Chamber and committees

This Government is committed to action to reduce reoffending and we are taking forward a range of measures to support individuals to break this cycle. These include:

• maintaining record levels of funding of nearly £95 million for Criminal Justice Social Work services to tackle reoffending and the causes of crime;

• investing an additional £4 million in 2016-17 to increase the use of robust community services which evidence shows are more effective at reducing reoffending than short prison sentences, and this funding continues in the budget for this coming financial year; and

• providing £15.5 million over 2012-17 through the Reducing Reoffending Change Fund to support third sector services delivering practical, one to one offender mentoring services to women and prolific young male offenders, a substantial advance in the support previously available across Scotland to those completing short term prison sentences.

From 1 April, our new model for Community Justice will come into effect. Statutory Community Justice Partners will jointly plan and deliver services to prevent further offending and support those who have offended to reintegrate into communities. This approach will strengthen the way services and communities work together to break the cycle of offending, reduce re-offending and ultimately make our communities safer.

The Scottish Government will consult on proposed amendments to section 12 of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937 (Cruelty to persons under sixteen) this year. New legislation will be brought forward in the current session of Parliament.

The Scottish Government consultation, "Electronic Monitoring in Scotland – A Consultation on Proposals for Legislation" closes on 19 May. A response will be published after that date.

The total number of individual instances of electronic monitoring in each Local Authority in each financial year of the current contract, which commenced in April 2013, are set out in the following table. An individual may have been subject to electronic monitoring on more than one occasion. Figures for 2016-2017 cover the period from April 2016 to February 2017.

The Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children, based at the University of Strathclyde, will provide a report to me on the early findings of the programme of action on neglect in the pilot sites, by 31 March 2017. These findings will be placed in the public domain.

As recommended by the Child Protection Systems Review, the Scottish Government has committed to working with Police Scotland to develop a flagging system on the national vulnerable persons database that will identify all children who are placed on local child protection registers. Preliminary work to develop this will begin shortly and we will work with Police Scotland to identify and address issues of access and data retention.

The national child protection policy will be published within 12 months of the statement. Support for the policy will be provided as part of the on-going child protection improvement programme.

The budget for child protection for 2017- 18 is £1.166 million. This includes funding for the child protection improvement programme and frontline support for projects that help vulnerable children and families such as the Partnership Drugs Initiative.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-05429 on 14 December 2016. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

Further to the information previously provided, an additional £1.5m has been allocated for distribution amongst the 32 local authorities to support bail services for women in 2017-18.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-07232 on 15 March 2017. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx