 We have a Very good morning and welcome to the First Meeting of the Criminal Justice Committee in 2023 and I'd like to wish everyone a very happy new year. We have apologies noted this morning from Pauline McNeill, our first item of business today is an oral evidence session on the bail and release from custody Scotland bill which will be our main item of business over the next few weeks and we've got two panels joining mae'r unrhyw bryddsodol, Kate Wallace ym Llywodraeth, ac Ms Emma Bryson ym Sbheeghwch yn Sôl, a fydden nhw dysgu. Felly mae chefu rhesbysgol yr ysgrifennu mewn gandd iawn. Rwy'n meddwl y fairenodol, i ddweud o'n 60 minuc ar gyfer y cael今天的a gysgogart funding, ddim yn ies i ddweud gennym wrth gwrs ac rhywb bod, ac mae gennym yn bosbant i ddweud. I would like to move straight into questions and open up with a very general question, if I may. I'll come to you first, Kate. We thank you for the submission that Victim Support Scotland provided the committee. In your submission you set out your general concerns about the proposed provisions in relation to the use of bail and remand. I'm just wondering if you can update members on the details of your concerns particularly around the new test and then I'll come to Emma and bring you in on that. In summary, we recognise that remand, the proportion of people who are on remand has increased. We think that it's really important to remember what the purpose of remand is though. It's really important in terms of public and individuals, so individual victims and complainers safety. We are concerned that robust risk assessment has to take place in order to make sure that victims and complainers in public safety remains paramount. In essence, that is what we've been discussing and making sure that robust risk assessment adequate resources are in place. The right information is shared with the right organisations and risk assessments carried out by trained professionals. Ultimately, the right resources to supervise, monitor and support those individuals and the community. I think that that really summarises it. Okay, that's very much. I'll come in with a follow-up question in a moment, but I'd just like to bring in Emma to pick up on the same question, if you would. I'd like to start by saying first of all that I'm a representative of a very small organisation. We are three people working in a voluntary capacity, so we don't have the resources to carry out large amounts of research. What we do bring to the table, though, is the lived experience and the best interests, we believe, of victims and survivors, specifically of sexual and domestic offences, but more broadly, of anyone who's been the victim of crime. I think that I would echo much of what Kate's just said. We know anecdotally from many of the people that we support and represent that when it comes to bail conditions that the concerns and the experiences of victims are often not adequately considered. We have concerns about the frequency with which bail conditions are breached and the on-going impact that has on victims of offences. I could pick up before handing over to other members on the risk assessment process that Kate outlined and that victims of offences Scotland would want to see as part of the consideration process. Within the bill, the proposal is that criminal justice social work have a big role in informing bail decisions. I'm interested in your views on who else or which other organisations would be appropriate to participate in that process, particularly given the concerns that you've outlined for victims and the importance of their voice being heard in that decision-making process. Our concerns would be making sure that that risk assessment considers the safety of the public victims and complainers as paramount. To do that, it has access to the right information from the right organisations. That would include organisations that support victims currently. That does not routinely happen, as I'm sure you're aware at the moment. We believe that that is really important and that risk assessments are carried out by trained individuals. Yes, it will be challenging around the timescales for this, but given the profile of people who are currently on remand, the proportion increase in remand is not driven evenly across all crime types. It's driven very much by people who are on remand, accused of sexual offences and violent offences. Also, when you look at the figures for conviction of crimes whilst people are on bail, there are a significant number of people who are convicted of crimes whilst on bail. 11 people, for example, in one year were convicted of murder or culpable homicide and over 70 people were convicted of rape, sexual assault and other sexual crimes. That risk assessment process is really important and it's really important to include the experiences and insights from victims themselves. Thank you for that. Emma, do you like to come in on that? Certainly, with regard to risk assessments, the experiences of victims are often, as I said previously, not adequately considered. What we would say is that nobody is better placed to understand the specific risk posed by a particular offender than the person who's been the victim. That's especially true of domestic abuse. It can be difficult to prosecute due to the nature of the offence. Offences that happen behind closed doors are the same as true of sexual offences. We know victims who have been affected by domestic and sexual offences where the offender is on bail. We hear over and over again how, when bail conditions are breached, they are not necessarily acted upon. There seems to be quite a gulf between the theory of what constitutes a breach of bail and how that's supposed to be responded to and how that is implemented in practice, which can be really disheartening for victims and can cause many of them to disengage with the process to withdraw complaints because they feel that they are continually being retraumatised by a process that hasn't fully understood the harm that they may have experienced, but the on-going psychological impact it has upon them. We would like to see that taken account of more. We are welcomed to recognise that the psychological element is recognised by the committee, but we would like to see a specific focus on that in terms of how you respond to that and how you implement safeguards there. Thank you very much. There's a lot in that and lots of follow-up questions that we can ask, but I'm just going to bring in other members now and I'm going to hand over to Russell Finlay. Thank you, convener. Good morning. The intent behind this bill is to reduce remand and therefore increase the number of people who get bail. We already know that one in eight crimes are committed by those who are on bail. In your submission on page six, you say a direct quote, the unfortunate reality of more individuals being released on bail that would otherwise be remanded will mean an increase of individuals who commit crimes whilst on bail. We're also here later from some academics who addressed the same point in their written submission and they say that, let me just find this, that bail reform quote, need not be causally associated with increases in crime. Can you perhaps explain a bit further on that? There does seem to be a bit of a contradiction there. On the one hand, victims' organisations are saying more bail equals more crime and the data that already exists seems to suggest that that's the case. Some of this academic research or opinion appears to suggest otherwise. Can you explain a bit more? At the moment, you've got a significant number of people, as you've said, who are convicted for other offences while still on bail. Without any change to what is put in place around bail and supervision monitoring, management support, the logic tells you that there will be more people put at risk, there will be more victims of crime and there will be more lives ruined. However, there is an opportunity to change what goes on around bail in terms of supervision, management and monitoring. It will require a significant amount of resource. It will require a significant amount of different types of approaches that appear to me that we don't currently have in Scotland. The scale of people who are convicted for offences while still on bail tells you that what is happening on bail is not working currently. That is what the difference between those two statements is, with a different approach to bail supervision services for people with complex needs, closer management and monitoring and supervision, it perhaps needs not be inevitable. However, those services currently do not exist and we are in a situation where we are under huge pressure around resources across the country across all areas. Existing crimes that occur while people are on bail need not happen in a fully reformed system across the board. Potentially, and with a robust risk assessment based on ensuring that the bail is considered only when we can be absolutely certain that people are not going to be put at risk and where there is absolute certainty around adequate management and supervision within the community. Is that okay, or do we have time? It's about the electronic monitoring, as time served. On page 