Criminal Justice Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Official Report 748KB pdf

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Priorities in the Justice Sector and an Action Plan

Our next item of business is consideration of the committee’s action plan. I refer members to paper 3. I intend to go through the paper section by section, just to confirm whether members have any comments, wish to make any amendments or, in fact, disagree with the assessments of progress to date.

The first section is on “The impact of COVID and recovery”. Do members wish to flag anything?

As members have no comments, we will move on to the section on “Prisons and prison reform”. It might be worth mentioning or including reference to the Promise, particularly in the part on women and children. In March 2022, there was an update on the Promise. Given that it is supporting young people who are care experienced and, ultimately, seeks to reduce the number of young people in care, it might be worth including that for reference.

I do not disagree with any of that.

I have a further point, which is about an update on the issue of young people being held in adult institutions. I am not sure what the current number is. I know that the number is always quite low, but it might be helpful to get an up-to-date number.

I recall that a commitment was made—I think that it was after I raised the issue in the chamber—to provide more analysis on the future of the barnahus model and the volume or capacity that might be required. That would perhaps kick off capital investment projects quite early on, which would be helpful given the timescales for that sort of thing. My understanding is that work is being done to provide some forecasting on that, which would inform decision making. At the moment, we have one barnahus, but I do not know whether that is one of three, five or 12, or whether that is it. That issue is not necessarily relevant to this year’s cash flow, but it is relevant to future years.

11:00  

It is valid to raise the issue of secure care and secure accommodation. I have recently had some local casework on the issue. There still seems to be disparity around how many places are available, who is filling those places and where the funding for them is coming from. Anecdotally, I know of providers of such services who claim that there is capacity in the system and do not understand why there are young people in the adult prison system. It seems to be a funding issue and a follow-the-money situation, so much so that they are taking people from south of the border to keep their head above water financially. That does not seem to make much sense. When we write to the Government, perhaps we could chuck that point in.

Thanks. We have taken a note of that suggestion so that we can follow that up.

It is clear that there has been considerable investment in the women’s estate, with the opening of the two new community custody units and the new prison in Stirling, which we are yet to see. Given what we know about women’s offending patterns and the different nature of the women’s prison population compared with that of the male estate, do we need to assess whether those new facilities provide more appropriate facilities for women? I wonder whether we should incorporate their special needs, healthcare issues—which we are aware of—parental responsibilities and medical needs into that assessment. Particularly once Stirling prison is open, I wonder whether we should review whether the women’s estate delivers on the objectives that have been set over many decades.

Thanks. Those are all relevant updates. I think that there is support from members for facilitating a visit to Cornton Vale once it is ready to receive visiting groups. We will pick that up.

This is perhaps not totally relevant to this section, but it is relevant to the action plan. I recently attended a meeting of the cross-party group on health inequalities, at which Wendy Sinclair-Gieben provided an update on the work to address health inequalities in prisons. She made the point that, in relation to the inspection work that she undertakes, her desire is that there will be an opportunity to undertake a review of the healthcare model in prisons, which members would agree is highly relevant to women. That is something to note.

The Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce has done quite a bit of work on recovery cafes for its report, but I do not see an awful lot of specific reference to recovery cafes. We should monitor progress on that action.

I have a comment rather than a request for further information. It is an observation on the report. The progress that has been made on in-cell telephony is a good news story. We will get regular updates on how it is being rolled out and its benefits, but any feedback on that would be very much welcome. It is a very good thing, and I congratulate the SPS on taking that forward.

Thanks. That is noted.

We will move through the action plan. We are on page 10.

“Residential rehabilitation”, which starts on page 7 and ends on page 9, mentions a variety of funding. Audit Scotland talked about that recently, saying in essence that there is a lack of clarity around how that money is being spent. Given that lack of clarity, there is a lack of ability to evaluate the effectiveness of that spending. I do not know whether that is the place for that point, or whether there is somewhere further on where it would be more relevant, but it is worth making.

We can note that and insert it at the relevant part of the action plan.

From recollection, the update report was in March last year, then there was a follow-up around October.

Okay.

