per year, and there is potential for an increase in community sentencing—particularly for the 21 to 24-year-old age group—and for more review hearings in courts. For example, if the judiciary impose a community payback order, in order to encourage and monitor compliance, the young person might be brought back before the court, with input from justice social work and relevant others, to consider how they are complying with that order, which could last a short time or for anything up to three years. Therefore, the guideline encourages more rehabilitative outcomes, in the hope of reducing reoffending, which we hope will result in fewer victims in future.

Victims groups and their representatives have also been part of the consultation, the engagement and the research that the council commissioned. It has been a large undertaking and, if people would like to learn more, there is a lot of information on our website, and an impact assessment will be released after the High Court consideration.

Professor McAra, would you like to come in?

Thank you, convener, and thank you for inviting me to give evidence today.

Most of my evidence will be based on the findings from our longitudinal study, “The Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime”, which Susan McVie and I have been running for the past 23 years. We have followed the same people since the age of 12. They are now aged 35, so we are getting results from phase 8 of our study. Some of the things that I will say relate to the longer-term information about people’s journeys through life up to that age.

In 1982, my first job was in the Scottish Office as a researcher, evaluating the implementation of ring-fenced funding for community justice and social work criminal justice services. At that time, the ambition was that those services would reduce short-term imprisonment. On some levels, the policy was successful, but it was not successful in reducing the prison population. The principal reason for that was that sheriffs and judges continued to give short-term sentences, because they felt that they had no alternative and did not feel tremendously confident in community disposals.

I absolutely welcome the Scottish Sentencing Council’s recommendations and guidelines, but the proof of the pudding will be whether they are absorbed and followed by the people who are able to sentence. When we want to transform the prison population and what happens to people in Scotland, it is really important to think about what the judiciary are doing. We must always accept that we have to have an independent judiciary and that they are the gatekeepers to the criminal justice system, in relation to disposals in the community or in prisons.

As has been drawn to the committee’s attention, there is now compelling neuroscience research on brain development and neurodevelopment that looks at how children mature and at how the brain matures up to the age of 24. Given those biological considerations, rehabilitation seems to be the most just approach to dealing with young people who come into conflict with the law. However, there are other contexts to young people’s lives that mean that the court setting is simply not appropriate for 16 and 17-year-olds.

Ten years ago, I gave evidence to a previous justice committee about trying to extend the system, so that a different venue is used to deal with children who come into conflict with the law at 16 or 17. That is still needed. Although the children’s hearings system can, technically, deal with 16 and 17-year-olds, it very rarely does, so some of the most vulnerable transition into the adult system and get up-tariffed very quickly. That is shown by our study. The longer-term outcomes for those children are very poor. The conundrum of how we manage older children in justice systems has yet to be solved by the Scottish system.

Thank you, Professor McAra. That was very helpful.

Fulton MacGregor has a couple of questions about violence reduction before we move on to questions about alternatives to custody.

I have a general question about Scotland’s approach to youth offending. The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit has done some fantastic work. What can we learn from the work of that team in our approach to youth offending? Many positive things are happening—people would expect me to say that given that I used to work in the sector. What can we learn from the Violence Reduction Unit’s public health approach and message in our other work? I will start with Niven Rennie.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. There are a lot of things involved in that question. First, by taking a public health approach, we recognise that the answer to our problems does not lie with justice and the police alone—we all have to play a part. Many people start their journey into criminality and violence pre-birth. We know from work that we have done on adverse childhood experiences and the impact that growing up—[Inaudible.]

I totally agree that interventions need to be made earlier. We need to try to keep people out of prison. We have shown that people who have a history of offending can turn their lives around in a couple of years and help to take other people out of a criminal justice journey—there are people like that who work for me. There is so much that I could talk about, but it would take up the rest of the meeting. I hope that that touches on some of the issues.

That is a very helpful overview. Superintendent Convery, do you want to come in on that and expand on the point that Niven Rennie made? How important is it that we take into account all the different factors, including child welfare, when dealing with youth offending? You probably heard Bruce Adamson in the previous session talking about taking a human rights approach.

