Chamber and committees

Thank you very much for that.

Joanne, I get the impression from what has been said that it is not necessarily that the wrong people are being held on remand for the wrong reasons; it is simply that there are too many people on remand because the trials are taking too long to come to fruition, which has the knock-on effect of more people being on remand. Dealing with the backlog and getting those—[Inaudible]—to pass more quickly would, by default, bring down those numbers quite quickly. We should maybe consider that. Have you any views on what has already been said?

One of the problems with legislating to change the parameters of the grounds on which bail can be permitted or refused is that it is quite an all-encompassing approach. I do not know that it necessarily accounts for the nuances of courts. It applies to summary and solemn cases. It does not differentiate between domestic and non-domestic cases, nor does it take into account the nuances of specialist courts that deal with sexual abuse or drugs, or youth or female courts, for example. It is a one-size-fits-all approach to the changes.

My worry about that is whether it is the right approach. I wonder whether you might comment on that. Should a more nuanced approach be taken to legislating when we make changes to refusing grounds for bail, as the bill proposes to do? That is quite an open question, after which I might zoom in on some specific scenarios.

Thank you for allowing me to ask those questions, convener. I appreciate that, as I am conscious of time.

Those are problems that the bill does not address or fix. We know that the backlog and the amount of time that people are being held on remand awaiting trial is an issue. Another problem is the suspicion that defence lawyers might be saying, “Just plead guilty, because the sentence will be less than the amount of time you spend on remand.” People are still in the same environment, but they have fewer rights and options open to them, which is worrying.

Mr Mackie, could you go back to the original question? You will know, because you sit in a court, that courts deal with different cohorts of people in different ways, but the bill does not do that.

I am sorry to interject, but we are tight on time. From what I saw at Glasgow sheriff court on Monday, sheriffs consider such factors. They will consider, for example, whether the accused is a young person, a female or someone who has been declared as having mental health or addiction complications. Having a full-time job is clearly a factor in some cases, as is the mention of children or the fact that the person is somebody’s carer. Those are already factors, so why do we need to bake that into the legislation?

My final question is on a specific issue. If the changes in the bill come to fruition and the public safety consideration is the primary consideration for whether bail is granted or otherwise, what powers will the sheriff have to deal with the issue of repeat non-appearances? That has been specifically raised with us. There is concern that a person will simply fail to appear at future diets, and sometimes custody is the only way to ensure their presence at the trial, for example. If the sheriff has nothing up their sleeve to ensure that a person who, historically, has breached scheduled appearances on a number of occasions appears in court, they will not be able to do that. How do we deal with that?

Good afternoon, chief inspector. I want to follow on from that conversation around the duties on the police and enhanced responsibilities that result from an increased volume of people on bail. This was mentioned in the previous evidence session. We do not know how up to date the figures are, so perhaps the parliamentary research team could help us with this, but when I last checked, the figure was that one in eight crimes was committed by someone on bail. I do not know how many crimes that is, but it is a fair amount. Obviously, the police are the front line when it comes to dealing with reported crime. They are responsible—and not just for how the reporting is handled. We can talk about 101 calls until the cows come home—that is another matter for another day. You have to turn up to and deal with the initial report and, perhaps, arrest someone, potentially dealing with their custody over the weekend, for example. I will turn the phrase on its head: is it inevitable that if the bail population—rather than the remand population—increases, the number of offences committed by people on bail will also increase? Is that a wrong assertion?

That is entirely the answer that I expected from you. It is entirely appropriate that, if your workload is increased, the Government must rise to the occasion.

I have another question around monitoring. Let us say that there is a political decision to hold fewer people on remand, and so, subsequently, more people may be given bail—that is, after all, the premise of the bill. There may be additional conditions or increased monitoring, whether electronic monitoring or other forms of restriction of liberty. What role will the police play in that regard? Will the police have no role at all, with it being purely down to criminal justice social workers or other agencies to fill that role, or will the police have quite an active role with regard to those who are out on bail, who may be among that cohort of up to 20 per cent who reoffend while on bail? What duty do you have in relation to ensuring that public protection is paramount?

A few other things popped into my mind. How will we quantify that rebalancing, which I think is the word that you used, if we are shifting the balance of risk from one element of the criminal justice system to another—in this case, to the police? The financial memorandum is suitably vague in its analysis of that, beyond the fact that there may be a shift in the volume of people from those remanded to those who are released on bail. What work needs to be done ahead of the bill continuing its progress through the committee and Parliament to give you the satisfaction that the policy shift and rebalance will be matched by financial rebalancing?

They could be fixed externally.