Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S3W-29499

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 10 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive how many offences of drink driving were recorded in (a) January and (b) December in each of the last three years, broken down by police force area.

Question reference: S3W-29498

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 10 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive how many offences of housebreaking were recorded in each of the last three years, broken down by police force area.

Information on the number of crimes of housebreaking recorded by police force area for the last three years is given in table 4a in the annual statistical bulletin series Recorded Crime in Scotland, for each of the years 2006-07 to 2008-09, published by the Scottish Government in 2007, 2008 and 2009 respectively. Copies of the first two of these bulletins are available in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. numbers 43510 and 46684). The statistical bulletin Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2008-09 can be obtained at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/09/28155153/0.

Question reference: S3W-29496

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 10 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-25654 by Kenny MacAskill on 12 August 2009, what further work it plans to undertake to disseminate the good practice identified in the report and whether it plans to provide additional funding to community justice authorities to implement such practice.

We are working with community justice authorities to develop, with other agencies, ways of raising public awareness and support for community service activities. Furthermore, the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill contains measures to ensure engagement with relevant community interests on the nature of unpaid work undertaken as part of a community payback order.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-25653, on 12 August 2009, for details of additional funding provided to all community justice authorities to support the delivery of credible and robust community service orders. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

Question reference: S3W-29492

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 10 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive how many custodial sentences have been imposed for breaches of community service orders in each month of 2009.

Information on community service orders is currently collected on an annual basis which does not allow a monthly breakdown. Information on breaches of community service orders resulting in custodial sentences during 2007-08 is given in the answer to question S3W-29491 on 10 December 2009. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

This is the most recent publicly available information and figures for 2008-09 will be published in the first quarter of 2010.

Question reference: S3W-29489

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 10 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive how many community service orders were revoked before being completed in each month of 2009, broken down by local authority area.

Information on community service orders is currently collected on an annual basis which does not allow a monthly breakdown. Information on community service orders that were revoked during 2007-08 is given in the answer to question S3W-22858 on 23 June 2009. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

This is the most recent publicly available information and figures for 2008-09 will be published in the first quarter of 2010.

Question reference: S3W-29501

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 10 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive how many crimes were recorded by the police as causing death by (a) dangerous driving and (b) careless driving when under the influence of drink or drugs in each of the last three years, broken down by month of incident.

The police recorded crime statistics collected centrally are based on an aggregate return from each of the eight police forces in Scotland and are not broken down by the month in which the crime/offence was recorded.

Information on the number of crimes recorded by the police as causing death by (a) dangerous driving and (b) careless driving when under the influence of drink or drugs in each of the last three years, for Scotland, is given in the following table:

Crime	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09
Causing death by dangerous driving	37	23	27
Death by careless driving when under influence of drink/drugs	1	1	1
Total	38	24	28

Source: Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services.

Question reference: S3W-29493

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 10 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive how many community service orders were breached in each month of 2009.

Information on community service orders is currently collected on an annual basis which does not allow a monthly breakdown. Information on breaches of community service orders during 2007-08 can be found in table 3.1 of the 2007-08 criminal justice social work bulletin. This is available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2008/12/09091001/0.

This is the most recent publicly available information and figures for 2008-09 will be published in the first quarter of 2010.

Question reference: S3W-29491

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 10 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S2W-29301 by Cathy Jamieson on 8 November 2006, how many custodial sentences have been imposed for breaches of community service orders in each year since 2005.

The figures provided in the answer to question S2W-29301 were derived from Criminal Proceedings in Scottish Courts data up to 2004-05. While it is possible to update these figures on a comparable basis to 2006-07, the introduction of a new IT system within the courts meant that breaches of social work orders were no longer recorded as separate offences from 2007-08 and so have been excluded from the most recent Criminal Proceedings bulletin.

More information on the changes is available in Annex C of the 2007-08 Court Proceedings bulletin at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/04/27103325/50.

Other, more up to date information on community sentences is currently collected on an annual basis from local authority social work departments. The social work statistics give somewhat different figures since they include cases where the outcome of the breach application is not known by the social work department. The equivalent information to that requested above can be found in table 3.1 of Criminal Justice Social Work Statistics, 2007-08 which is available at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/PubSocialWork.

This is the most recent publicly available information and figures for 2008-09 will be published in the first quarter of 2010.

Question reference: S3W-29425

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 30 November 2009
Current Status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 8 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive how many people under 18 have had a charge proved for handling an offensive weapon in each of the last five years.

The available information is given in the following table.

Persons Aged Under 18 Convicted of Handling an Offensive Weapon¹, by Age, 2003-04 - 2007-08

Age²	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08
13	1	0	0	0	0
14	0	0	1	3	0
15	4	4	4	1	6
16	91	126	162	150	135
17	245	298	339	335	290
Total	341	428	506	489	431

Notes:

1. Where main offence.

2. At date of sentence.

Question reference: S3W-29424

Asked by: Richard Baker, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 30 November 2009
Current Status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 8 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-28444 by Fergus Ewing on 5 November 2009, what the age by year was of each offender.

The available information is given in the following tables.

Persons Convicted of Handling an Offensive Weapon¹ by Age² and Gender, 2007-08

Age	Males	Age	Males	Age	Males	Age	Males	Age	Males	Age	Males
15	6	20	201	30	83	40	40	50	9	60	3
16	132	21	192	31	65	41	46	51	11	61	1
17	282	22	156	32	70	42	34	52	10	62	2
18	276	23	135	33	56	43	26	53	9	63	2
19	224	24	127	34	67	44	26	54	5	64	1
		25	119	35	42	45	36	55	4	65	1
		26	120	36	53	46	17	56	7	67	2
		27	104	37	51	47	16	57	2	68	1
		28	99	38	57	48	13	58	8	70	2
		29	86	39	56	49	16	59	2	71	1
										Total	3,212

Persons Convicted of Handling an Offensive Weapon¹by Age² and Gender, 2007-08

Age	Females	Age	Females	Age	Females	Age	Females	Age	Females
16	3	20	11	30	5	40	4	50	1
17	8	21	4	31	3	41	2	51	3
18	9	22	8	32	2	42	3	53	1
19	15	23	14	33	9	43	3	54	2
		24	2	34	3	44	3	56	1
		25	14	35	9	45	3	60	1
		26	11	36	5	46	4
		27	6	37	5	47	4
		28	6	38	1	49	6
		29	8	39	4			Total	206

Notes:

1. Where main offence.

2. At date of sentence.