We absolutely support Niven Rennie’s comments about taking a trauma-based approach. We believe in that as an organisation, and we are working towards that. That runs through all the legislation that is being delivered or developed to support youth justice, ranging from UNCRC incorporation to the promise of a division for youth justice strategy, addressing the age of criminal responsibility and so on. There are lots of moving parts and we have a fantastic opportunity to try to pull things together.

Looking at the wider picture and taking a public health approach is the right way to support our young people. I am aware of the Scottish Sentencing Council’s announcement this morning, which is about trying to underpin and fix the challenges that young people are facing. We absolutely support that approach in order to try to prevent offending in the first place. The fact that the guidance extends to young people up to the age of 25 recognises the trauma-based aspect of the issue.

We would advocate the use of lived experience, so that service users’ perspectives and views are listened to, engaged with and understood. Niven Rennie has done a lot of work on that. That is clearly about witnesses, too. Another challenge that we face is balancing justice and welfare and how we meet and manage community expectations to try to deliver and maintain confidence.

There is a lot going on. I absolutely agree that the UNCRC offers huge opportunities. As an organisation, we are fully committed to a rights-based approach. I would like to think that that is the direction that we would take as an entity, and I am sure that we will all work collectively towards that.

12:15  

Superintendent Convery makes an important point. Some of the young people who display the most challenging behaviour in our communities, which affects those communities badly, are also some of our most traumatised young people. How important is it to find a balance there, and how can we get that right? How do we ensure that we put welfare, and a human rights approach to our children, at the centre of our system? Perhaps I can bring in Diane Dobbie on that.

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to that question. Young people who are in conflict with the law have unmet needs. Social Work Scotland acknowledges the research on brain development that shows that children’s and young people’s brains are not fully developed until they reach 25 years old. Many young people who are either on the edges of the justice system or involved with justice services have experienced some level of trauma or adversity, but they are all individuals. The whole-system approach that was introduced in 2011 has already demonstrated some good outcomes for some young people. However, the challenge relates to some of our older young people, and the need to ensure that they get the right help at the right time and that any response is proportionate, trauma informed and child centred.

Young people do not fare well in the adult justice system, so it is important that, where possible, they are kept out of adult justice services through early and effective intervention in the first instance. In addition, they should be diverted from custody and remitted to a hearing to ensure that they get multi-agency support and that a child-centred approach is taken to create a plan that responds to their needs. We should also take a child-centred approach to those young people who pose a significant or imminent risk of harm. We should not put them in custody—where possible, we should use secure care, although there are some legal barriers to its use, as some of the written evidence to the committee has acknowledged.

The research shows that young people who are over 18 are still not fully developed or fully mature. It is often a challenge to get those young people to comply with community payback orders because, at times, their maturity means that they are testing boundaries, raising challenges and taking risks. We need a multi-agency approach to those young people that is flexible and supportive.

An intervention that has worked well is the structured deferred sentencing approach for young people who have been convicted of an offence but have not yet been sentenced. There is a level of flexibility in that—young people can have their progress monitored regularly by review courts. There is some evidence that such a flexible response has resulted in positive outcomes for some young people, who have gained a greater sense of citizenship through that intensive support.

I am happy with that response to my general question. I have another question to put later on, but three witnesses still want to come in on this subject; I defer to you on that, convener.

I will bring in Professor McAra, followed by Fiona Dyer, to pick up on that topic.

One of the things that we in Scotland should celebrate is the major reduction in the number of young people aged 16 and 17 who are in custody. It would be good to get that figure down to zero, but it is much better than it was. There has been a huge reduction since the introduction of the whole-system approach. There has also been a reduction in criminal convictions for 16 and 17-year-olds. There is a strong set of downward trends in the criminal justice statistics that indicate, to some degree, that diversionary approaches are working. That is very pleasing to me, because our Edinburgh study was one of the pieces of evidence that was drawn on to give the Government confidence that diversion worked and could be used. We can see that, on some levels, it is working.

However, those figures disguise the fact that although the system is dealing with a smaller number of young people, as everyone in this meeting will recognise, those young people are much more intensely vulnerable. It is an intensely vulnerable group—those who end up in Polmont are absolutely the most challenging young people, who are suffering from extremely difficult circumstances.

