Justice Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Official Report 568KB pdf

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Remand

Agenda item 5 is an evidence-taking session on remand, on which the committee held a round-table session on 16 January. Today’s session provides an opportunity to explore in more depth some of the issues that were raised at that round table.

I welcome the witnesses. Karyn McCluskey is the chief executive and Keith Gardner is the head of improvement at Community Justice Scotland; Thomas Jackson is the head of community justice at Glasgow City Council, and is representing the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; Tom Halpin is the chief executive of Sacro; and Kathryn Lindsay is the chief social work officer for Angus Council and a member of Social Work Scotland.

I thank all the witnesses who supplied written submissions. That is always extremely helpful for the committee in advance of an evidence-taking session.

I refer members to paper 4, which is a note by the clerk, and paper 5, which is a private paper. We will commence our questions with Liam Kerr. [Interruption.] I am sorry—Liam McArthur. I looked at Liam McArthur and I said “Liam Kerr”.

You keep throwing me that dummy, convener.

Of all the committees that both Liams could end up in, it would be the Justice Committee.

11:30  

I offer a quotation from the Scottish Prisons Commission from 2008, which said:

“often remands are the result of lack of information or lack of services in the community to support people on bail.”

I ask for your reflections on whether things have moved on since then. Is the quotation still apposite?

It is fair to say that we have watched remand numbers grow. They have not reversed, so from that perspective it is still an issue. The question whether it is about more information or support could be discussed. The critical issue is that we have good evidence that where we provide supports in the courts, there is a shift in judicial confidence and sheriffs decide for bail and community options. We know what we can do to make that shift.

There is no doubt that the Scottish Prisons Commission reflected what everybody knew was the issue. Fundamentally, that remains the same.

You asked whether the situation has changed since 2008: that is a good question. People do not comply with bail and other conditions because of a broad range of circumstances: it is not just about them not wanting to comply. We must consider the whole picture and the availability of supports.

The answer to your question is that the picture is different in different parts of Scotland. However, the Prisons Commission’s statement is still right and we should stay focused on it.

If the picture is patchy, it is perhaps invidious to pick out the exemplars or to name and shame. However, is there evidence that shows what the people who get it right more often are doing that others are not doing?

In Sacro’s view, structured bail supervision services are effective. The service in one sheriff court accepted short adjournments with the full support of the sheriff principal and the sheriffs to ensure that there are packages around people. In 13 months, the service worked with 30 women who were selected because they were already going on remand. The adjournments during the hearings were because breaches of conditions had occurred and drug treatment and testing orders were not working: there was history. Of the 30 women, 25 complied with the support. Of the five who did not, four breached conditions and one did not comply because she moved out of the area.

That is one example; I could give many. We know that bail supervision is effective and works.

Community Justice Scotland is a relatively new body and has been looking around Scotland.

Knowing that I was coming to give evidence to the committee on remand, I spent some time in the custody courts. We are dealing with the most damaged and chaotic people in our communities. Bail supervision is not the only answer. Most of the people involved live in chaotic accommodation—in bed and breakfasts, for example—so letters do not follow them from one place to another. We will have to look more widely for solutions to the issue.

Colleagues will be aware of the work that is going on around homelessness; we seem to be able to occupy opposing moral universes on the matter. With remand, we are often dealing with the same people that we deal with in respect of homelessness. Indeed, one leads to the other: many rough sleepers have just come out of jail.

There is an evidence base from the housing first model, through which we put people in a home. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would say that the most essential things are that people have a stable situation and reduce some of their more abhorrent and damaging behaviours. That does not happen yet, as we can see from cases in the courts. The people in our communities who are most dangerous need to be remanded, but we need to think of different ways to deal with the chaotic people.

The picture is very patchy around the country. I hate to use the term “postcode justice”, but it exists. In some areas, people may be diverted or there may be a great bail supervision pilot programme, which is more likely to be the case for women than for men. Therefore, there is a mixed picture, and it is no surprise that the use of remand has continued unabated.

In that case, are we perhaps misdirecting people by focusing on what social work departments could do to provide information that would give prosecutors and sheriffs the confidence to take on alternatives to remand?

I listened to Sir Harry Burns giving evidence to the Health and Sport Committee. The majority of people whom I saw in the custody court last week need a care package. They are people with alcohol or drug problems. We look for the propensity to reoffend, and people who abuse drugs are more likely to reoffend. In the Netherlands and Germany such people are provided with immediate access to detox, which would be much more effective here than remand is: people would achieve much more and would achieve better outcomes.

You referred to “postcode justice”. Are the options that you have just mentioned, among others, being woven in in relation to housing allocations and so on?

That is happening in some places. Not too far from here is LEAP—the Lothians and Edinburgh abstinence programme—which is absolutely outstanding. I cannot tell the committee how good it is. I asked LEAP whether it could take more people: it probably could. I know of defence agents who have been desperate to get people on to the programme. We need to consider the matter as a public health issue in respect of the great majority of people who are in a cycle in and out of our prisons. If we look at it solely as a justice issue, we will not achieve the paradigm shift that we require in order to put in other measures to keep people from offending and to reduce victimisation.

I want to pick up on Karyn McCluskey’s point by saying that, in working with the most vulnerable people across society—whether or not they are on remand—our observation is that the issue is often about the stickability of universally available services. We tend to find that our more chaotic individuals continually struggle to engage with such services. That might be because changes of address mean that correspondence about appointments is missed.

