Chamber and committees

That completes consideration of the two affirmative instruments. I thank the minister and her officials for attending the meeting.

I will keep the flow of questioning going by bringing in Mr Findlay and then Ms Mackay.

Thank you for that response. I know that Fulton MacGregor was keen to ask some questions on purposeful activity in prisons and the transition phase into the community.

Our next item is a round-table discussion on reducing youth offending, offering community justice solutions and alternatives to custody. I refer members to papers 5 and 6. We will take evidence in a round-table format from witnesses who join us remotely. I am sorry that you cannot join us in person due to the current rules on social distancing.

I warmly welcome our panel of witnesses: Fiona Dyer, who is the interim director of the Children’s and Young People’s Centre for Justice; Gemma Fraser, who is a senior reporting officer for recovery, renewal and transform at Community Justice Scotland; Ashley Cameron, who is a member of The Promise Scotland oversight board and who worked on the independent care review; Superintendent Colin Convery, who is from Police Scotland’s partnerships, prevention and community wellbeing team; Diane Dobbie, who is on Social Work Scotland’s justice standing committee; Professor Lesley McAra, who is from the University of Edinburgh; Dr Hannah Graham, who is a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Stirling; and Niven Rennie, who is the director of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit. We very much appreciate your time in joining us this morning. I thank the witnesses who have provided written submissions, which are now available online.

I intend to allow about an hour or so for questions and discussion. If witnesses wish to respond to a question, I ask that you request to speak by typing an R in the BlueJeans chat function. I will bring you in if time permits. If you merely agree with what another witness is saying, there is no need to intervene to say so. Comments that you make in the chat function will not be visible to committee members and will not be recorded anywhere, so, if you would like to make a comment, please do so by requesting to speak.

We will move directly to questions. As ever, I ask members and our invited guests to keep questions and comments as succinct as you can. I am keen to encourage as free flowing a discussion as possible.

I will start with a question for Gemma Fraser from Community Justice Scotland. I would then like to bring in Fiona Dyer, if I may. This morning, the Scottish Sentencing Council published a new proposed guideline on the sentencing of young people. If it is approved, the guideline will apply to the sentencing of all young people under the age of 25 and will require the courts to consider rehabilitation issues and the availability of a range of non-custodial options. I appreciate that members and witnesses might not have had a great deal of time to consider the guideline, but I am interested in whether our representative from Community Justice Scotland, in the first instance, welcomes the report. What difference, if any, would the guideline make?

If you have no more questions, Mr Findlay, I will pull the discussion back to Ms McNeill, who I think has some questions on the modernisation of the estate.

I think that we have lost the connection to Ms Medhurst.

Mr Purdie, could you pick up that question while we try to get Ms Medhurst back?

There were some questions earlier about drugs in prisons. I would like to jump back and allow members to ask some further questions about that. We will then return to modernisation for a couple of final questions.

Ms McNeill has touched on the issue of deaths in custody. I have a follow-up question, which should perhaps be directed to Hannah Graham. Do you have any concerns about deaths in custody or deaths following custody? That could involve delays in fatal accident inquiries, a lack of findings of concern or a lack of support following release. Is there anything that you would like to pick up on in that respect?

Thank you very much. I will bring in Ms Dyer, after which I will ask Hannah Graham to respond.