Chamber and committees

The contract price for phase two of the construction of the Scottish Crime Campus is £11,744,547.73 excluding VAT. Work is scheduled to start on the site on 21 February 2011.

The draft budget does not contain specific funds to finance the implementation of section 18 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010. The Scottish Government remains committed to ending automatic unconditional early release and officials have been in discussion with a range of interests to determine how we can implement this effectively in light of the spending cuts passed down by the UK Government. We will review funding under the spending review proposals for 2012-13 and beyond.

The government published its estimate of the cost of early release in the Financial Memorandum of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act 2010, which can be accessed via the Scottish Parliament website (page 122 onwards):

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/bills/24-CrimJustLc/b24s3-introd-en.pdf.

The Scottish Government remains committed to ending automatic unconditional early release and officials have been in discussion with a range of interests to determine how we can implement this effectively in light of the spending cuts passed down by the UK Government.

The Scottish Government remains committed to ending automatic unconditional early release and has taken action to make this happen.

 

Our assessment is that it would deliver a significant change to the way that the criminal justice system deals with offenders. This would include a potential increase in the prison population, all other things being equal.

The project to build the Scottish Crime Campus is being delivered through three separate main works construction packages. Contract 1, the enabling works; contract 2, the shell and core of the campus, and contract 3 the fit out.

Contract 1 is currently on site and due to complete in March 2011; contract 2 is due to be awarded shortly and is currently planned to be complete in February 2012. Contract 3 has not yet been advertised and its start and completion date remains to be confirmed but we expect the crime campus to be fully operational by mid 2013.

Planned expenditure in 2011-12 is £14 million. Expenditure in subsequent years is subject to contract and market conditions.

The Scottish Crime Campus is being funded by both the capital budget and key efficiencies and savings from resource budgets.

The available information is given in the following table.

Persons proceeded against for an offence with a domestic aggravator recorded, 2005-06 to 2008-09¹:

Police Force	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09
Central
Proceeded against	8	123	323	601
Convicted	8	108	288	547
Custodial sentence	2	9	20	60
Dumfries and Galloway
Proceeded against	185	210	252	282
Convicted	161	192	228	263
Custodial sentence	17	16	27	20
Fife
Proceeded against	21	23	52	102
Convicted	19	21	43	91
Custodial sentence	0	2	8	11
Grampian
Proceeded against	47	210	264	466
Convicted	39	192	235	430
Custodial sentence	4	15	13	15
Lothian and Borders
Proceeded against	598	748	776	961
Convicted	553	667	709	868
Custodial sentence	46	63	69	96
Northern
Proceeded against	117	234	300	370
Convicted	109	225	282	342
Custodial sentence	6	18	31	28
Strathclyde
Proceeded against	3,664	4,003	4,015	4,861
Convicted	3,117	3,514	3,500	4,275
Custodial sentence	351	374	434	524
Tayside
Proceeded against	319	325	329	309
Convicted	291	285	294	285
Custodial sentence	32	27	36	35
Scotland2
Proceeded against	4,959	5,876	6,311	7,976
Convicted	4,297	5,204	5,579	7,101
Custodial sentence	458	524	638	789

Notes:

1. The recording of offence aggravators has improved with time therefore caution is needed when comparing changes over time. 2005-06 is the first year where it has been considered that the use and recording of domestic abuse aggravator codes from the Scottish Government Court Proceedings Database has been of sufficient coverage to be used.

2. Includes a small number of cases where police force unknown.

 

The increases at the Scotland level outlined in the table above, between 2005-06 and 2008-09, are likely to be related to a 27 per cent increase in the number of incidents of domestic abuse that were reported by the police to the procurator fiscal, from 14,900 in 2005-06 to 18,800 in 2008-09. This change may be associated with a revised protocol between the Police and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (in December 2008) for dealing with domestic abuse cases - http://www.copfs.gov.uk/Victims/Abuse.

It should, however, also be noted that statistics dealing with court proceedings and recorded crime are not directly comparable as a person may be proceeded against for more than one crime involving more than one victim and there is the possibility that the crime recorded by the police may be altered in the course of judicial proceedings. Also a crime may be recorded by the police in one year and court proceedings concluded in a subsequent year.