It is often the case that the level of chaos in an individual’s life means that trying to hold on to them and support them to get to a point at which they can effect change is very challenging. That is when we see people yo-yo in and out of custody or remand situations. Rather than focusing specifically on the criminal justice social work element of the response—bail advice and provision of services to courts—we need, across health, the third sector and local authority provision, the partnership element that is much broader than a justice response.

I will draw on the example of my constituency. Is that happening because we are seeing more integration between social work and healthcare provision? I presume that you have housing colleagues co-located with you. Are local authorities and health boards now grasping the fact that a multipronged approach to more complex cases is the only way of getting the “stickability” that you mentioned?

It is about having a multi-agency approach and looking at people’s circumstances in the round. Individuals exist in families and communities, and they have a range of issues that lots of different services can help to resolve. I think that the challenge is, as Social Work Scotland observes, that often our systems around appointing substance misuse support, for example, are not as flexible as they need to be to encourage continued engagement by the most vulnerable and chaotic individuals.

For example, if I have a general practitioner appointment on Friday, I know that I need to keep it. I would remember that and would have lots of different things that would help me to get there. However, a lot of the people with whom we work might not even know when Friday comes, so their ability to keep appointments with GPs or other services is limited. Even if we can tap them into services, the problem is often about the follow-through and on-going engagement that they need to make changes in their lives.

I will be brief; my comment follows on from that. The traditional view of bail supervision is about compelling, compliance, curfew and those rigid things. What we are talking about here is much more holistic, and the social work part of it is absolutely crucial.

The pilot of the project that I talked about was undoubtedly successful, and it was successful because the court, the social work service and the third sector worked together as one team. For example, I know of a woman who breached her DTTO and everything else. Everyone had had enough—there was only one place she was going, and that was adjournment.

The first conversation between the court social worker and the third sector was on the need to put a plan around her. They said, “Tomorrow we’ll start that, but today we need to get the court to accept that this is a credible solution”. The court’s first response was that the woman could not comply, and had not complied, so it asked why that should be done. That point was made. The third sector’s response was that the woman had to comply because she was in the last chance saloon. It was a really honest conversation. The woman kept 11 of 12 appointments, and had a reason for not keeping the one that she missed. She then went back on a DTTO.

It is crucial that we do not write people off. The system is not currently flexible enough or holistic enough. People need wider supports.

My final point is that we talk about whether housing and health are at the table: very often, they are in the conversation, but from the third sector’s perspective, referrals between services are pretty rigid and systematic, which is why things fall between the cracks. You need someone who can go into those spaces because they are not aligned with just one service, so that they can make appointments and make sure that the person is there on Friday, or whenever. That is the holistic bit, which is not about a process diagram.

I have a point about bail supervision, which we were going to raise later on, but this is probably a good time to bring it in. I declare an interest as a social worker who is registered with the Scottish Social Services Council.

One purpose of the community payback order was to bring in a more holistic approach. When a person is convicted and given an order, it sometimes includes conditions including that health services and so on are to be involved. In relation to remand, we are in a totally different position. On what Tom Halpin just said, does the panel know of anything that could work universally that would give bail supervision officers, for example, teeth, which would enable them to get the various agencies involved? Where I worked as a social worker, bail supervision was very effective and was regarded as being particularly successful in that area. I know, however, that its effectiveness is patchy across the country. Are there any suggestions on that?

There are a number of examples of people who have successfully moved through bail supervision to community payback, because of a disposal of the court. The real crux of the matter is that it is not simply about supervision and unpaid work—it is wider. There are great examples of that happening in all authorities, so the point that Fulton MacGregor made is right. However, there must be an end-to-end pathway so that everyone understands what is to be achieved.

My answer will speak to the first and second points about the response to people who are on bail.

The committee will know that the new model of community justice has been rolled out across the 32 local authority areas. Each area is required to produce, and has produced, a community justice outcome improvement plan. Many of the plans speak to the issues of remand and bail.

The purpose of the plans is the development of comprehensive and cohesive local services that are a response to individuals who are in the justice system. I think that sometimes the justice element obfuscates the fact that such individuals do not have a level playing field. They are people who, by and large, have numerous complex difficulties that arise from a range of previous traumas.

As Tom Halpin suggested, those people do not comply or find compliance difficult, but the system generally demands 100 per cent compliance 100 per cent of the time. The idea behind the community justice outcome improvement plans is for all local partners to have a common vision of what community justice means in their area, which includes what it means when people are bailed to the community. What is our collective response? Let us help people not to lose their accommodation and employment, but help them to stay connected to their families. We know that those things have impacts, so that response can help to improve people’s lives.

11:45  

Although we need to think about the structures, it is much more important to take a more people-centred approach because this is a public health issue. If we do not address those people’s issues and instead just keep seeking to punish them, we will simply marginalise them further. Although there are some dangerous and harmful individuals out in the community, the vast majority of people whom we deal with through criminal justice social work and associated services are in need of care and assistance. They represent as much of a risk to themselves as they do to other people.