Our study follows the trajectory of young people up to the age of 35. We have been able to do what is called trajectory modelling, in which we look at different patterns of offending. One group in our cohort contains young people—not very many—who are at a chronic level of self-reported offending, and are intensely involved in it. Those young people—as with many of those who become persistent offenders, whether it involves serious or less serious offending—come from the poorest backgrounds. The young people in our cohort who are still picking up criminal convictions—they are a very small proportion—are intensely poor and come from extremely difficult backgrounds.

In the justice system, poverty is often the elephant in the room. Poverty underpins the lives of so many of the young people who get caught up in the justice system, and we never deal with the problem holistically. We look at it not in the round, but in terms of individual families, housing or jobs. We never consider the ways in which those issues are intersectional. It is poverty that leads to chronic patterns of offending.

Poverty is very strongly predictive of chronic patterns of offending, and it also prevents people from stopping their offending. Most people desist from offending in their early 20s. With the small group of people who continue to offend into their 30s, we see that they are trapped by poverty, poor skills, poor education and having been excluded from school early, and they cannot break free. Until we start thinking about rehabilitation and youth justice in a broader, holistic context, we will continue to see those highly vulnerable young people coming through the system. They are very difficult to help and support, because the context in which they live traps them and does not allow them to move on.

There are fewer such children in the system now, which is great. However, given the difficulties that they face, their needs—especially for those up to the age of 18—are best met in the children’s hearings system.

We need to examine our legislation. There are so many contradictions in Scottish legislation about who is a child and where their needs can be best met, which is why we have so many children in the adult courts system. Ultimately, if we are to be UNCRC compliant, children—those up to the age of 18—should not appear in any adult court. At present, if a child who is 16 or 17 is not open to a children’s hearing or is on compulsory supervision, and their needs have to be met in a secure environment, they cannot be sent to secure care and must go to a young offenders institution instead, because, under the legislation, they are deemed to be an adult.

As I already said, low numbers of young people are remitted to the children’s hearings system. Scotland needs a system that treats all children as such, and the children’s hearings system must have the support to be able to deal with all children up to the age of 18.

The Sentencing Council’s new guidelines are fitting for those aged from 18 to 25 and would take their additional needs into account. Until the legislative changes are made, however, children over the age of 12 in Scotland will still appear in adult courts. We must change that.

If there are no more questions on that topic, I am keen to move on to alternatives to custody and diversion from prosecution, before we go on to community sentencing.

Professor Lesley McAra and other witnesses have talked about the reasons why that should happen, and why it may not be happening, and I agree with them. We have also talked about the provision of secure care; I would like to explore secure care in general as an alternative to incarceration in prisons or in young offenders institutions. The witnesses will probably have heard Bruce Adamson’s powerful evidence in the round-table session earlier. He said that children should never be in prison—I agree with that, and I suspect that others do too.

The submissions from Fiona Dyer and Ashley Cameron express great concern about that, and point out that those settings are not appropriate for children. They certainly do not reflect the recommendations in “The Promise” report or the whole-system approach, nor do they fit in with the getting it right for every child agenda. We know that there can often be tragic outcomes for children in those settings.

Ashley Cameron, you made a powerful submission. Secure care can offer a holistic setting with trauma-informed care and can provide training for young people. What are your thoughts on that? Fiona Dyer and Diane Dobbie have both said that there are legislative barriers to the use of secure care. I would like to tease that out a wee bit.

The Promise Scotland and, more formally, the Independent Care Review have issues with secure care because, as you rightly said, it sometimes has tragic consequences and can lead to the further criminalisation of young people. There are issues with the kind of secure care that we are talking about. We may define it in law as a secure place for those young people to be as they are rehabilitated, but young people’s experience of secure care is very different. Their privileges are completely taken away from them; many care-experienced young people told the care review that secure care feels just like prison. If that is what we are doing to our young people, we are doing it very wrong.

There are further issues regarding secure care, such as cross-border placements, which have come up time and again in the Scottish Parliament. Young children are moved from England to secure care places in Scotland, which further reduces the number of placements that we have available for kids who are from, or living in, Scotland.

Young people in secure care are often criminalised and stigmatised—that is prevalent. We in Scotland should not take great pride in locking up our kids, even if it is in a secure care placement. Many care-experienced young people who are placed in secure care feel as if their voices have been totally shut down. They are told what to do and when to do it, and that is that: there is no conversation.

