Chamber and committees

I have asked Mike Ewart, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is as follows:

The following process and issues are covered during the selection process for Sex Offender Treatment Programmes (SOTPs).

An initial interview is conducted to assess the following issues along with a review of available relevant information, including any existing risk assessments (i.e. Stable and Acute 2007 [SA07]):

An examination of criminogenic need;

An assessment of intellectual functioning;

An assessment of social functioning;

An assessment of generic Exclusion Criteria;

Low IQ;

Those suffering from current mental illness, and

Those suffering from mental illness/brain damage at the time of the offence.

An assessment of Readiness Criteria (exclusions) including:

Total denial

Refusal of treatment

Poor literacy

Physical disability.

2007-08 court proceedings data is planned for release in April 2009. Data for the latest year available (2006-07) is given below.

Persons Receiving a Custodial Sentence in Scottish Courts of Six Months or Less, 2006-07

Police Force Area	Number of Persons
Northern	710
Grampian	1,021
Tayside	1,864
Fife	804
Lothian and Borders	2,023
Central	696
Strathclyde	7,034
Dumfries and Galloway	533
Total	14,686

Note: 1. Total contains one case where force is unknown.

The award of an additional £1 million in 2009-10 (£250,000 this financial year) to the community justice authorities for the delivery of speedier and more immediate community penalties indicated that the Scottish Government, in conjunction with COSLA, will be commissioning an early audit of current timescales across all local authorities for start and completion of work placements. The audit will be repeated in the first quarter of 2010 in order to measure the impact of the additional funding in delivering the improvements in standards of service delivery sought.

The Scottish Government has discussed community alcohol partnerships with a number of relevant organisations, including bodies represented on the Scottish Government Alcohol Industry Partnership. Scottish Government officials recently visited a community alcohol partnership in St Neot''s, Cambridgeshire, to learn about its operation and impact.

The Scottish Government is supportive of partnership activity to tackle alcohol misuse and the Scottish Government Alcohol Industry Partnership is supporting the development of a wide-scale and far-reaching community partnership initiative in Fife which will take into account useful learning from other community alcohol partnerships.

How best to engage and communicate with local communities on localised crime is principally a matter for Scottish police forces, police boards and their community safety partners, supported by central government.

We are providing this support in a number of ways, including working with key stakeholders to produce a community policing engagement model which clearly sets out the role and objectives of policing within communities.

The Scottish Government publishes statistical information to raise public awareness of the levels of different types of crime in local communities. In particular, the Recorded Crime in Scotland Statistical Bulletin, published in September 2008, presents statistics on crimes and offences recorded and cleared up by the eight Scottish police forces, broken down by crime/offence group, police force area and council area. These statistics are available on the Scottish Government website (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2008/09/29155946/0) and are announced in the national media.

Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics (SNS) is the Scottish Government''s on-going programme to improve the availability of small area statistics in Scotland. Members of the public can find out statistical information about their local community, including crime levels, by entering their postcode on the SNS website http://www.sns.gov.uk/. We are currently working with forces to update and enhance this for the 2009 Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.

Police Forces, Community Safety Partnerships and their local partners work hard to raise awareness of crime levels in their communities and reassure the public that these issues are being addressed. More information can be found on local authority and police websites.

The review of national antisocial behaviour policy is considering this issue in relation to antisocial behaviour and will report to Parliament in early 2009.

The first annual report of the Scottish Policing Performance Framework, which was published on 8 December 2008, will help ensure that the public and other stakeholders are better informed about how their police force is working to tackle crime. This can be found at:

www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2008/12/08094452/0.

The Association of Scottish Neighbourhood Watches promotes good citizenship and greater public participation in the prevention and solution of crime. The Scottish Government provides the Association with grant funding (£253,000 in 2008-09), and is supporting their award ceremony in April 2009 which will help raise awareness of local citizenship, crime prevention and community safety activity.

The Scottish Government also provides grant funding (£220,000 in 2008-09) to Crimestoppers Scotland. Crimestoppers Scotland regularly host campaigns to encourage the public to contact them with information on criminals or crimes. They also publicise their success at providing the police with information that leads to convictions.

The Scottish Police Service is committed to ensuring that local communities are fully aware of, and can influence, local crime-fighting activity through a number of initiatives and strategies, such as the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) Public Reassurance Strategy which can be found at:

www.acpos.police.uk/Documents/Policies/CRIME%20-%20ACPOS%20Public%20Reasurance%20Strategy%2010.09.07.pdf.

Where necessary the Scottish Government will raise awareness through public information campaigns, such as work which is currently underway to develop a campaign around the misuse of air weapons, firearms and replica weapons.

We have no immediate plans to replicate the Home Office scheme in Scotland, but will monitor the impact of this innovative approach to public engagement with interest.

The Scottish Government Justice and Communities Analytical Services Division has previously worked with Scottish forces on the development of the crime domain in the 2006 Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation which, through the Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics website, maps crime levels down to data zone level (geographical units containing between 500 and 1,500 residents), and are currently working with forces to update and enhance this for the 2009 Scottish Index.

http://www.sns.gov.uk/default.aspx.

This PQ was answered in the Chamber. The answer can be viewed in the Official Report using the following link:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/officialReports/meetingsParliament/or-09/sor0115-01.htm

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-18970 on 14 January 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.