Chamber and committees

As I outlined in response to a recent portfolio question S6O-00869 on 16 March 2022, the statistics reaffirm that the pandemic has had a significant impact on our justice sector, just as it has on every other sector in Scotland. The Scottish Government continues to support justice agencies to take action to address the court backlog, which was exacerbated by the pandemic, in common with many legal jurisdictions worldwide. For example, a recent Report from the UK Public Accounts Committee suggested that the crown court backlog had almost doubled since March 2019, to 60,000 of the most serious criminal cases waiting to be heard. The important point is that we have a plan and strategy in place—including an extra £53.2 million for a justice recovery fund in 2022-23—to move matters forward, recognising that unnecessary delays are not in the best interests of victims, witnesses or the accused . Answers to Portfolio Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at Meeting of the Parliament: 16/03/2022 | Scottish Parliament Website .

The Domestic Abuse (Protection) (Scotland) Act 2021 makes provision in two areas relating to protection for people at risk of domestic abuse.

Part 1 of the Act will provide additional protection for people who are at risk of domestic abuse by providing the police and courts with new powers to remove a suspected perpetrator of domestic abuse from the home of a person at risk through a scheme of domestic abuse protection notices and orders.

An implementation group including Police Scotland, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and Scottish Women's Aid is continuing to consider how to progress the necessary elements to allow for commencement of Part 1 of the Act.

The group is overseeing the development of training and operating procedures, legal aid issues, court rules and associated processes for courts’ consideration of applications for protective orders; including how input of views of relevant children can be provided to inform the court’s consideration of applications within the short timescales set by the Act, support for people for whose protection an order is made, any guidance that may be needed for those using the legislation and steps needed to monitor and evaluate the use of the legislation once in effect. It is also considering the impact on court programming of the new powers including the likely significant financial costs arising. Within this context the group is giving consideration to the timetable for when this Part of the Act can be commenced.

Part 2 of the Act makes it easier for a local authority or registered social landlord to transfer a tenancy to a victim of domestic abuse. This aspect of the Act is not directly linked to Part 1 of the Act. The steps necessary for implementation are being taken forward and include secondary legislation, changes to court procedures, forms and model tenancy agreements as well as working with stakeholders to develop statutory guidance. Commencement of the provisions and publication of the guidance on the social tenancy provisions is scheduled for the end of 2022.

The presumption against short sentences was extended from 3 months or less to 12 months or less in July 2019. While relevant sentencing data is being monitored, the impact of COVID-19 on court business means it is not possible to confidently identify and attribute cause to any trends in court disposals in the period monitored to date. Caution is also required generally in attributing changes in sentencing patterns to any particular factor.

A bulletin ‘Extended presumption against short sentences: monitoring information - January - December 2020’ was published on 23 March 2021 and is available at www.gov.scot . In addition, the latest criminal proceedings bulletin presents data for the financial year 2019-2020, which includes 9 months of sentencing data after the extension.

While there is no estimate in the reduction of people receiving custodial sentences as a result of the presumption, the criminal proceedings statistics show that between 2018-19 and 2019-20, there was a 13 percent reduction in the number of custodial sentences of 12 months or less from 9,585 to 8,324. The number of custodial sentence of “up to 3 months” decreased by 19% from 3,139 in 2018-19 to 2,551 in 2019-20, and is less than half the number ten years ago.

A final decision on the number of hubs has not yet been taken. A paper to the Restorative Justice Stakeholder Group, published on the Scottish Government website in 2021, set out a proposal to develop up to 6 administrative restorative justice hubs based on sheriffdom areas, and discussion is underway with our stakeholders and partners on this. The precise number of regional hubs in place by 2023 will be subject to these discussions and a range of factors such as level of demand, and cannot be confirmed at this stage.

As this requires several tables of data to answer, a response has been provided through the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 63198). Across all crime and justice-related statistics, house burglary is not identified separately from housebreaking. As such each table shows actual and attempted crimes for theft from a motor vehicle by opening a lockfast place, theft of a motor vehicle, theft by opening a lockfast place and theft by housebreaking, including housebreaking ‘with intent’.

Table 1 shows crimes recorded by the police between 2011-12 and 2020-21. We do not hold information on the number or percentage of these crimes that were reported to the police by the public. For information the Scottish Crime & Justice Survey includes estimates of how many property crimes were committed over 2008-09 to 2019-20, and the percentage of them that were reported to the police. Further information on this has been provided alongside the tables. All crimes presented in Table 1 will have been investigated by the police as a crime was recorded by them. Table 2 and Table 3 show the number and percentage of these crime types that were cleared up the police.

Table 4 shows charges brought by Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

Tables 5 and 6 show the number of people proceeded against and the number of people convicted respectively, for these crime types over 2009-10 to 2019-20, and the overall percentage is shown in table 7. The 2020-21 National Statistics will be published later this year.

Care should be taken when comparing different data sources relating to the criminal justice system. For example recorded crime statistics count crimes and offences at the time that they came to the attention of Police Scotland while criminal proceedings statistics report on cases which have concluded in court. This means that a crime may be recorded by the police in one year, charges brought and court proceedings concluded in subsequent years. In addition, a person may be proceeded against for more than one crime, or a set of crimes with more than one victim, in a proceeding, but only the main charge is counted in these court proceedings statistics. There is also the possibility that the crime recorded by the police may be altered in the course of judicial proceedings.

Transport Scotland officials engage regularly with CalMac and cover a range of operational topics including staff and crew not only for the Arran Ferry services but the whole of the Clyde & Hebrides Ferry Services network. I recently met with representatives of CalMac’s senior management team and discussed a range of issues including the Arran service.

Scotland’s Redress Scheme has been running for twelve weeks and Redress Scotland have begun to make decisions and offers of redress payments. As this process is in its infancy, completed applications and financial payments have not yet reached a level to enable us to disclose payment amounts without comprising the applicants’ data privacy.

It should also be noted that although determinations have been made, all associated payments may not yet have been processed as a fundamental aspect of the scheme is to ensure that applicants have suitable time, up to 6 months following determination, to consider the offer and seek legal advice prior to accepting any payment and signing any necessary waiver relating to their application. Further information regarding payments will be available in due course as more determinations are made, and in line with the reporting responsibilities included in the legislation.

At the time of response, there are 11 entries on the contributors list.

The list of contributors is a published list available on the gov.scot website and will be updated upon further contributors joining the scheme.

Scotland’s Redress Scheme: contributor list - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Funding for devices was provided to local authorities by the Scottish Government. As such, local authorities undertook their own procurement exercises and devices purchased became assets of, and are managed by individual local authorities. Decisions on their use, including around security, are taken locally.