What I am hearing is music to my ears. I visited Her Majesty’s Prison Barlinnie on Friday, and that is exactly the point that came out of my discussion with the lead and support for outcomes and the deputy governor of the jail. There is clearly an issue, because 40 per cent of the prisoners are in a revolving door situation. We talked about the co-ordination between social services, local authorities and the police.

Last year, I visited North Devon Council—I was on holiday, but I was interested in what it was doing. The council has a multi-agency team in its headquarters, which has reduced the problems by 50 per cent, because the police are next door to social services and other people.

My question is for Thomas Jackson. What is COSLA doing to encourage local authorities to take that approach?

There is a varied picture, but I have a better knowledge of Glasgow than I do of all the other local authorities, so any answer that I give will reflect that.

We need to ensure that, alongside discussion about bail supervision, we talk about voluntary opportunities. In Glasgow—although it is not unique to Glasgow—we have a partnership between three third sector organisations that are based in a social work office and provide a bail support option for women. It is a women’s service. That option is entirely voluntary and without conditions, but we have had some very positive outcomes from it. We need to broaden the opportunities for people.

We must also consider the overall impact. You mentioned the constant churn at Barlinnie, which is a unique situation. The committee has received evidence that about 20 per cent of the daily population of individuals in custody are there on remand, although the daily reception for women is well over 60 per cent. We are talking about a huge volume of individuals with, as we have heard today, very complex needs.

That raises the issue of where the resources will come from. We know what works and we have the evidence for that. However, in 2012, an Audit Scotland report identified that only 16 per cent of a £3 billion spend on reoffending in Scotland was spent on rehabilitation. Our shift in justice spend needs to focus on what we can do in the community. There are plenty of good examples across the third and public sectors, and we can do a lot more of that work if we think about how we can take some of the investment that is currently locked up in prisons and put it into the community.

During our previous evidence session, we were told that there is a lack of data on why judges are still putting people on remand. I find that odd. Do you have a view on why that data is not captured? Do any of you have anecdotal evidence of why judges are still putting people on remand?

We have figures for outcomes from the projects that we have done. For example, in one local authority area, there were 250 cases over a certain period and I can give you the breakdown of what happened in each case. We can give you sufficient evidence to draw inferences from, which I think would be helpful. That information is available.

In the project that I told you about, which involved 30 cases, there was great support from the sentencers. They conducted a survey of their own courts in that sheriffdom over five weeks, and there were 70 remands of which only two were women. Of course, those two women are important, but, if we are talking about numbers, that project was not touching the large number of males who were going through remand.

What came out of that project is that the courts are supportive as long as the community alternative is credible, consistent and there. If sentencers are faced with someone who is breaching all the time and who is reappearing before them and they do not have an alternative, that forces them down a route. It is about ensuring that the support that we provide in the community actually supports the aim of the court, which is not to put someone in prison at that stage.

Just to clarify, I am going to reflect back what I heard. It might sound quite pejorative, but I do not mean it in that way. I take it that judges are saying that they are going to hold people on remand because they have concluded that the community alternatives are not credible. Is that why judges are deciding to use remand?

In that particular case, when someone was presenting not for the first or the second time—when they were not complying—and there was no wraparound or holistic service and no report or resource in front of the court, the judge knew that, if they just released the person as they did the last time, they would be back next week—that is my phrase. That is not a credible position, whereas we had an adjournment, a court social worker and a third sector partner. A needs assessment was done and a care plan was put in place, and we came back and said, “This is what is going to happen.” If there is no compliance with that, it is then a different discussion.

In effect, the judge was saying, “What else am I supposed to do?” Is that correct?

That is certainly the impression that I had in that case.

I would not disagree with any of that. I preface what I am about to say by saying that it is not meant as a criticism of any sentencer or procurator fiscal.

The legislation is difficult in and of itself because the driving legislation behind it, the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995—section 23C for the pedant in me—talks about taking into consideration factors such as a substantial risk of failure to appear and a substantial risk of reoffending.

Those are unquantifiable statements, and it is left to the court to make decisions in a very complex and speedy process. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the legislation requires the court to ask whether the person has previous convictions and whether they have previously failed in relation to an order without any recognition of how “previous” that was.

The overall picture is that, if a court is going to make an assessment of the risk that an individual presents at the time, there is a question around how that process is driven, what the outcome of that process is and what evidence drives the decision making in the court.

Another part of the legislation requires that, when bail is granted or refused, a record should be kept of that. I am aware that that happens in some cases and not in others. Liam Kerr asked about the lack of data. He is right to do so, because we do not know whether it is the same individuals we are remanding time and time again. Is there a difference in remand being used in solemn and in summary cases? There is a dearth of data on that, as the two elements are compounded.

I absolutely agree with Liam Kerr. It is an area that is ripe for problem solving. When I was at the court on Monday, I picked up a procurator fiscal form. It is a report by a sheriff and a bail application, and it goes through criteria—yes or no—about why they are granting or refusing bail. I do not know where that form is kept or whether it is always filled in, but it would be useful to start to look at it.

Another point that I highlight is our tolerance for risk. We are so used to applying risk models for some of the most dangerous people in our society—as is absolutely right—that we tend to apply them to some of the more chaotic people, and that is impacting on remand. I have sat in court in numerous custody cases and have noticed a lack of knowledge about some of the options that are out there. We are looking forward to electronic monitoring—I am heavily involved in that—particularly around bail. The use of the global positioning system, as opposed to the radio frequency that is currently used, will make a big difference. However, there is a lack of knowledge.