7 of your submission, it says that time spent in electronic monitoring should be no substitute for time that would have been spent in prison as part of a sentence. Turning to the submission from the academics, they suggest that the amount of time would be reasonable to treat two days spent on electronic monitoring as the equivalent of one day in custody at the time of sentencing. Is that a formula or a suggestion that you've come across before, or is that one that you agree with? It's not one that we would agree with, no. There are two completely different things, and a custodial sentence is completely different from electronic monitoring at home, so we would continue to disagree with others on that. If an individual is bailed but subject to electronic monitoring and then comes the time of sentencing, no real consideration should be given to the restrictions that they were under at the time. Consideration, yes, but reducing time spent in custody because of the time in electronic monitoring? Is that partly ideological or partly also because you do have offenders who play the system in prolonged proceedings, as we know, churn cases, and that can be considered a softer way of doing time? I guess that my response to that would be that there are two completely different things, and therefore should be treated as such. I would leave it at that. If you care to answer you can, but that seems to be reasonable. I want to go back a bit to something that you talked about earlier about the removal of restrictions and bail-in-solum cases. From your submission, I know that you opposed the repeal of section 23d, which means that it would be the same test for all offences. You talked about sexual violence and domestic abuse, so I wonder if you could expand a wee bit on that. Tell us what your opposition, your fears are about it and whether you would like to see the exceptions remain rather than be repealed. Emma, can I come to you first? When it comes to repealing section 23d legislation, we have concerns about that. Our understanding is that that was specifically implemented to address crimes that involve violence against women and girls, and we would really want to see legislation replacing that that offers again that specific protection to those types of offences. We fully recognise that domestic and sexual offences are the hardest to prosecute and the hardest to victim welfare. We feel that it is all the more important that any legislation that is in place is robust enough to recognise those very specific risks and harms that they face. From the victim's point of view, would that cause some alarm if that was repealed and they felt that we were just being treated the same as every other offence, despite the almost unique nature of domestic abuse and sexual offences? Exactly. We agree that those exemptions should remain. Any changes to what is there at the moment? Do you want to strengthen the exceptions? There are exceptions at the minute. We need to come back to you on that, so I do not think that we would have considered that. You mentioned earlier about the systems that would need to be in place around bail if that was going to work. I think that that is probably the crux of this legislation, if we are going to be serious about reducing our numbers and remand. What we do not want to do, which I think that you have both articulated, is to put people more at risk because there are not robust safeguards around. Are you able to tell us what you think that might look like? What bits of the bill do you think are good in that, or do you think that we need to go a bit further? How do you think that system might look around people who are on bail? From our perspective, I represent an organisation that supports victims of crime. From a victim's perspective, what needs to happen, which is not currently happening, is better communication with victims about bail conditions. Victims need to be satisfied that there is a robust system around managing an individual within the community in a way that they do not experience at the moment. Gathering information from victims to inform risk assessments, updating victims about bail conditions and letting them know and understand what that means. One of the other points that I was going to make is that in the bill around judges and sheriffs having to explain why remand is used, we also think that bail should be explained as well in terms of reasons, and that would be helpful for victims and others too. Given consideration to that, we need to make sure that those reasons are given. Any changes so clear understand about what happens when breaches and where that information goes. At the moment, the experience of victims is that that is extremely patchy. Victims often feel as though they are the people who have to police the bail conditions themselves. They often do not know what they are. They are often not given an opportunity to contest those bail conditions, even in situations in which it is making them or their children unsafe. From a victim's perspective, I can answer that question. I think that there will be other people who will be able to answer that question better in terms of the mechanisms that should be in and around the accused persons who would potentially otherwise be on remand. For us, it would be about transparency support going in to victims, gathering information, sharing that information and absolutely a robust set of measures around which means that victims and the public are kept safe. I will come to that in a bit more detail as well. I wonder how we might achieve that. If I go back to the provisions in the bill on input from justice social work, which I know you will be aware of, and it is a big part of the bill. Do you think that there is anything in there that perhaps at that stage, through those provisions, justice social workers could be bringing in agencies like yourself or other women's aid and other organisations that might be working with victims? Is that the way in? I do not think that that could be made a statutory duty, if you like, but is it something that could be developed in practice? Is that a thought of how that, what you have outlined there in a general sense, could be achieved? Yes, we would agree with that. Gathering information from victims themselves and complainers and victim organisations and feeding that information in through criminal justice social work in the way that happens in other countries should be done more routinely in Scotland. Do not get me wrong, it is not without his challenge. I know that. That is a piece of the puzzle that is missing at the moment and would be more helpful. We have examples of bail conditions that have not had any due regard to, for example, where victims reside and contact arrangements with children, that type of stuff that is putting people at further risk. That would certainly help to alleviate some of those issues. I would echo much of what Kate just said. From our perspective, we hear time and time again from victims where the offenders on bail are not informed, especially in a timely fashion when an offender has been released. The information is not given to them until after the fact, so they have no opportunity to prepare for it, no opportunity to put their own safeguarding measures in place if they feel at risk. We hear repeatedly that victims feel that their concerns, their specific concerns about the specific offenders, are not taken into consideration. I reiterate the point that nobody is better placed at understanding the risk that they face than the victim who has already been through that process. Victims' experiences are not a homogenous entity. They do not fall neatly into very closed categories. You certainly made reference to a holistic approach in your written submission, and we would all heartedly agree with that. When it comes to victims' experiences, there is sometimes a gap between the theory of what should happen when bail conditions are breached and what actually happens. We have one particular person who we supported who, when the bail conditions were breached by the offender approaching the woman in a public place, was advised by the police that she ought to stay out of his way. That is not how bail conditions are supposed to work. It is a similar question that I gave to Kate. I will dig in a wee bit more. Do you think that part of the provision around the powers for justice social work would be about whether there is a specific victim or specific victims? That assessment needs to address the plans around how that person can be kept safe. Does that make sense? I think that, understandably, you cannot tailor a plan for every individual victim, but the idea that risk factors is often treated as a bit of a box-ticking exercise and does not always take regard to specific risk factors. I keep coming back to domestic and sexual offences because they are the most difficult cases to deal with, but they are also the cases where victims suffer the most harm when bail is breached or when they are not informed in a timely fashion. The psychological harm that they suffer on-going long-term cannot be quantified. I do not know if it is a good time to come here or not. You will be aware that, in the legislation that is proposed, there