I have heard of some tragic experiences among young people who have been in secure care. That has furthered their existing trauma and led to complete mental health breakdown and the complete breakdown of their relationships with family and community. There is no chance of rehabilitation for some of those young people, because they are now adults and are deeper into the criminal justice system. It is a complex issue, but The Promise Scotland remains firm that we should not be locking up our children and young people.

12:30  

I put it on record that the secure care home in my constituency is excellent. It has trauma-informed care and offers qualifications to young people so that they can go on to positive destinations. I have visited it many times, and the experience that I have had and that I hear that the young people have is very good.

The problem of the lack of uniformity across Scotland in relation to secure care homes has been highlighted. It is great that there are good ones for young people, as there should be, and that some offer holistic care, but that is not commonplace or uniform. I am aware of the cross-border issue that has been mentioned. That is a result of the funding mechanism for secure care homes, which seems to be inappropriate and inadequate. Again, there is no uniformity—secure care homes have to bid for money and some get more than others, which just does not work. We need to look at that issue as a whole.

The secure care home that I have visited is excellent. I agree that the last resort should be to deprive children of their freedom but, as an alternative to prison and young offenders institutions, secure care homes have a place.

I will respond to that. I am not saying that every secure care placement in Scotland is absolutely tragic, but those are the experiences that I have heard throughout my time campaigning in the care sector. There are good placements and currently secure care is one of the only alternatives to a custodial sentence. I did not make it clear that we are sorely lacking the mental health support that is needed to help children and young people to understand, accept and move on from the trauma. The funding for mental health provision, especially for young people, is not enough. If we are to prevent further criminalisation of the care-experienced community, we need to get in there early doors to ensure that they can understand their journey and move on from their trauma.

Thank you—I agree with that.

I totally agree. We do not want to lock up any children but, unfortunately, some children need that form of security, to protect themselves and others. In Scotland, our secure estate is a better place than a young offenders institution and, as you say, some good work is happening.

A lot of work has recently been done on the secure care pathway standards that were co-produced with young people with secure care experience. Those were introduced earlier this year to try to bring some consistency and improvement to the journey into and out of secure care. As Ashley Cameron said, that involved listening to children who have been in secure care and learning from them.

Children who have complex needs and who have experienced a lot of trauma in their lives need support, and secure care homes need resources. Secure care is a form of care, not a form of punishment. Those facilities have care staff, social workers and mental health staff who work in small units within the larger secure environment to try their best for children who have had real trauma and adversity in their lives. That will not be a quick fix, but it is definitely a better environment for them than a young offenders institution.

Will you comment briefly on the legislative barrier that you mentioned?

If someone is in court, they need to be classed as a child in order to be remanded or given a sentence in secure care. They need to be under the age of 16, or a 16 or 17-year-old on compulsory supervision through the children’s hearings system. Otherwise, the sheriff is unable to make that placement and remand or sentence a young person in that way. Even if an assessment has shown that a young person’s needs would be better met in secure care, a sheriff or judge would have no option but to use a YOI.

That is helpful.

We have been covering elements of custody and secure care. Collette Stevenson is keen to ask questions about alternatives to custody.

On the question of options for young people other than putting them into custody, I want to explore two elements. What stands out for me, as it did in the previous session, is the issue of alternatives to custodial sentences and the need to protect our communities. Having spoken to somebody who has gone through open prison, I know that they were able to engage with the Prince’s Trust, go out to work and play football. Should we have more of that?

I also want to ask about structured sentencing. How effective is that, and how could social work play a bigger part in it? I have worked in outdoor education, and what stands out for me is the empirical research in that regard, in particular around youth offending and people who are at risk or who are going into the criminal justice system for the first time.

Another initiative that stands out, which could work really well, is campus cops. I do not know whether any of you can come back on that. Campus cops came into a big school—probably one of the biggest schools—in South Lanarkshire, and they were able to gauge whether there was an element of offending coming through. How effective would that approach be?

I am throwing quite a lot at you, but I am keen to hear your thoughts, and to hear about what evidence exists in those areas.

Perhaps Mr Rennie can pick up those questions.