I have to say that the people who are really good are the defence agents. I was impressed by the quality of the defence agents that I saw in the court. They knew their clients well and understood their journey, and they represented them very well. They highlighted opportunities in third sector services and other services that are out there. I came away thinking that I must contact more defence agents to tell them what is available.

For the avoidance of doubt, did you mean to say that you want to contact solicitors, not defence agents?

Sorry—I meant defence solicitors.

My question relates to the same point and the example that Mr Halpin gave. In previous evidence, stand-down reports have been commended to the committee. Given what Ms McCluskey said, there seems to be a pivotal role for the criminal justice social worker in the court in the context of sentencing. Are sentences being meted out when a criminal justice social worker is not present in the court? If so, could that be addressed?

There will be a broader perspective on criminal justice social workers in courts. In our experience, whether a social worker is available on the day is very much subject to demands on the local department.

In reforming the system, we must be careful that we do not just move the deck chairs. People talk about reform and say, “We’ll do it with that team,” and then, “We’ll outsource it,” when, in fact, they are still doing the same thing.

Karyn McCluskey’s point about risk was very relevant. A lot of the risk assessments were brought in before austerity, at a time when there were resources. It might be time to have a look at what we mean by risk assessment and think about whether assessments are still relevant in the context of the resource that we have today. We have to ask whether the resource that is tied into risk assessment is changing lives or administering justice. There is something to be said for going back and looking at what we are doing more broadly. Whether there is someone who can get a person to their housing appointment is important, but when we talk about reform we need to think about the whole system.

The original question was about decision making in courts. There has been research into sentencing decision making in a number of jurisdictions and, during my career, I have had the opportunity to talk to a number of sentencers. The response that I can share is that every case is an individual case and the courts are often weighing in the balance risk, the seriousness of the alleged incident and the person’s history of compliance or non-compliance with court orders or other orders. How the person presents on a given day also features. There is no doubt that greater availability of information to courts to help them to contextualise the individual would be of great assistance.

There is some variability in how criminal justice social work is delivered in practice. Not every court is created equal, and not every criminal justice social work service has the same funding available to it. The reality of delivering court-based social work services might be that a single social worker is on duty, perhaps covering more than one sitting court at a time. They might be running from one court to another, trying to capture the people that they want to engage with.

12:00  

In our written submission, we give a flavour of some of the tasks that criminal justice social workers undertake in the court. At any given point, a criminal justice social worker might be the only person who is doing that work across several courts in one building, and they will also be in demand from various solicitors who are looking for updated information so that they can inform the court about their individual clients’ circumstances. It is therefore a really complex situation and one that involves a lot of juggling and decision making in real time about where best to use the time.

If someone’s time is taken away, perhaps to interview someone who has just received a custodial sentence or who has been remanded in custody and whose family is very distressed as a result of that decision, they cannot be in court and available to provide information about someone else. There is a real-world issue about how we can provide sufficient cover in those circumstances so that, in every instance, real in-depth and meaningful information is at the court’s disposal to help with decision making.

Kathryn Lindsay picked up on some of the issues around stand-down reports, but 3,700 were issued in the most recent year for which we have full records, and more than half of them were oral reports. As Kathryn said, a range of informal information gets to the court’s ears via social work through solicitors and other means. Social work provides that resource, although it does vary across Scotland—that is a fair point.

The issue is about the judge’s decision. As Keith Gardner highlighted, they are trying to make a rational decision in a complex setting with a complex set of individuals. How do we shift that confidence? More information is one way of doing that, but it is also about the community options that we have available. In our written evidence, we present some information about our investment in women’s services. When a woman goes to court and, maybe, faces a decision between remand and bail, we can now provide greater support. We do not have the same resource investment in relation to men.

We have invested well in aspects of the justice service so a judge will have every confidence that, if they send somebody to custody, they will reappear in court, but we have not necessarily made the same investment in our community services. That needs to be a crux of today’s discussion.

Fulton MacGregor has a supplementary question.

How important are the local courts in that regard? There have been changes to the local courts system recently. How can the situation be resolved? In my experience, having local knowledge in local courts was very effective because the courts did not always rely on the court social worker to provide information, as the local office could also provide it. How can the problem be resolved?

The evidence from places such as Red Hook and community courts is that having a stable sheriff who sees the same people can have positive outcomes for some of the most difficult people that we are seeing day in, day out. It is a challenge when numerous courts are sitting, and in big places such as Edinburgh and Glasgow they might see different people each time. The evidence base tells us that some of the community court models definitely work, although they are incredibly expensive. People tend to focus on the building and not the process, but things such as the drug court are successful. There is about to be a new alcohol court in Glasgow, and there is an alcohol court in Edinburgh. Such things show real success because the people who are sitting on the bench are absolutely invested in them, and so are the people who are coming in front of them.

Karyn McCluskey mentioned electronic monitoring. At a previous meeting, we heard the chief inspector of prisons say that that is not currently available as a condition of bail but that it might be available in the future. Can you help me to understand why it is not available now and how likely it is to be available in future? Can anyone on the panel say what difference it would make to remand numbers if electronic monitoring was available?