is a new concept that is being brought in of public safety, which is not something that the criminal courts have dealt with before. There is concern that there will be a lack of clarity around that. Perhaps lots of court appeals argue about what that concept means and that it might be helpful if it was better defined within the bill. Perhaps if I come to Cape First, whether you think that the introduction of that concept is helpful and how you think that would be better defined, what have you got any thoughts on that? We do think that it is helpful that it mentions not only public safety, but individual complainers are victim safety too. Often, when public safety is thought about, it is thought about more generally rather than potentially some of the individual complainers themselves. For example, I think that it is useful to have both of those things included. Having it more clearly defined may be more beneficial. It comes back to that point around risk assessment and having a robust risk assessment. You will be taking evidence, I believe, in a couple of weeks' time from the risk management authority, where I am sure that they will have a view on that. However, it has been clear about harm and the type of harm. As Emma said, it has been clear around psychological as well as physical harm being included in that definition. It is helpful. It is about remembering what the purpose of remand is and not losing sight of that. One of the main purposes that it seems to us that is potentially strengthened within the bill is around public and complainer and victim safety. A greater emphasis on complainers. When you think that it might be appropriate to remand a person who is accused of a non-violent offence, you have spoken about sexual offences and violent offences. However, in terms of non-violent offences, do you think that the situations where remand is appropriate? I think that there will be others who are better placed to answer around that. Our view is that remand has a really clear purpose around the protection of the public and victims and complainers and that having a primary use around that is helpful. We could depend on how we define different types of crimes, but certainly if we keep that in our minds, there will be others who could potentially argue around the repeat nature and all the rest of it. The other thing to remember is that, in some crimes, index offences—you all know that in the committee—it is often, particularly in cases of domestic abuse and others, some of the index offences are shielded in a type of offending behaviour that is indicating that individuals may be potentially at risk. For example, Breach of the Peace has got such a massive catchall category and covers quite a wide range of different types of offending behaviour, so that is potentially to bear in mind as well. Also, the way that hate crime is defined would not necessarily be sometimes a crime of violence, but that would be another one that I would potentially have a concern about too much. In terms of the concept of public safety, is that something that you have had the opportunity to look at? If it was to be better defined, what would your thoughts be on that? Are you concerned that, if a new concept is brought in, that might make it more difficult for victims if there is a lack of certainty as to what the law is? We broadly welcome the idea of introducing an element of public safety, because, ultimately, from the general public's point of view, that is absolutely what I think needs to be stated. That is the purpose of it. The difference lies in when you are talking public safety, which is about keeping the general public safe from various forms of harm and the safety of individual victims and complainers. That is a very, very different kettle of fish altogether. To refer to the difference between violent and nonviolent crimes, I think that most people would agree that, when you are talking about violent crimes, they are recognisably more serious than nonviolent crimes. However, when you consider and again refer back to domestic offences, when you add coercive control into that mix, that is something that is such a real insidious offence that it can be very difficult to define. It can be very difficult to identify. If you have a victim reporting coercive control to the police or to another organisation, the things that they are afraid of, the actions of the offender that have placed them in a state of fear and alarm, can seem completely inconsequential to somebody outside of that relationship. Again, that is why I come back to the point about nobody has better place to understand the risks that they face than the people who have already faced them. Especially when you are talking nonviolent crimes, which I think for many people would automatically be considered as less serious, but in many cases can be more serious because the psychological harm that is inflicted is not as easily remedied as a broken bone or physical injuries. I was wanting to come in on every lease planning and ask about your submission. In terms of the new legislation coming forward, the aim is to support the successful reintegration of prisoners back into the community. That includes release planning and also through care. Do you think that the proposals that are being put forward in the bill are helpful? Would you like to see any other changes to reflect the interests of the victims? Have you seen any good practice in place in your own experience as well? The committee has heard me talk about release planning before and the example of emergency air release where there was no information sharing whatsoever with victim support organisations and victims to help to prepare them for a situation where an offender was being released into the community and the catastrophic impact that that had across a wide range of organisations and individuals. I think that, although we welcome the attempt in the bill as it is currently drafted, we have its contingent upon a complete review of the victim notification scheme and the changes being implemented at pace. I would say that there are some intricacies of how information would be shared and how it could be shared and how that would work. I think that we would want to work through in a bit more detail. We welcome the attempt to consider some of those issues in the bill, but we think that there is further work to be done to ensure that that works in practice the way in which it is attempting to be drafted. One example of that is that, at one point, it says in the bill that information can be shared with victim support organisations, regardless of whether or not a victim has agreed to that. There may well be a very good reason for that, but there are unintended consequences of sharing information with organisations where victims have not necessarily consented to that information being shared. Also, our experiences of criminal justice agencies sharing information with third sector organisations is not good, so we would have concerns that, in practice, there would be quite a few barriers, particularly from organisations such as Police Scotland, for example, that more than has been anticipated, so we would have to work through all that to make that reality. In terms of good practice, there are some examples in the Caledonian project, for example, around domestic abuse, where information is gathered from victims to and they are an integral part of that programme. There is another domestic abuse organisation that has information shared with it prior to release on bail, but the issue that we have with that is that those are probably the only two examples that I can give you. It is in no way widespread across the whole country that that type of approach that we would expect. From my perspective, what I would like to see is that I absolutely get the point around making sure that support and services are in place for people being released from custody and that that happens quickly, and that they are ready there. That has to be mirrored for victims too, so we have a justice strategy that talks about trauma-informed and person-centred approaches. To me, that means that we should be preparing people earlier, victims, for people being released. We should have support in place for them prior, at the point of and after release, and there should be really clear mechanisms in place for sharing information, for example, when things go wrong. Ultimately, if those things are working in the way that I have just laid out, ideally you would end up with less victims on an on-going basis and less people traumatised than has happened currently. This side of things is not something that we have a great deal of knowledge or experience in, but I would like to make just a few comments. It is around victims being informed. I would completely agree with Kate on the point about information sharing being absolutely critical. I think, again, for victims who, when offenders are due to be released, the more warning that they have, the better, the better prepared that they can be. Our experience, again, speaking to victims, is that they often feel throughout the whole criminal justice process that they have no agency, decisions are made on their behalf, actions are taken, that they