Chamber and committees

The Crown currently has a system in place for alerting vulnerable victims and next of kin when a person convicted of a serious crime is granted interim liberation pending appeal.

The names of the five appellants and details of their crimes are, like the details of all other appellants granted interim liberation, matters of public record. The information is available from the Depute Principal Clerk of Justiciary at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh.As the Lord Advocate's Private Secretary and I indicated to you in our respective letters of 18 July and 13 August about the case of Richard Crawford, the prosecutor has no statutory right to be heard when the High Court is considering an application for bail from an appellant pending the determination of his appeal.

It is not for ministers to conduct investigations into the operation of the independent judiciary. Ministers and the senior judiciary correspond and meet from time to time on issues of common concern.

Procurators Fiscal have detailed instructions on the decision whether to oppose bail applications from persons accused of criminal offences but not yet convicted. These take account of factors including the seriousness of the offence, the criminal record of the accused, the risk which liberation on bail might pose to victims and witnesses, any factors which indicate a probability that the accused will fail to appear at court and the existence of any current bail orders. The decision on whether to admit accused to bail is a matter for the court.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is as follows:Prisoners are prohibited from writing about their own crime or past offences or those of others, except where such writing consists of serious representation about conviction or sentence or forms part of serious comment about crime, the process of justice or the penal system.

The available information on sentences given by the courts for drug dealing offences is given in Table 1.Table 1: Persons Sentenced by Scottish Courts for Drug Dealing Offences¹, 1997-2000

Main sentence	Calendar year
	1997	1998	1999	2000
Total	1,621	1,627	1,559	1,284
Custody	821	780	729	617
Community sentence	463	519	541	425
Monetary penalty	275	271	248	204
Other sentence	62	57	41	38

Note:1. Persons whose main offence was one of "drug dealing", defined as all drug offences except illegal possession.Information on the sentence lengths of those received into custody for drugs dealing is given in Table 2:Table 2: Direct Sentence Receptions to Penal Establishments of People Sentenced for Drug Dealing¹ by Sentence Length, 1997-2001

Sentence Length	Calendar Year
	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001
Total	795	767	758	677	801
Under 3 months	43	34	30	12	21
3 months to less than 6 months	173	153	159	108	112
6 to less than 18 months	240	248	195	189	260
18 months to less than 2 years	40	45	36	44	52
2 years to less than 4 years	126	151	172	166	160
4 years and over	173	136	166	158	196

Note:1. Persons whose main offence was one of "drug dealing", defined as all drug offences except illegal possession.

Information on the number of breaches of drug testing and treatment orders (DTTO) in the three pilot areas is detailed in the following table. This information is currently not available on a year by year basis.

	Orders Made (Non-Drug Court)	Breached	Orders Made (Drug Court)	Breached	Total Made	Total Breached
Glasgow	192 (from October 1999)	49	59 (from November 2001)	3	241	52
Fife	127(from July 2000)	17	4 (from August 2002)	0	131	17
Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire (from 12-01)	42(from December 2001)	8*			42	8*

Note:*Includes one order breached twice.For those orders breached, the following table details the action taken in each case:

	Order Revoked and Imprisoned	Order Revoked and Substitute Probation Order Imposed	Order Revoked and Warrant to Apprehend Issued	Order Continued	Revoked and No Further Action	Outcome Still Pending	Other	Total
Glasgow	14	4				29	5*	52
Fife	5	3	4	1	1		3+	17
Aberdeen	3			2			2#	7

Notes:*Five orders revoked and offender admonished (in the context of the offender having re-offended and receiving a further custodial sentence).⁺ Three orders deferred, reassessed and offender placed on DTTO.^# Two cases currently remanded for sentencing.Data on positive test results is not held centrally. However, given the nature of addiction, and the fact that the DTTO is not a total abstinence order, it is expected that offenders subject to the order are likely to continue to produce positive results for some time after commencing treatment. All test results are included in the report submitted to court by the supervising officer at the four-weekly review hearings. Sentencers in reviewing the offender's progress as part of the review hearing process will consider any positive test result within the context of the offender's overall circumstances and the appropriate action to be taken.An evaluation of the DTTO pilots including information on breach rates and test results was published on 3 October.

Expenditure on tackling drug misuse spans a variety of funding streams, administered by a wide range of organisations. The Executive does not hold all of this information centrally.At the end of 1999, however, the Executive's Policy Unit Review of Drugs Expenditure which is available at http://www.drugmisuse.isdscotland.org/publications/abstracts/PUDrugExpenRev.htm estimated that £141 million was spent per annum on tackling drugs - around £22.64 million on prevention, £53.77 million on treatment and rehabilitation, and £65.09 million on enforcement.In 2001-02, additional funding of £128.3 million over three years was made available for anti-drug measures. This included a £100 million funding package, announced in September 2000, allocated as follows:

Area of Spend	2001-02(£ million)	2002-03(£ million)	2003-04(£ million)	Totals(£ million)
Treatment	2	4	4	10
Rehabilitation	6.8	6.8	6.8	20.4
Training	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.6
Prisons	2.0	4	4	10
Training and Employment Bridges	1.5	2.5	2.5	6.5
Community Disposals	2	3.5	4	9.5
Young people and families	4	6	8	18
Schools Education	1.0	1.0	1.0	3.0
Youth Crime	0.0	0.5	0.5	1
Public awareness	2.1	2.1	2.1	6.3
Scotland Against Drugs	1.5	1.5	1.5	4.5
Social Inclusion Partnerships	-	2	3	5
Research	0.666	0.666	0.666	1.998
Local structures,	0.6	0.6	0.6	1.8
Management information and systems	0.5	0.5	0.5	1.5
Total	24.866	35.866	39.366	100.098

The balance of £28.3 million, which was announced in July 2001, was distributed as follows:

Area of Spend	2001-02(£ million)	2002-03(£ million)	2003-04(£ million)	Totals(£ million)
Enforcement	1.9	4.2	6.702	12.802
Pilot Drug Courts etc	0.2	1	1	2.2
Community Safety	-	0.75	0.75	1.5
Treatment	0.9	1.3	1.1	3.3
Scottish Communities Against Drugs	0.5	-	-	0.5
Children's Projects	0.5	0.75	0.75	2
Crown Office	2	2	2	6
Total	6	10	12.302	28.302

Decisions on expenditure in future years to 2005-06 will be made shortly, in the context of the 2002 Spending Review.

The average length of time for the provision of substantive answers to written parliamentary questions in the period 1 to 12 September in (a) 2001 was 19 calendar days. Of the questions lodged during period (b) and answered to date, the average time taken to answer them was 13 calendar days. As at 27 September, 87 of the questions lodged in the period 1 to 12 September were still awaiting substantive answer. I will write to the member with an update on performance once all outstanding questions have been answered. As with all outstanding questions, these will be answered as quickly as possible.

Prosecutors are present in court at all applications for bail that follow immediately upon conviction. Prosecutors are also present in court in relation to all bail applications heard in the High Court, because these applications are dealt with each day in the Bail Court and other cases in that court require prosecutorial input. Prosecutors will not necessarily be present in the sheriff court when sheriffs are considering applications for interim liberation. Prosecutors are therefore present at all post conviction bail hearings of murder, rape and culpable homicide.