My understanding is that there used to be provision for EM to be used for bail. Of course, that was via a radio frequency signal, so the person needed a box in their house, which was cumbersome. I have just come off the expert group on electronic monitoring, which has recommended the use of GPS monitoring and alcohol monitoring. The legislation is being drafted at the moment, and it will have to go through a process. We have proposed that monitoring be used in a range of areas—for example, for people on bail and people coming out of prison.

Electronic monitoring is an extra tool, but the issue is about more than just the technology. It is a bit like wearing a Fitbit and expecting to lose weight and become fitter as a result. People who are being electronically monitored must also be supported. If I put an alcohol bracelet on someone, for example, I need to help them to avoid alcohol, which is about finding sober friends and sober places. It cannot be about just the technology, although I have great hopes for it, given the very positive evidence from Germany and America. We should be able to use monitoring for bail, but we must also support people. If the housing first model or bail supervision was being used, electronic monitoring could be an extra tool in the sheriff’s toolbox.

From Social Work Scotland’s perspective, electronic monitoring, or any tool that could help us to reduce the unnecessary use of remand, would be very welcome. However, I add a word of caution about the potential risk of up-tariffing existing bail supervision cases. Following the original pilots, we have had bail supervision for many years and its use has grown, but the use of remand has grown exponentially alongside that. Our concern is about more punitive and restrictive measures being added to bail supervision with no corresponding reduction in the use of remand. We would support the use of other, more restrictive measures, but we would welcome that being tied to a use of remand that reflects that shift. We need to be mindful of the risk of bringing people on ordinary bail or bail supervision up to bail supervision-plus.

I am just trying to get my head around the trajectory that we have seen in the statistics for remand. We are constantly told that, across a range of measures, crime figures are down, and we have a presumption against shorter sentences, which seems to have been extended further; we also have the various supportive measures that we have talked about, and we are also talking about electronic monitoring. It seems counterintuitive that, at the same time, we are seeing an increase in the remand figures. We have explored quite well the complex issues that certain individuals have that explain the cases in which they are involved. The picture seems to be that trends do not necessarily follow the trajectory that we would expect them to follow, given the crime figures and the presumption against shorter sentences.

I am sure that I will not give you the answer as to why that is the case, but I can confirm that your concern is valid. The shine women’s mentoring service works with 800 women a year across Scotland. It works with women serving short sentences or women on remand, so it is for those spending less than four years in prison, who make up a big part of the women’s prison population. We know that 76 per cent of the women who would be eligible for shine engage with the service, so it is not as though we are not getting a fair representation. However, half the women who use shine are on remand, which to those who work with them in prison on throughcare or integration seems awfully disproportionate. The reality is that there is a disproportionate use of remand, but 70 per cent of those who are on remand do not get a custodial sentence. That takes us to the issues that you were talking about, which we are all very aware of.

To go back to your question, the answer is to do with our inability to deal with the chaos. That is the fundamental point; it is not about the seriousness of the offending and it is not about the legal process; it is about our inability to deal with the chaos and do what is required, and we do not know how to tackle that.

Liam McArthur is absolutely right: crime is at a 42-year low and the movements that have been made on youth offending are spectacular—we should not forget how far we have come. However, at the moment, 80 per cent of calls to the police are not about crime; they are about vulnerability, and that is exactly what we see in the courts.

The problem is that the issue is seen through the lens of justice, not through the lens of vulnerability. Police Scotland is having to look at the issue completely differently. It is upskilling officers’ understanding of mental health and providing training and a whole range of other things.

We are dealing with a different situation. Many of our services are not fit for purpose and we do not have the level of services that we need. We have defunded services, although that is because of austerity so it is understandable. However, community justice, returning people to communities and improving their health outcomes must be priorities when our budgets are set.

Tom Halpin made the point well when he said that we are dealing with chaos—that must be a feature in any interpretation of the issue.

We must also look at the whole justice trail. In the same period, we have also seen a reduction in police undertakings and reductions in police disposals and procurator fiscal disposals. We are not taking people out earlier in the system and we are not providing the right support to make those viable options.

I am very interested in women in the justice system, including women on remand. We have heard that 70 per cent of women who are remanded in custody do not receive a custodial sentence; we have also heard that women are pretending that they do not have children in case their children are subsequently removed from them, which is shocking.

The 2012 report of the commission on women offenders included recommendations on issues such as bail supervision and electronic monitoring. To what extent have those recommendations been implemented? I suppose that, in a way, the panel has answered that question. However, I would be interested to hear more about the Glasgow monitored bail system, which seems to be successful, if Thomas Jackson could expand on that. Is that similar to the shine service, which Tom Halpin talked about?

Following the commission’s report in 2012 and the Government’s response to it, we saw a hive of activity across Government to support women. In Glasgow, we have been very fortunate because we have established a women’s justice centre, as defined in the Angiolini report. Tomorrow’s women Glasgow has been operating for three and a half years and has a proven ability to work with a range of vulnerable individuals and those who have not previously engaged with services.

We have also started a new supported bail project, which is delivered by three third sector organisations that each provide slightly different areas of expertise—Turning Point Scotland, Aberlour Child Care Trust and Ypeople, which is an accommodation specialist that targets women. The project came out of a reinvestment of justice moneys. The Government identified £1.5 million, which was top-sliced from the SPS budget and distributed across Scotland.