often feel that their rights and interests aren't really at the heart of all that. When it comes to prisoners being released, it is all the more important that the people who have been affected by their offending in the first place are placed front and centre, of being kept informed, of being kept up-to-date, of making sure that they have the support that they need. When it comes to trauma-informed practice, it is a phrase that is bandied around quite freely. We would like to see it applied a little bit more specific to individual traumas. It is very much a catch-all phrase. Trauma takes many different forms. I think that everyone who has experienced trauma experiences it uniquely and the consequences that it has for them are also unique. The idea that a one-size-fits-all approach is not always appropriate. On the basis of release planning and through care, the view that there is going to be a third sector approach will be purposeful activity. There will be activities in order to get them to reintegrate into the community, but the other thing is that our whole justice system is around the actual punishment and rehabilitation aspect of that. You talk about safeguarding and early reforming. However, having worked with the victims at the moment in terms of rehabilitation, are there any reassurances or reassurances that, when they do start to release planning, they are coming out of prison, that there is a proper rehabilitation programme in place and that there is no re-offending again? If I can just take that first of all, victims that we work with will say that they are looking for a justice system that is robust and that is going to keep them safe. It is also going to ensure that what has happened to them does not happen to anyone else. That is not the experience at the moment. I have talked about the convictions whilst on bail. That tells you that there is a problem. Getting a balance between justice and rehabilitation so that appropriate programmes are put in place to ensure that people do not re-offend, along with some other root causes and fundamental services that may need to be in place. The fact is that, when you look at the remand population for victims to have confidence and alternatives to remand, you are looking at scaling up a significant amount of resource capacity, expertise and, frankly, services for people with complex needs that I do not think in this country we have currently got at the scale that we would need. At the moment, victims are expressing a deep concern about their own safety and other safety without all those things being put in place. I agree that rehabilitation and proper resource rehabilitation, whether in custody or in the community, is an absolutely crucial part of that. Some of that will be about addressing specific offending types of behaviour. We have talked about this before in relation to, for example, the stalking and that very obsessive type of behaviour. I am going to use an example. Unpaid work, for example, is a response to that without anything else, and it is unlikely to make any impact for those individuals. Emma, do you want to come in on that? I do not have anything to add to that. I wonder if I can maybe just come in following up on some of the questions that Collette Stevenson has been asking about. In relation to communication, in particular, with victims, you might be aware that the committee had a private session with survivors. One of the things that came through to me loud and clear was the rather mixed picture that exists in terms of contact and communication between, in particular, the courts, while a case is being processed and a victim, in order that they are clear what is happening and can plan their life and their family's life around that. I am interested in what opportunity you might think the bill provides. We are obviously focusing on bail, remand through care release, but a really key part is communication with victims. Is there an opportunity for the bill to provide an opportunity to improve the way that lines of communication exist? How would you like those lines of communication to be improved? I have outlined some of that earlier on in terms of gathering information from victims to inform risk assessments. There is reference around the reasons for refusing bail. My view is that we should be giving reasons for granting bail, and that would be really helpful. Communication around release, some of which are picked up in here, but there is some more work to be done on that. However, all of that needs to be done within. It is unfortunate in terms of the timing around the victim notification scheme review. If that had happened earlier, we could have been having this conversation around the recommendations from the victim notification scheme review, because I think that a lot of what you are describing falls into that category. There is some attempt being made in here, and I can recognise that. It is about how it is going to work in practice. We were very grateful to the committee for taking the time to discuss with victims directly, and I know that they were to express that to me. Thank you for that. However, information around bail conditions, when those bail conditions change, breaches of bail and those kinds of things are not routinely shared with victims at the moment. Anything that can be done to strengthen that would be enormously helpful, because what you have said is that people who are completely unaware of the risk that is around them and where you will have heard those examples of bumping into people in the supermarket or somebody appearing outside your house when you were not expecting it because you did not know that things had changed. Even where you had been in some cases told that bail was going to happen and then it does not, for whatever reason, not being aware of that and not being able to take steps around your own safety accordingly in your family's safety, so strengthening those types of communications and information would be helpful. I will bring in Emma Cynon, again going back to the sessions that we had. I was quite surprised, but one of the people that we spoke to spoke about how she received a lot of information from the police. In your view, who should have responsibility to communicate with a victim, particularly around, say for example, the outcome of a bail appeal or a bail review and some of the other decision making that takes place? Who feels best positioned to have responsibility for that role or does it, I suppose, stretch across different organisations? The complexity at the moment is the different types of bail as well, so I think that that does not help. If someone has already been supported by a victim support organisation, working with that organisation can be enormously helpful. One of the challenges that people have expressed to us is information being shared with them. First of all, there is a problem of information not being shared with them at all. The other problem is when information is shared and being shared in a way that is anxiety-provoking and that is not helpful for them to understand. You have heard some of those examples yourself, so the very cold clinical letters that come in, we are still getting examples of those letters coming in on a Friday afternoon. Nobody around to be able to phone to ask for help. We would advocate, from a trauma informed perspective, I do not think that there is one single answer to that, apart from a clarity around roles and responsibilities asking victims for their preference where they can do that. For some people it might be that they do not want to be contacted directly themselves, but they would prefer a victim support organisation to be contacted first, who can then share that information with them in a way that may well be face to face and may not be a letter at all. The other challenge with letters, for example, is that you do not know what is in it until you have opened it. I gave the example before, you do not expect people to open a letter given them a cancer diagnosis without putting in a whole raft of support for some people now, because of the trauma that they have experienced that Emma has explained. The impact to opening a letter telling them that somebody is potentially already out, which is what can happen, can be pretty catastrophic. So making sure that there is choice, control, people can choose around that and can pick what the best options are for them. I would love to give you an easier answer to that and a more simple answer to that question, but I do not think that in a trauma-informed justice system there is and I think that the important thing is about making sure that information is shared and that it is shared in a trauma-sensitive manner. That is helpful. Different modes of communication are something that I certainly have not thought about, but I absolutely understand the value of that. When it comes to communicating with victims and witnesses in terms of court outcomes and bail hearings, anecdotally we hear from victims that this can be done in lots of different ways. It can come from different sources. It can often come from victim support or directly from the police. Sometimes the information is not imparted until after the fact, as referred to, which