I will pick up some of them, in particular the points around outdoor activity and campus cops. We regularly encounter young people caught up in the system who have never had any positive role models in their lives. Through the provision of experiences outwith the justice setting—for example, in the countryside or at sporting events, or through contact with campus cops—young people are gaining not only experience but a positive influence in their life. In my opinion, that is the role of campus cops. They are there not only to support the teachers and to be in school when problems arise but to form positive relationships with the young people. We cannot get enough of that.

Some of the young people whom we recently took to an outdoor activity had never previously been outwith the estate on which they live in their whole lives. There is a need to give people alternatives.

Before I pass the questions over to the other witnesses, I emphasise that the system is currently focused on activity after the fact. We need to focus on prevention—we need to stop people coming into the system. That should be our sole focus. I could not agree more with what Professor Lesley McAra said earlier about poverty. Just now, we tackle each of the issues that we face in isolation. If we were to tackle poverty, that would be a great step forward.

I will bring in Superintendent Convery on the back of Mr Rennie’s response, if he would like to pick up on some of those points.

In our experience of deployment, campus officers are invaluable, because of all the benefits that Niven Rennie laid out. Essentially, they provide positive role models and support, and offer an alternative route for policing.

One of the big benefits that we see from that is the ability to identify the underlying factors, and the pattern of behaviour, that may lead to a young person becoming involved with the justice system. The campus officers are uniquely skilled, and they are placed where they can support teaching staff and other colleagues across the sector to help to identify the issues and step in at an early stage with the right intervention before someone even gets to offending in the first place.

Perhaps Gemma Fraser would like to come in with a couple of brief comments.

I completely agree with Niven Rennie in highlighting the need for prevention at the earliest stage. However, in answering the question that was asked, it is important to remember that prevention is about preventing not only the first, but the 41st, offence. We need to think about how we use the community, as well as the criminal justice system and its set of options such as diversionary activity, community payback orders and custody, as an opportunity to continue that support and help young people to achieve their potential.

As the Scottish Sentencing Council highlighted in its report “Sentencing young people”, it is young people who experience the greatest capacity for change. We need to think about how we use all those elements and what we can do better, or differently, with regard to what young people need and want to achieve, which is no different from the needs and wants of young people outside the system.

In that way, we can ensure that, wherever possible, we do not use justice services in the delivery of that support. Instead, we should connect young people to universal services in their communities, through existing community planning networks and landscapes. Through that approach, we can ensure that they have a trajectory that does not otherise them, or continue their otherisation, in justice, but instead places them firmly in a community that welcomes them back and integrates them, and supports rehabilitation on a different level.

This is obviously a topical discussion. I see that Diane Dobbie would like to come in, and we will then finish off the discussion with some comments from Professor McAra.

I will try to be a bit more concise in my response this time. I want to elaborate a little on structured deferred sentencing. In the Lanarkshires, a pilot was undertaken—it was evaluated by the University of the West of Scotland and Community Justice Scotland—to try to reduce the criminalisation of young people under the age of 21. It was applied to young people who had complex needs, and introduced a partnership approach between the court, Action for Children—[Inaudible.]—and our colleagues in housing services.

The scheme involved doing an expedited assessment, getting support for the young person and fully following their journey after leaving court. It focused on links to poverty—for example, it connected young people with a bus pass, and ensured that they were registered with a general practitioner and had stable housing. At other times, it involved supporting them in their relationships with family, and supporting them to appear in court when they had to do so.

At the end of the pilot, the majority of young people—over 80 per cent—had ended up being admonished at the end of their order. Of course, as much as that was a great result, we ultimately do not want young people to be in the justice system at all. However, there were really positive outcomes from the structured deferred sentencing. The bit that worked was the relationship—it took time to build relationships, and that was pretty intensive work, so it required a lot of resource, but it was a particularly good return on the investment for those young people.

One of the other measures in the scheme, which links with Collette Stevenson’s question, related to the other support that was available. Many of the young people moved along the employability pipeline so they were more ready for work; some of them ended up in college placements and so on. Overall, the outcomes of that one study were really positive—the programme was a positive alternative to custody that was tailored to meet the needs of young people.

12:45  

I am conscious of the time. Let us focus briefly on secure care again. Pauline McNeill has a question on that. I will then move on to community sentencing, when I will bring in Jamie Greene.