I have one final addition, at the end of page 7, under “Residential rehabilitation”. There was a recent statement on residential rehab by the Minister for Drugs Policy—back in January this year, I think—which provided an update about an £18 million commitment to develop stabilisation and crisis care services and align those with detox and rehabilitation. We could get more information on that from the Official Report.

Are there any more specific issues around prisons and prison reform?

When I briefly popped out, did you cover recovery cafes?

Yes—as in, there was not much of an update.

I am looking for clarity on funding and on whether they would be a feature of every institution.

Okay.

We move on to “Misuse of drugs and the criminal justice system”, which is on page 17.

Convener, I thought that we were doing it page by page; my mistake.

On “Under 18s/Secure care”, which is on page 12, I welcome the fact that the committee will be looking at that aspect of the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill. I expect that the rest of the bill will go to the Education, Children and Young People Committee.

However, I also want to say at this stage that I have had a meeting with the hope instead of handcuffs campaign. Other members may have been contacted by it as well. It does work on the way that young people are treated during their transportation to secure care. It might be worth thinking about that campaign for an evidence session, around the time of that bill. I know that we will talk about that at another stage, but I just wanted to raise that and to encourage members to meet the campaign group.

I agree. That is a helpful suggestion.

I should declare an interest, in that I have also had a meeting with that group, as have others. It is very effective at lobbying.

I understand that there is a commercial interest behind the campaign. It is entirely appropriate that we note that. Nonetheless, to give it the benefit of the doubt, it has a genuine interest in the issue of transportation. This is certainly not the first time that the committee has raised the issue of the contract involved in that service, and some reservations have been expressed about it. To be fair, I put some questions to the campaign about the scenarios in which it would be entirely appropriate to restrain a young person—for their safety or the safety of staff and others around them—and I think that there is an acceptance that that possibility should remain in place.

Action needs to be based on evidence. If there is genuine evidence of inappropriate behaviour, that should come to our attention, but it should be a matter of public record rather than hearsay and gossip. If there are genuine examples of young people having been inappropriately managed, people should be forthcoming with those so that the Government can address the issue directly rather than it becoming an issue based on hearsay, in which we have no idea of the truth of the matter. However, the campaign made some valid points, which it is important to raise.

Thanks, Jamie. I am happy to look at an opportunity to do that.

This is just a small point. Page 13 makes reference to

“the Scottish Sentencing Council’s recently published guidelines for sentencing young people.”

I think that it would be better to be a bit more specific, perhaps by including a link. It should say the date when those guidelines were published and when they were brought into effect, because I am not entirely sure when that was.

I want to pick up on the issue that Fulton MacGregor raised about the use of handcuffs. I suspect that he knows far more than I do about the rules and guidelines that exist in terms of residential care in children’s homes and so on, but as far as I understand the issue, the regulations that exist in some settings do not exist in the transportation setting. It would be useful to have a briefing on that in order to get some detail on the issue before we start taking any evidence on it. I do not have the relevant background and I think that it might be helpful to the committee if, rather than ask witnesses about it, we were given copies of all the regulations that exist in various settings.

I wanted to raise an issue about remand, which comes up on page 13. It relates to some of the evidence that we have seen in relation to the Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill. The remand rate for women is even higher than that for men—the rate of male unconvicted prisoners approaches 30 per cent of the prison population while, for women, the rate is 35 per cent to 40 per cent. I was quite alarmed when I learned that.

I know that the committee has had difficulty getting data around offending patterns, and I think that it might be useful to incorporate in our work the idea that we need to have a better understanding of who is in the prison population, both on remand and in the general population. It would be good to be able to track the differences that occur over time. My impression is that there are now more violent prisoners and prisoners who have been charged with or convicted of serious sexual offences such as rape and child sexual abuse, including historic cases, but we need to have a better understanding of that. Perhaps that could be incorporated in the work programme, because trying to get that information has been like pulling teeth. I know that the Scottish Parliament information centre has tried to provide what is available but, without more information, it is difficult for us to scrutinise the situation.

I also want to highlight the differences between the male estate and the female estate. We need to have an understanding of both.