immediately puts the victim in a state of fear and alarm because the person that has presented a risk to them previously is unexpectedly free and they have to accommodate that. I think that the way in which information is passed on and who it comes from can make a huge difference. If you have a nominated support worker who is happy to receive that information and take the time to sit down with you and explain to you what it means, that is really helpful. Quite often when information is passed on to victims it is not explained. When it comes with legal terms or being told that bail conditions have been applied but not explaining what those bail conditions mean or how they work, all of these things, when they are done right, and there are lots of examples of good practice out there, when they are done right they can have a hugely positive effect on victims, when they are not done right, when they are not done in a timely fashion, when key information is not explained or imparted or done so through an unexpected letter in the post. It can be really, really damaging. We recognise that there isn't an easy answer to that. Again, it's not a one-size-fits-all scenario but it certainly does need to be considered and we would like to see a higher priority placed upon how and when victims are informed and adequate explanations being given for the information that is being passed on as well. Just to talk about the actual impact of that, I've spoken to this committee before about safeguarding and around suicides for victims and their families and this is a really important implication of not communicating effectively. I'm sitting here with a briefing that's given me a number of examples of where victim support has had to phone emergency services to attend because we've received a phone call from someone who's been so traumatised about a letter coming through the post that they've then opened, not knowing what it was before they've opened it, that they've attempted to take their own life. We've seen an increase in those types of safeguarding concerns right from the beginning of the pandemic but it hasn't really gone back to the levels that we would have normally had pre-pandemic, which is a big concern, but that's the real life impact of not taking a trauma-informed approach around communication and not taking care around it. In that briefing that I've got here, cold clinical letters that organisations think are doing what they should do because they're factual and they're factually accurate are having a massive impact on people's mental health to that degree. I just thought it was important to bring that back in given that we've got those examples. That's helpful and unappreciated. Okay, any other members have any? Jamie? Thank you. Thank you, convener. Good morning and thank you for your written submissions. I'd like to focus on the bill itself. I appreciate there are many more wider issues that we could be addressing as a committee, but for all intents' purposes, the limit time that we have, I'm keen to extract as much from you about the bill and its content. I'm focusing first of all on part one of the bill, which obviously is around the narrowing or restricting the parameters around which the bill can be granted. Now, I presume the Government would argue that our remand population is too high. Others may attest to that and agree with that point and they would argue that the bill as currently drafted would in all intents and purposes meet its obligation to reduce remand population. In fact, the financial memorandum of the bill itself estimates that it would lead to around a 20 per cent reduction in the remand population which on current figures equates to around 1,800 people extra or additionally being released to, otherwise, would be remanded in the current system or status quo. On the face of it, the bill meets its objectives. First of all, would you agree or disagree that the remand population is too high as a matter of principle philosophically? Secondly, would you agree or disagree that the bill meets the objective of reducing remand population but does it do it in a way, as currently drafted, bearing in mind, that also meets the needs of victims? I'll maybe start with Kate. On the remand population, one of the key things that we need to remember is looking at what is driving. The remand population has increased, that's true, but the profile of people who are in prison has changed over time in Scotland. I get a wee bit frustrated because people forget about presumption against short sentences in Scotland, so presumption against short sentences, as you know, has meant that people who would have otherwise been in prison for sentences of less than 12 months are on the whole not there in as many numbers as they would have been before. That changes who is in prison. Overall prison population numbers are down considerably to what they have been in the past. When you look at what's driving the remand increase across the proportion of people on remand was going to go up because of the presumption against short sentences category being removed, but when you look at the actual numbers, the increase in the remand population is being driven by people who have been accused of sexual offences, which increased over 20% to the year 2021-22, and people who have been accused of violent offences, which went up by nearly 10%, it's not, as I said at the beginning, it's not even across all the different crime types. So when you consider that around 60% of people who are on remand in the most recent figures anyway are there for either sexual offences that they've been accused of or violent offences, then I think that paints a different complexion on who's actually in prison on remand. So that's something I think to consider. And as I said at the beginning, I think what we are saying is that remand has a purpose, and as long as we're really clear about that purpose in terms of public and victim and complainer safety, then remand will continue to have a place bail. And in terms of the use of bail, we've talked about this earlier on this morning about making sure that people are protected and that there's robust risk assessments done when considering the use of bail, but there are considerable numbers of offences that people have been convicted for whilst they've been on bail for other offences. So that is something that has to be borne in mind as well. And as I said, in 2019-20 there were 11 people convicted of murder or culpable homicide whilst they were on bail. There was over 70 people convicted of either rape, sexual assault or other sexual offences whilst they were out on bail. And there was 189 people convicted of either attempting murder or serious assault while they were out on bail. So that's the kind of context in which we need to consider around remand. And as I said earlier on, if the public and victims are to have confidence in reducing that remand population, then the alternatives have to be based on robust risk assessment and have to be in place with the adequate services for people with really complex needs, management, supervision and assurances that those services will be in place to keep people safe if we're going to use alternatives to remand. I mean, just sort of just for a brinket, amen, sorry. I'm just reading between the lines. You're saying that it's not simply the case that too many people are just being chucked in prison on remand. It's actually that the profile of those who have been remanded has changed drastically in part due to presumption, in a short sense, but also the nature of the crimes and certain types of crimes increasing. Therefore, those people really should be on remand and those are decisions that are best made by judges under the current system. Of course, part one of the bill goes to great length to narrow the parameters in which judges can make those decisions. So I may ask you both about your concerns about that. Equally looking at part one of the bill, it really, as far as I can see, doesn't do the second part of what you're asking for, which is saying that if you do let more people out, then you must also encounter strength and bail conditions and the enforcement of bail conditions and the communication with victims around that, because this element of public safety is such a wide scope. It doesn't necessarily take into account some of the secondary types of crime and an abusive behaviour that may result from someone being billed. I personally can't see anything in the bill that addresses any of that or strengthens any victims right. So I wondered if you had spotted any, and for our intents and purposes we have to amend this bill where possible, what should be going into it. So I'll throw that out there because I'll bring Emma in and feel free to come back to you, Kate. In terms of the use of remand, I think that the public perception would very much be that in the interests of public safety, where someone's guilty of committing an offence, the idea that they are removed from society keeps everybody safe. In reality, obviously, it's not practicable to lock up everybody who's committed offence, and neither should we. The reference to the prison population where you have a real prevalence of offenders who have committed sexual