I will make it quick. To be honest, I am not sure who is best placed to answer this, but I hope that the witnesses can help me.

We have heard a lot of important stuff, including from Ashley Cameron, about secure care, which probably needs to be reviewed and so on. I know that we are going to come on to discuss deaths in custody, but I want to highlight the case of William Lindsay—also known as William Brown—although I am sure that there are others. He was a 16-year-old who should have been referred to secure care and not to a prison—everyone involved in the case was clear about that. However, my understanding is that secure care was not available.

Has anything happened since that case? I know that there have been other cases to deal with—there seems to be a lack of secure care. I believe that we are only mandated to a maximum of 70 or 80 per cent, leaving the remainder for English placements. I do not understand why we have done that, so can anyone help me understand it? Does anyone have any answers as to whether we have actually acted since that case? To me, it is a death that could have been avoided.

The case of William was really tragic, and I believe that it was through a lack of beds. One of your colleagues referred to the issue of funding in secure care. The providers are charities, and they need to generate their own income in relation to the number of young people that they have. I believe that all the units have emergency beds, but 50 per cent of our secure-care beds currently have young people from outwith Scotland—I believe that that was the figure as of yesterday. That is just due to the funding. One positive is that we do not need a lot of beds in Scotland, because we manage a lot of young people in communities and in different ways.

That case was tragic, and it should not have happened. We need to examine the funding model and consider how we can always have beds available. There have been discussions on the issue, but they are still progressing, and I am sure that they will take time. However, that does not mean that what happened to William will not happen again.

Ms McNeill has touched on the issue of deaths in custody. I have a follow-up question, which should perhaps be directed to Hannah Graham. Do you have any concerns about deaths in custody or deaths following custody? That could involve delays in fatal accident inquiries, a lack of findings of concern or a lack of support following release. Is there anything that you would like to pick up on in that respect?

My written submission and that of my colleagues at the University of Glasgow for an earlier round-table discussion on prisons both cover deaths—deaths on community sentences, in my case, and deaths in custody and following release, in the case of my University of Glasgow colleagues. The reason we have highlighted that analysis—in some cases, our figures, which are newly in the public domain, have not been highlighted in that way before—is that we are very concerned. We can speak for years, we can have commissions for years and we can have reviews for years about the problems of imprisonment or the use of custody, or we can speak about wanting alternatives to custody and community sentences.

In my written submission, the analysis shows some quite serious considerations. In community sentences of one type, over a seven-year period, 1,178 community payback orders were listed as finished because of a death. My colleagues’ submission also talks about substantive concerns around deaths in custody. What both submissions have in common is our concerns about, in particular, suicide and drug-related deaths, as well as all other deaths. When we raise such a sensitive topic, we must do so not only with compassion and dignity but with the passion and fire that it deserves. We need to pay attention. In her written evidence, the chief inspector of prisons has recommended that there needs to be a review into deaths in custody and following release, which could include parole and non-parole licences.

The figures that I have presented on the people who are dying while serving community payback orders could probably be summarised in four or five words: young, mostly unemployed, criminalised and dead. That should spark an interest, because criminologists, human rights advocates, healthcare workers and social workers have been trying to draw attention to what happens when earlier needs—such as those relating to mental health care, substance use and physical healthcare—are not met and earlier inequalities and disparities are not addressed. Unfortunately, we have substantive concerns around what happens, and that includes the deaths of young people in custody as well as the deaths of young people on community payback orders.

In 2019-20, 61.3 per cent of the people who died while serving community payback orders were aged between 16 and 40 years old, and that is not an age at which we typically expect people to die, so there are bereaved families. The media will pay attention to the deaths in custody, which is wholly understandable given the gravity of what has happened under the care of the state, and because they have access to fatal accident inquiries afterwards, if the Lord Advocate and Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service decide to hold them. We have far less data on people on community sentences who are dying, and there is underreporting of the deaths as serious incidents to the Care Inspectorate. We have worrying concerns not only for community payback orders but for eight or nine types of orders or licences in the community, and that area has not had as much attention or understanding as it could have had.