We have a rich response to women, and we are starting to see the fruits of that work in the outcomes. We do not have nearly the same response for men.

Have we achieved everything that was set out in the Angiolini commission? No, we have not. Even now, almost six years on, it is worth keeping an eye on that.

Is the project specific to Glasgow, or is it provided elsewhere in Scotland?

There are other projects. Sacro leads on some projects—and has led on others where funding has ceased—but the project that I am talking about is unique to Glasgow.

There are projects everywhere. There is a great service in North Lanarkshire and there are services in Ayrshire—they are springing up all over the place. In addition, the Inverness justice centre will be opening soon.

I see really good work taking place, but provision is still patchy. I worry for women in rural areas. The position is great for those who live in town centres, where there are probably enough people to justify having a service. However, for those who live outside those areas, services are lacking.

I must say that I was very impressed when I went to Orkney, where services are very thoughtful in how they support their women even though they probably do not have a great many people coming through. However, I slightly worry about the patchiness of service provision.

Do professionals who, like you, work in the system recognise that, given women’s needs—they might have families, for example—they present a unique case? I do not want to men to receive a lesser service, but is it recognised that there is a problem with women on remand?

I think so. I have not met anyone who has underestimated the damage and trauma experienced by many of the women. From my previous experience of working with lots of women who have been involved in violence, domestic abuse and many other things, I know that they take much longer to get to a good outcome—it takes years and years of work. Sometimes, people think that that can happen over a short period and that you can get an outcome in six months, so some of my colleagues in the third sector are funded only for very short periods. However, those women will take a long time to get to a place where they have a life that is predictable, understandable and manageable and where they can have a sense of hope.

12:15  

We also recognise and are very understanding of adverse childhood events and the impact of trauma. Parental imprisonment is another adverse childhood event, so we are passing that trauma on to people’s kids. There is no greater reason to try to change the outcome for women than to try to make it better for their kids, because we cannot pass that on to the next generation.

We know from the experience of the shine mentoring service and the work that followed the Angiolini commission that there is a gender difference. The evidence for that goes beyond the anecdotal—there are Ipsos Mori evaluations and so on, which we can give you. Let us accept that that has been established.

If you go around the country, you will see many great examples of initiatives, but there is still gender inequality in Scotland, because those things are not universal. That is fundamental.

I can tell you about my experience of some of the services that are delivered in Tayside—my day job is at Angus Council. We have a really good success rate, particularly in the Glen Isla project in Angus, which is a very rural area. There are considerable challenges in delivering a service for women there, given that the number of women involved with Angus criminal justice services is small. We have found that it is not the criminal justice social work part of the intervention that is important. We do outreach with the Glen Isla service—we do the compulsory parts that are not needed by the court. However, it is the community-based support elements, such as the wraparound health care and support and the packaging of support to help women to access services that you or I would take for granted, that are important, along with the longevity of that support.

We find that women do not leave us. That is a real challenge in terms of the sustainability of that approach. The approach grew from a justice perspective but now there is a recognition that there is a cohort of women in our area—and no doubt in other places in Scotland—who need extra support in order to make and sustain changes in their lives, for their own benefit, for the community’s benefit and for the benefit of their children and families.

The fact that women face specific issues is recognised, as you will see if you look at the community justice improvement plans. Having connected with the 32 local authority areas in the creation of the plans, I see that that is absolutely recognised, and it is something that many local areas toil with. There are other factors. I was a justice manager and the erstwhile chief social work officer in one small local authority, and those authorities do not have many women coming through their service, so there is an issue for them in having bespoke individual plans for those women and their families.

Although I recognise the sterling work that has been done in women’s services in Glasgow, we need to share how and why those services work. For example, we need to understand how they get the buy-in from other partners, such as health, and how that could be transferred. I am not suggesting that we just transplant the Glasgow model; I am talking about learning from the research about why things work and why they have made an impact so that we can share that.

Collective buy-in is particularly important. The issue of buy-in and leverage in community justice is something that the 32 local authority areas are toiling with just now. For example, there is the relationship between community justice partnerships and integration joint boards and the service that they deliver through health and social care partnerships, as well as the relationship between those two entities and community planning partnerships. We are at the start of a local journey on that. However, it is recognised that there are specific issues for women in the justice service.

What I wanted to say has mostly been said, but it is a given that there is no women’s service in Scotland that is not trauma informed, and training will be involved in that. The psychologist at the tomorrow’s women Glasgow project is based in the trauma team, and we are sharing that training. For example, tomorrow’s women Glasgow has provided training to Victim Support Scotland in Glasgow, because it recognises that the project has built up unique expertise.

I want to pick up on a point that Karyn McCluskey made, which was about how long we have to work with people—women, in particular—before we see changes. That is an important issue for the committee to hear about. After 12 months of monitoring the tomorrow’s women Glasgow project, we had seen very little movement in things that we thought would change, such as offending levels, health issues and relationships. During that period, it was challenging to keep the public sector partners on board and to keep their social workers, nurses, psychologists and prison service staff involved. They were there thanks to the good will of the public sector, which believed that the project was the right way to proceed. It took another year before we started to see substantial shifts, because we were targeting the most vulnerable individuals.

We must understand that if we target more people who face remand, whom we want to shift to bail, we will have to invest appropriately. We need to recognise that we are dealing with individuals who might live in extremely chaotic situations that it will take longer to unpick.