and violent offences, arguably they are the most serious offences that the victims experience or that the public would have concerns about. Quite rightly so, they should make up the majority of the prison population. I think we have concerns again around that narrowing, limiting the restrictions. I think we certainly have concerns about repealing section 23C, because it was specifically intended to address violence against women and girls, we would very much like to see something replace that. More generally, in terms of what changes could be made to the bill, I think that we would like to see something a little bit more explicit in terms of what rights are afforded to victims, what victims can expect in terms of information being passed on, in terms of support offered. When they've been a victim of really serious crimes, I think that that would definitely be a benefit, I think, to most of the people that we represent. Do you think there's maybe a view that the judiciary is already quite well placed to make these sorts of decisions based on information that's available to them, and why an Afro politician is tinkering with that independence? I think that, yes, to a degree the judiciary are absolutely well placed to be making decisions about these things, but I think what we would argue is that that element of discretion is really important. If you start narrowing, if you make those restrictions even more limiting, I think that you've made reference to in your written submission, that does increase the risk to victims kind of more broadly, and that's something we feel should be avoided at all costs. I'll come back to you, Kate. I suppose that I'd flip it round. We have no issue with, and the victims that we support, we have no issue with, remand being used for individuals who need it in order to keep victims or the wider public safe and secure, and having that as a key focus. What we do think is that victims' voices should be heard by criminal justice social work in a way that they're not currently a decision maker prior to any decision being made on remand or bail, and we think that victims and complainers should be consulted on any bail conditions as it will have a direct impact on them. Perhaps I'll more answer your question. Victims and the wider public safety, we believe, should be the primary consideration when making remand or bail conditions, which is not just quite exactly how the bills were deed at the moment, and also, in answer to your earlier question, robust action being taken to protect victims of crime when bail conditions are breached. Crucially, that information making its way back to sheriffs and judges in a way that it's not happening currently, which is an impact on the decisions that they're able to make, and we're very well aware that we're discussing remand and bail here, so what we're talking about is people who are being accused of crimes, as opposed to those who have been convicted of them, so removal of people's liberty at that stage is not to be taken lightly. You can still in Scotland be bailed for any being accused of any crime, including murder, so that's worth bearing in mind. Another thing I wanted to say was just that victims of crime, it's really important that and complainers are kept up to date with any changes in terms of conditions that have been attached to bail, and that they can request changes to conditions, so sometimes default conditions are put on that are completely inappropriate in individual circumstances, and at the moment the justice system in Scotland doesn't afford victims the ability in the same way that it does to accuse persons to be able to impact and influence bail conditions, so that's something that could be addressed, Jamie, I think, in terms of the questions that you're asking, and then the last point is just what we've been discussing around making sure that information is passed to the right people, and that there's clear protocols in place for that, particularly for victim support organisations, where, as I say at the moment, information sharing between statutory organisations and some of the criminal justice agencies and institutions to third sector organisations is not done well at all. That's fascinating, I appreciate times very tight, convener, but there's so much to cover, and I haven't even started on part two of the bill, but I know, but thank you for your time. The problem is that at the moment section one really only suggests that input from justice social work will inform decisions around bail, and we haven't even delved into the implications around resource and time and what effect that will have on, but there's nothing in there really that I can see that says that victims have to be consulted or that their voice or views will be heard. I wonder if the panel is aware of Kay's law, which has been introduced in other jurisdictions, which actually flicks the emphasis on to consultation with the victims of the crime of which the person is accused, as a primary factor in consideration of whether bail is granted, and then the circumstances and needs of the perpetrator are taken into account. Is that a better balance, do you think? I think that victims should be consulted and information is a laid out, and what I said earlier, that information should be sought from them, yes. As I said, if bail conditions are breached, then information should be shared back with them too. I think that what we would say is that, again, we hear time and again from victims, that when it comes to the criminal justice process, in terms of making statements, giving evidence, providing information that is necessary in order for a prosecution to go ahead, victims feel that they are an active part of that, and their experiences are being taken into account. Once that side of things has been dealt with though, they will more often than not feel completely surplus to requirements. A lot of that is around information not being passed on in a timely fashion. That does happen time and time again. More generally, it's about the fact that the purpose of a victim in a criminal justice process is to provide the relevant information in order for charges to be made or a prosecution to go ahead, but their wider wellbeing and their importance to the process isn't considered. We would argue that they should be held at the heart of the process. They are the reason that criminal justice procedures go ahead, because they have given off themselves in terms of making statements, talking about the things that have happened to them, and they do that in many senses. Victims often will report offences, not just because something has happened to them, but because they recognise that, by reporting an offender, they are effectively protecting other members of the public, and then to be treated as if their experiences are no longer important because they have given a statement or that their concerns are not addressed or that their safety is not considered. They are really damaging. I think that, just to make that point, the experiences and the voices of victims really ought to be at the heart of decisions, certainly around bail and remand anyway. That is a very nice summary. I have to say that the evidence that we have taken from survivors is quite horrific in the way that perpetrators are flaunting the system and abusing the system, even whilst on bail, to further traumatise the victims. That is certainly not being dealt with. I am just up with the benefit of time. Rather than asking lots of questions on part 2, would it be more suitable to perhaps write to the witnesses? I feel like we are listening a lot more in this session than we would get perhaps in written submissions. I will leave it there then. That is just the back of 11 o'clock. I think that we will just draw this session to a close. Thank you very much, Kate and Emma, for your contribution this morning. We will have a very short suspension to allow our witnesses to leave. Our next panel today consists of Dr Hannah Graham, senior lecturer in criminology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Stirling, Professor Fergus McNeill, Professor of Criminology and Social Work at the University of Glasgow, and joining us online is Professor Leslie MacCara, chair of Pynology at the University of Edinburgh. It is a warm welcome to you all. I am just going to move straight on to questions if I may. We will have around about an hour or so. I wonder if I can just open up with a general question and refer to the joint submission that yourselves Hannah and Fergus submitted to the committee and kick off with a couple of questions around your comments on the grounds for refusing bail. In your submission you say that the proposed two-part test for grounds for refusing bail, centering on public safety and risk of harm, is reasonable and it is constructive that safety considerations of complainers are acknowledged within this. Obviously, we have just heard evidence from Victim Support Scotland and we are keen to put victims' voices at the heart of the process of considering bail. Given the context of the comments that you have made, what further comments have you given what we have heard this morning? Start off with you, Hannah, and then come to Fergus, and then I