Justice Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Official Report 544KB pdf

Justice Sub-Committee on Policing (Report Back)

Item 2 is feedback from the Justice Sub-Committee on Policing on its meeting of 15 June 2017. Following the verbal report, there will be an opportunity for brief comments or questions.

I refer members to paper 3, which is a note by the clerk. As Mary Fee is not present today, I will provide the following feedback. The Justice Sub-Committee on Policing met on 15 June, when it took evidence on the deployment of police body-worn video cameras. The sub-committee heard that the evaluations of the use of body-worn video cameras by other police forces and in the north-east division of Police Scotland had highlighted a number of benefits and some potential drawbacks.

Police Scotland is now looking at the possibility of a national roll-out of body-worn video cameras across the police service. Before that is done, improvements will need to be made to Police Scotland’s information and communications technology infrastructure and potentially to the ICT of those in the wider criminal justice system. Initial and maintenance costs will need to be quantified.

The sub-committee will next meet on 22 June, when it will hear from Her Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary in Scotland, Derek Penman, on his report on openness and transparency at the Scottish Police Authority. Do members have any questions?

This is not a question, convener, but an additional comment. I thought that it was a very useful session. The findings coming out of the pilot in the north-east were encouraging across a range of different indicators, but we also heard from Police Scotland a recognition that, until it has an information technology infrastructure that will support going down this route, and until it has a better handle on the likely up-front capital costs and on-going revenue costs, it is taking a sensibly cautious approach to a national roll-out. That is something that we will return to. Nevertheless, some of the findings on the impact on officers’ safety and early pleas in cases in a range of different areas were very encouraging.

I certainly found it useful to see the cameras in order to have an idea of what we were talking about and to hear the evidence of how they had been deployed and the reports back on that. It was therefore a very worthwhile session.

If there are no questions or comments, that concludes our 23rd meeting of 2017. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 27 June, when we will take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Justice on the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Bill.