I was glad to hear the Glen Isla project being mentioned. I represent Angus North and Mearns, but the Glen Isla project falls within the Angus South constituency of my colleague Graeme Dey, and I know that he has raised it a number of times in Parliament.

Karyn McCluskey talked about the wider impact on families, and ACEs were mentioned. Gail Ross led a members’ business debate on that subject the other week, which shows that it is high on the agenda at the moment. I would like to hear a bit more about the impact that being on remand has on the person themselves and their wider family. I am particularly interested in hearing about the effect on women, given that a higher percentage of women are on remand, the vast majority of whom go on to receive non-custodial sentences.

My colleague Nancy Loucks from Families Outside should be here, because she can talk incredibly eloquently about the ripple effects that women can experience when they are taken into remand, such as losing their accommodation, going into debt, their kids being taken into care and their mental health problems being exacerbated. I do not know where the impact ends—it is a spiral.

There is a lack of services for women on remand. Because they do not need to go to work, they can stay in their cells pretty much all day, which will exacerbate their mental health problems. The effect is catastrophic. Despite the presumption against short-term sentences, 98 per cent of women get a sentence of less than 12 months. We must do something about that; we need to design services that will make a difference. It would great if Scotland could lead the world and change the outcomes for some of our most vulnerable women.

We know that a period on remand or in custody is devastating for not only the individual concerned but their family. Children will sometimes not know what has happened to a loved one in their lives, who will just disappear for a period. People will not always tell children the truth about what has happened, because they think that that is best for them, but children will know that something is not quite right. One day, someone will be loving them and taking care of them, and the next day they will simply not be there. They will get no notice of that. I have a small child and I dread to think what he would make of it if I was not there tomorrow.

We conceptualise these things as happening somewhere else to other people in the belief that, somehow, that makes it better. Such scenarios do untold emotional damage to children, which affects their understanding of the world as a place in which they can rely on people. Many of the children and young people who are affected by custody and remand will be children who have already suffered adverse childhood experiences. They might already not be in the direct care of their parents, and they might be in the process of being assessed for alternative care arrangements.

A direct consequence of periods on remand or in custody is that there can be unnecessary delays to those assessments. Children’s planning might not happen, because parents are not available to be tested on rehabilitation, for example. It is right and appropriate that we do not remove children from their home unless we are absolutely sure that it is not the right place for them, but, to be sure of that, we need parents to be physically present and to engage.

We know that parents who are in a custodial setting often struggle to engage meaningfully in child protection case conference discussions about their children, and in children’s hearings and other court arrangements, as they are more difficult. Parents are presented in handcuffs at those meetings, which sets a particular tone around their involvement. It is scary for children to see their parents in that way—turning up with two officers who have transported them in handcuffs—in the presence of the group that is making decisions about their lives. Those things are all very damaging for families. In addition, the missed birthdays, the missed first days at school and the missed goodnight stories all have a difficult impact for families to rationalise.

We also forget that every individual who is in custody is somebody’s child. The impact on that individual’s parents and their wider social support network is a real challenge. Even the practicalities of visiting people who are on remand are very difficult, as they are often expensive and time consuming. That all puts a lot of extra pressure on families. The resource that the person brought in, if they were employed before they were remanded, also stops. Access to benefits might need to be reassessed in light of someone not being in the family home. The ramifications are huge and affect every facet of an individual’s life, and therefore every facet of their family’s life. The average period in remand is something like 23 days—there is all that disruption for 23 days.

Thank you very much. Those points were well made.

We are getting near the end of this session; we have only about another five minutes.

I want to pick up on something that Karyn McCluskey mentioned in her previous response. She said that the reality for people on remand is that they spend long periods in a cell with nothing to do, because they do not have to participate in work. We have heard that story from other sources. We hear what you say in that we should try to stop people being held on remand, but, when they are, what should they do? Doing nothing does not sound like a terribly good activity.

It does not. They are untried and unconvicted. They are innocent, technically, because they have not been through the court system.

I want better health services and mental health services—of course I do; I am an ex-nurse. I want more support for women and I want women to be involved, and I want women to be seen not as a deficit but as an asset. We never ask people what they are good at; we tell them only what they are bad at. Everybody has an asset.

It is a teachable moment—Prochaska and DiClemente would say that the motivation to change model can start at any time. The period on remand should be looked at as motivation to change. People might be contemplating a change in their behaviour and we should support them. In custody is the wrong place for that change to happen, but if someone has to be held on remand—if they are a threat to themselves or other people—we should try to capitalise on that opportunity.

Are you aware of any good examples of where that is happening?

It is probably just not happening enough. Do not get me wrong—I have lots of colleagues who work in the prison system and they do their very best in very difficult circumstances. Many of the people who come in—men and women—are detoxing from drugs. Their situations are incredibly chaotic, so trying to provide that level of support might be really difficult when dealing with a huge volume of people. The picture is scattered. The problem is that when there is such a big volume of people on remand, we cannot provide the service that we are talking about. If the number was reduced, the people on remand might get the service.

12:30  

There are examples of good practice. I mentioned the shine project. Although that project is aimed at women, it would cross gender.