will bring in Leslie. We would contextualise our written evidence by saying that we have said that it is a step in the right direction and expressed the belief that a test of public safety can be developed that understands public safety and risk of harm, including the safety and risk to complainers, but also in the first paragraphs of our submission we have also said that suggesting that the bill as put to the parliament is sensible and constructive in the right direction of travel certainly does not negate perhaps the need for more focus scrutiny, the detail being thrashed out, amendments being proposed and I think the public safety test based particularly on what we have already heard from multiple panels of witnesses last year and this morning there are some very sensible points being made by people to say we need to have a better understanding. The written submissions of the judiciary also point out that there might need to be more clarity otherwise the point has been made that there could be appeals if there was a lack of clarity or there could potentially be decision making in a direction that is I could say risk averse but I say that with an empathy for that in a way to say if you're not sure what could be going too far because it's not clear you might then decide in the way and it might have a potentially counterproductive outcome to the policy intent of the bill and actually not necessarily result in reductions in remand and my increase by a refusal so clarity is precious and my own personal view our focus can add to it is that more detail is needed it would be helpful for those it's a legal question around the public safety test but it has very real consequences for people with lived experience for the accused, for victims and for the wider community in Scotland so more detail would be helpful on the parameters because it is a potentially restrictive aspect of the bill so for it to achieve its policy intent you need to be clear for the courts to interpret that I would try to be brief I mean I would say listening very carefully to the last session is a lot in that evidence which is obviously compelling and for me I find myself most strongly in sympathy with the comments made about information and communication those to me strike at the heart of the question of victims interests in and need for procedural justice that takes them seriously that attends to their interests and concerns and that doesn't just use them as sources of evidence for the purpose of securing criminal convictions so I think on on all of those considerations I was very much I would align myself very much with what was said but I think that there are there are two caveats I would add just as reflections on on the previous session and actually more broadly having looked at the deliberations of the committee today and read the record and also read some of the submissions first of all unintentionally I think there's a false dichotomy created when we start talking about victims and offenders as if they're two separate groups of people I'm sure Leslie could speak to this from her research better than I can but if you look at the prison population compared with the general population you'll find disproportionately high rates of victimisation trauma and violence inside prison rather than outside so we should be really careful here when we're talking about the interests of victims that we need to think about that in a broader sense so I want to resist the false dichotomy and with respect to bail decisions on remand it's important to remember that we're talking largely about accused persons not offenders strictly speaking when we're considering remand not it's also worth remembering that prison imprisonment whether for remand or particularly in relation to short sentences is not a magic box that removes or eliminates risk and keeps us safe it's actually more likely to serve as an incubator of risks and therefore it stores up problems of harm that might come later so to get to the point about the test the public safety test I think what the legislation is trying to do if I'm reading it correctly or reading the intention behind it is draw a distinction between a current system which asks judges to think about the risk of reoffending which is a judgment of likelihood but doesn't really take into account or consider gravity and a system which is more preoccupied with gravity with seriousness and actually much of the evidence discussed in the last session was about serious harm in relation to gender-based violence sexual offending and so on and the legislation isn't aiming to reduce the use of remanding cases where those kinds of risks exist so I think it's important to try and be clear about the the shift from likelihood to gravity and maybe this is something that the committee could ask the cabinet secretary or senior civil servants later but that that's my understanding of what the effect of the legislation would be it shifts the judgment from mere likelihood of an offence to consideration of the likely gravity of the offence and its bit of an effect a reoffence and its potential impact yeah I'll stop there sorry okay thanks very much indeed and I'll just come straight to you Leslie to pick up on that and maybe also and pick up on the points that Tim Fergus made earlier so over to you okay thanks so I I would say I very much welcome the intent of this bill and listening to Kate Wallace in particular who was talking about the need for robust decision-making making that will enable safety and that will actually not harm others and will for me I think that the intent behind the bill is is a good one I think the notion of having very strong information robust risk assessments in bail decisions is a very welcome one so I welcome those aspects of this bill devil of course is in the detail in terms of how it will be interpreted how public safety will be interpreted but I do agree with fergus that the intent to shift more towards looking at the gravity and the potential risk in a more robust way in bail or remand decisions is something that actually will in a sense forward the wishes and intentions of our previous witnesses through this committee at the devil is in the detail in terms of how it will work in practice and whether social work justice social work will have the time and resource needed in order to be able to furnish those robust risk assessments and provide robust supervision and electronic monitoring being appropriately resourced as well that's actually where for me the big question mark resigns is not a question of there'll be fewer remands but there will be a need for more resource thanks for that so just following on from those responses in terms of obviously a key part of the decision making process is the information that is provided to the court on which decisions are based and obviously the provisions in the bill puts criminal justice social work kind of front and centre of that and in your very detailed submission you articulate your views on other contributions both to the bill decision making process but elsewhere in for example release from custody so third sector for example so can you perhaps now come to I'll come back to you Leslie on this and then bring in Hannah and Fergus maybe just outline a little bit about your thoughts on the proposals specific to criminal justice social work and what your kind of feeling is on the practicalities of that for example resourcing which is something that we're hearing time and time again well actually if you're going to put this into practice in terms of a bill decision that the timing is actually quite tight sometimes for that and so some of the kinds of risk assessments that need to be done actually take a bit of time and so there needs to be an immediate capacity to respond at that point so that's something that's really important one of the things that you see from a previous research when you looked at why reasons for judiciary not choosing social work supervision supervised bill is because there's a belief that there is a scarcity of resources there even sometimes where that resource actually exists so there needs to make sure that there is an immediate capacity to respond that then needs in terms of the supervision there needs to then be access to be able to mobilise services and support quite rapidly as well certainly for certain offenders who have or people who are accused who have quite complex needs so there needs to be a capacity to mobilise resources very quickly and then in terms of electronic monitoring which I think is actually a very welcome aspect of this bill to make sure that that can be put in place and again monitored carefully as well so I think that we know that social work can do extremely robust risk assessments to care inspector it's always always been very praising of their risk assessment capacity but it's being able to do this having the time to do it having the time to do the supervision having the time and the resources to mobilise very quickly and those are things that need to be put in place what we know from earlier research on bail supervision is actually although that is a resource intensive it's actually cheaper in a sense than sending people to on remand so it actually is a