On the point about monitoring the remand population, your impression is probably correct. I am certainly happy to consider some work around monitoring remand populations outwith the scope of the work on the Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill, which will conclude shortly. I am happy to consider that point further, because it is clearly a pressing issue that we have been grappling with.

I have a slightly different point to raise on the remand issue. The box on page 13 begins by saying that

“Remand numbers are not falling significantly”,

but it ends by saying that

“the number of people held on remand has fallen by 9%”

within 12 months. Arguably, that is a significant fall. Perhaps the opening line could be reworded to be a bit less subjective. “Remand numbers remain steady” or something like that might be better.

That is a fair point to raise. The action plan is almost a chronology of developments, so I am not overly worried about the fact that the sentence does not seem to fit—things fluctuate and change as time goes on. However, if you would prefer an update, that is absolutely fine.

On that point, I agree that there is a contradiction in saying that remand numbers are not falling and then saying that they have reduced by 10 per cent. I appreciate what you say about fluctuations, but 10 per cent is quite meaty. I know that, if the Government were using that statistic, it would hail the reduction as a success and would not say that the numbers were constant.

The wider point that Katy Clark is making is that the information that is set out needs to be seen in context. That is, what is important is not just the fact that the numbers are falling but what is happening as a percentage of the overall prison population—that is an important measurement.

However, that does not really take into account two factors. The first is the crime profile of those who are being held on remand, given that the lion’s share of them are remanded on charges that would require solemn proceedings and are therefore more serious. It also does not take into account how many of the remand population of 25 to 29 per cent—the numbers fluctuate—are on remand because of delays to trials. I do not know whether it is 10 per cent, all of them, some of them or half of them. There may be a cohort of people who are held on remand but would not be had their trials come to pass. We need to be cognisant of that as well.

11:15  

I am conscious of the time, and we still have a number of agenda items to work through. We will circle back to the section on the misuse of drugs, which starts on page 17. There are no particular updates or additions to that, so I move us swiftly on to the next section, which starts on page 23 and is on violence against women and girls. If there is nothing that members wish to highlight on that, the next section is on victims’ rights and victim support, which begins on page 28.

Can I clarify something? I know that we are skipping through these sections quickly. For the record, I agree with all the suggestions in the last column, which makes points about what the committee could ask the Scottish Government, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities or the third sector to do. Because we are skipping past pages, it is important that we give the clerks our consent to carry on with that work.

I totally agree with that. Quite a lot is coming out of our discussion, so the clerks will update the action plan accordingly on our behalf. If members want to make any technical additions to the action plan, I am happy for them to contact the clerks direct with those updates.

The next section is on reducing youth offending. It begins at page 32.

We are heavily skipping pages now, but I wanted to raise the issue of access to court transcripts. I do not know where that fits in.

It is one of our coming agenda items.

I will shut up, then.

I have a point about youth offending and community justice solutions. We will probably discuss this in more detail when we talk about the Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill. The intention on the shift towards community justice under that bill is clear but those budgets are getting cut for the year starting in April.

The committee needs to examine how that money is spent and how even a relatively modest increase might reap rewards. I wonder whether we should consider incorporating that into the action plan. It is likely that the bill will be passed, but there is a risk that nothing will change unless there is a structural shift in where the money goes. We might want to monitor that more heavily than other areas that we are considering, particularly given that we have spent so much time scrutinising the bill.

Thanks, Katy. I am happy with that, and we have taken a note of that suggestion.

Where did we get to? We were on page 32. The final section, which is on page 36, is on legal aid.

I am sorry—we are skipping ahead. On deaths in custody, on page 34, are we content as a committee that that issue has been followed up by analysis of where the Scottish Government agreed with our recommendations? The Government pushed back and said that it had

“no intention to create an online centralised system where delivery of the recommendations can be tracked.”

Are we content with that response, or do we want to push the Government further on that? It is still a very live issue, unfortunately and tragically.

That is noted. We can follow that up to get an up-to-date position on that.

If there is nothing else, we will bring this item to a close. If members want to make additional comments on the action plan, I am happy for you to link directly with the clerks—if it is more of a technical update. I appreciate that we have worked through that quite quickly.

We will return to our action plan later in the year to see what further progress is being made to deliver on the recommendations and actions that we have set out.