The resources and relationships are needed much earlier in the system and process, so that we can learn, because it is very hard to hold anyone to account if we do not count the deaths of those on community sentences. The Scottish Prison Service has a statutory duty to report, on its website, data on the deaths of those in prison custody; my colleagues at the University of Glasgow have provided an analysis of that data and they will release more on that in the weeks to come. Underreporting is a big issue, which is concerning. Because of the criteria, the Care Inspectorate is notified only of a fraction of deaths of those on community orders or licences, but it says that the majority of the deaths that it has been notified of are drug deaths or suicide related.

Thank you for that, Dr Graham. I very much appreciate your passion and insight. Because of the pressure of time, we will move on to looking at community sentencing.

I thank the academics, who have put in great work on the important issue of deaths in custody, which has, rightly, been highlighted in today’s media. Dr Graham has done excellent work on an area that was perhaps previously unreported, as has the University of Glasgow on FAIs. It is worrying that nine in 10 of the FAIs that were analysed by those academics were found to have produced no recommendations at all on things that can change. The mother of one girl who died in a young offenders institution was widely quoted as saying that the FAI system was broken. We have heard that time and time again. That may be an observation rather than a question.

We could spend all day talking about community sentencing. I want to ask about prevention. There may be a perception that Scotland does not suffer from the same level of youth gang violence as other parts of the UK or the world. However, we know from the number of inmates who are involved in serious organised crime that that is an issue. What work is being done—or not done—to ensure that people are not sucked into serious organised crime at a young age? We want to prevent them from falling into the trap of ending up in prison as high-tariff, high-profile offenders. The main thrust of my question may be crime prevention.

By virtue of my post as the director of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, I chair a UK-wide body called the hope collective, which includes 17 violence reduction units and a number of other organisations. That body has the aim that Mr Greene asked about. The key way to prevent people from becoming involved in serious organised crime or criminality is to give them hope, aspiration and opportunity. People need alternatives—it does not matter whether you are in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow or Aberdeen.

That goes back to some of the other issues that we have touched on. People who are brought up in poverty lack opportunity. Harry Burns, the former chief medical officer, calls it a sense of hopelessness. If we leave people with no choice, someone else will fill the gap, and the people who tend to fill it are the ones offering a quick buck or the opportunity to wear Gucci trainers or drive a fast car. They tend to be serious organised criminals.

The answer to our problems comes back to one issue: tackling inequality in our towns and cities.

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?

There is a lot of work. We have a project working with young people that looks at harmful sexual behaviour in schools, and a mentors in violence prevention programme delivered by Education Scotland is also doing that kind of work. However, a lot more could be done. The academics might be better placed to answer that question.

Mr Greene’s first question was about support for young people who are exposed to, or who are becoming involved in, serious organised crime. The SOC strategy and our consultation with the Government on the national effort focus on that—particularly on trying to divert young people away from that opportunity.

We also recognise that there are always some individuals who will get caught up in that and might end up incarcerated, and we are making a big effort with our colleagues in the SPS. A police officer is deployed at Polmont to work with the young men to help create positive opportunities and offer them positive lifestyle choices. That feeds into the work that Niven Rennie and his team do at the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit.

There is a need for diversion, but there is also a need to understand the fundamental problem. Services should be provided that allow us to support those young people and give them hopes and aspirations that they can achieve.

13:00  

Especially since the start of the pandemic, there has been an issue with criminal and sexual exploitation of children. Those children are victims. They are being victimised by adults and are brought into criminal or sexual behaviour. Much of that happens online. A lot of it happened online during the pandemic, but, now that we are back to doing more face to face, there is evidence that it is happening in person again.

We must bear in mind that those children are victims first and should be treated as victims. There is some work on that in Scotland, but probably not enough. We do not really recognise those children as being victims first instead of criminalising them. There are some young people in Polmont who come from a Vietnamese background, and we think that they have been trafficked. They are victims, but we are locking them up. That may be for their own protection, but they have been criminalised. We must get better at dealing with that situation in Scotland.

I am conscious of the time. If members have no further questions, I will draw the meeting to a close. If any of the witnesses would like to share anything else with the committee, they can do so in writing and the committee will take the evidence into account. I thank all the witnesses. I am sure that our discussion could have continued for much longer. Thank you for your participation.

13:01 Meeting continued in private until 13:07.