We have prison-based champions. When someone is on remand in prison and their peers are not coming out of their cells and are just lying on their beds, because that is the norm, to do something else would take the person outside the norm, which is a difficult place to be. It is hard to break the habit. A champion who works in the prison can engage with people, start interviews about what will happen beyond prison and speak to a person’s defence agent about how they are engaging. They can start to get group activities going.

The Scottish Prison Service’s resources in that area are fully utilised, so engagement with the third sector is important. Shine is a collaboration between a number of third sector organisations. It is about the ethos, not the organisation. Work inside a prison can be amplified to address the difficult cultural situation that people have described.

This evidence session has blown me away, to be frank. I am sorry to go on about my visit to Barlinnie, but everything that we have been talking about was happening there. The support officers and the prison deputy governor were crying out for mental health support, which Kathryn Lindsay talked about. I am currently looking at a project about that in the Vale of Leven, because there are issues there. It needs to happen.

The champions are a good idea. In Barlinnie, guys are sitting on the top bunk, feart to get out of bed because they would be seen as different from the others. I saw people on remand in their blue togs. The people on custodial sentences were in red and there were people in grey who were doing jobs, such as catering. It was about integrating all that. The work of the support teams was incredible.

The other thing that blew me away was what happened at 5 o’clock in the family reception centre, which was stowed out with families of prisoners—I avoided using the word “prisoner”, but the staff used it. People were in tears, and there was standing room only. The three staff who were there to work with the families were from non-governmental organisations; they were not prison staff. They were incredible.

I would really like to meet all the witnesses again, because there are more issues that I would like to raise.

Before our witnesses respond to that, will they also address the issue from the other side of the coin? If we reduce remand and people who were expected to be in custody are not in custody, how can families and victims be kept in the loop?

The support that is offered as an alternative to remand is based on mentoring—it is not just about supervision—and we cannot mentor an individual without having the wider support of families, friends and the social capital that surrounds them. The fundamental issue is the holistic mentoring that is being offered.

Will you respond to the point about keeping victims involved if they were expecting a person to be held on remand and suddenly that does not happen?

Sorry. I did not understand that part of your question.

We are looking at measures to reduce remand, but there might be an expectation that a person will be held on remand. How do we address the interests of victims and families? There are two sides to the situation.

There absolutely are. There are people for whom remand is absolutely appropriate, and that will be tested by the court. That gives clarity. A third sector organisation does not come along to champion someone and say that they should be out there; that is a decision of the court.

My view is that what victims would like is not about 20 days’ respite. We know that the adversity that is generated by a period of remand contributes to almost all the facets of risk that we assess in determining the likelihood of further offending. If our aim is to reduce the likelihood of an individual causing further harm or annoyance in their community, however that might transpire, we need to take every opportunity to reduce the risk that they present, rather than increase the risk as a result of our systematic approach.

A number of months ago, I hosted an event in Parliament with Circle Scotland and Addictions Support and Counselling. That was quite a remarkable evening, and the project is quite remarkable, too. I invite Karyn McCluskey to take this opportunity to say something about that project, because I think that it demonstrates how a different approach can be successful for all.

The service was incredibly supportive of the women. In a similar way to what I was talking about before, Circle viewed the woman as assets. Shine and similar projects do similar things for women. Circle gives them support with financial issues and everything else that affects them. It allows the woman to think about what a different outcome might look like and where they want to be, and it supports them along the way towards that.

At the event that you mentioned, there was a woman who had been supported in that way. The effect on her had been transformational. She was able to look after her family and engage in work again, and she was thinking about working. For her to be someone who can contribute to the wealth creation of Scotland and support themselves with money that they get squarely is quite a transformation. No one who was in that room could think that that was not a good use of money, that it was soft justice or that it was not the right thing to be doing.

I agree. I would be happy to provide the committee with more information on that event.

Earlier, you made a point about prevailing issues of vulnerability combined with a lack of knowledge in the court process, but you also said that defence agents were extremely empathetic and informed. Were you therefore saying that there was a lack of knowledge on the part of the judiciary, the prosecutors or someone else, or were you saying that the system did not integrate enough?

Please be brief, because Thomas Jackson still has to comment.

The procurators fiscal and the sheriffs did not always know everything that was available. The defence solicitors were very good. They had done research and knew exactly what was available, and they made suggestions to the court.

On the convener’s question about how we communicate to victims, consistency is important. As Kathryn Lindsay said, having someone out of sync for 21 or 22 days perhaps does not offer consistency.

Cornerstone demonstrates that there is a richness in the third sector. We have some leading examples that show that we know what works. The outstanding question is, are we going to shift our justice spend? If 15 per cent of the £3 billion that is spent on reoffending is focused on rehabilitation and the rest is spent on much more reactive and punitive interventions that do not deliver the same dividends, we are getting the balance wrong. We need to take a long-term view on how we get to where we want to get to. The timescale is not one or two years, but five to 10 years.

That is an excellent point to end on. We are always looking at the spend and questions of one-year funding and three-year funding. People should be given the money to get on with doing the job that they do well.

This has been a worthwhile session. I thank everyone for attending.

Under agenda item 6, I ask whether members are content to delegate responsibility to me to arrange for the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body to pay, on request, witness expenses for the remand evidence session.

Members indicated agreement.

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 20 February, when we will hold a round-table session on Brexit and policing and criminal justice.

We now move into private session.

12:38 Meeting continued in private until 13:06.