cost effective way of doing it but it does need resource and some of that is time and that is a capacity to mobilise very quickly so in that sense it is the intention is a really good one it's whether there is a resource in place to enable that to happen and social workers would be very competent obviously to do all this supervision there's no question about that. Thank you Leslie, Hannah and then Fergus. Yes so I would agree with that and in our evidence submission we draw attention it is the career calling of criminologists to draw attention to potential for unintended consequences or potential for collateral consequences so the time pressures at the point of bail and remand decision making are acute then you have time pressures for justice social workers workload and workforce considerations and I would emphasise the evidence that's already been heard from social work Scotland and their reports on workforce turnover of social workers and workforce pressures and also evidence by Alison Babbage to the health and social care committee about it needing to be a sustainable profession that does not burn out and so if we give the example of the implementation which is in the early stages of electronically monitored bail which was a component authorised by the management of offenders act in 2019 it's available across a set amount of local authorities but not all of them yet there could be differences in forms and procedures in each one of those different local authorities and that's not even to go with courts and court areas which might overlap different local authorities and then quick decision making and needing to balance that with good decision making so I would very much so underscore the professionalism and the skill set of justice social workers but be attentive to their fairly earnest concerns about their availability and whether they have access to the court and to also suggest that there is interim findings we said this in a submission from a small Scottish study of decision making on bail and remand where the judiciary who have participated in that and the crown office and procurator fiscal practitioners who have participated in that have said there are resource implications there are questions around time and availability we've drawn attention to the amount of remand that's used for between one and seven days it's not always an either or and if that happens to you that affects your children partner work responsibilities but also there is the gravity of weighing up is the judiciary would not take that decision lightly and is one or four or five days to get the information and assessment needed appropriate weight against the prospect of a lengthy weight on remand if remand is indeed opposed so I'm not unsympathetic or unaware of the pressures that are there the other thing that I would briefly draw attention to is that I'll declare an interest I'm a member of the Scottish Sentencing Council but I'm not speaking on behalf of the council we did a a piece of work a consultation with the judiciary on judicial perspectives of community-based disposals obviously because of our remit that would relate more to sentencing than to the bail and remand stage of proceedings but there is some relevances in judicial perspectives on availability and in in the Kate Skellington or research and in the sentencing council research the judiciary being open to informed views on risk assessment professionals who are qualified to assess and give a view of vulnerability of need and on the continuity and availability consistently across Scotland so the judiciary do have views on that at the point of bail and remand decision making and that echoed in wider work that's been done on how do we support community-based supports and measures but also decision making on what's available if you're going to move away from bail refusal in in some cases and reminding people so there's quite a few factors in there but I would certainly commend the place of justice social work and the importance of their contributions to the court thank you Fergus again I'll try and be very brief it's a quarter century since I was a justice social worker I've just calculated and if I were a justice social worker asked to advise a court on a bail decision under this legislation what I would want is clarity about what the public safety test means so that I can give information and advice that is appropriate so that that I think that's important in doing that I can imagine a process where there might be two stages so you could I don't want to overstep here I'm not a practitioner and I haven't been for a long time so my kind of capacity to make constructive suggestions about the detail of practice is limited but it seems to me that you could treat as and then you could select the cases that need closer examination under the public safety test so if somebody's coming to court bail is being opposed but there's no indication from the index offence or from the previous record that there are violent offences or sexual offences or the kinds of pattern of behaviour that give rise to public safety concerns then a triage might be enough to say looks as if on the face of it the public safety test here suggests that bail might be possible what would we need then to provide in terms of bail supervision and support in order to safely and effectively manage this person in the community and how might that contribute to risk reduction because if we put them in jail to a wait sentence then there's a risk that they'll lose accommodation that they'll lose contact with substance use services that they'll have family disruption etc making it worse incubating risk so I can I can well imagine just as social workers doing an excellent job at that stage of making or putting together constructive advice for judges to make appropriate decisions in those cases but it would require resourcing and specifically I think it would require resourcing in court social work units and just just to make a connection again to the previous session court social work units also have responsibilities towards victims and witnesses and they are by virtue of their position in the court better able than community-based social workers to undertake that communication in the flow of the business of the court so I can imagine ways in which significant additional investment in court-based social work might address a range of concerns here simultaneously thank you thank you for that okay I'm going to open it up and I think Fergus Fulton you want to come in and get my Fergus Fulton's muddled up and then Jamie Jamie do you want to ask a very quick follow-up and then I'll bring in Fulton yeah I'll keep my substantive questions to later but I just wanted to good morning sorry this morning I'm really intrigued by what you were something you said there and I just wanted to maybe pick your brains on something there's a wide expectation that if bail is unopposed then bail is granted and if bail is opposed and that opposition is sought for then the judge clearly has a process and protocol to follow is it your understanding or your belief that bail is opposition to bail has been overused and by that I mean you know clearly it's been opposed for good reason based on information available to the crown and the prosecution so why are we seeking to resolve the problem by limiting the discretion of the judges in the scenario where bail is opposed rather than educating the crown on the parameters that they would use to oppose bail because they're two sides to the coin and which is the best way to address it I wish I could give you a good answer to the question but I honestly don't know and I'm not sure I mean Hannah may know or Leslie may know better than me but I think the decision making of prosecutors in relation to case marking in general in Scotland is not it's not the best understood or the most researched of topics and I'm not even sure what the reasons are why that's been neglected but I can't think of any significant studies in that area for some time that would help us understand whether there is for example precautionary or defensive decision making about opposing bail which might indicate a problem that needs to be addressed through education of procurators fiscal or or I just don't know there I can't I can't see my point though is that the bill seeks to address the problem through the the other end of the problem by the parameters in which the judge can make the decision on whether bail is granted but if the primary source of the amount of people going through the bail decision isn't rests initially with the crown and their opposition to bail or not as the case may be then is that maybe a better way to see if there's a problem there first before you then restrict the discretion of the judges I would see that as an either or and I would I think that we have enough evidence that um maybe this is something you might want to ask about but I think we have enough evidence that we are using remand in ways which are out of line with norms in other western european countries there's I think that there's sufficient evidence to suggest that we do need to think about structuring judicial discretion and that's what legislation in relation to criminal procedure and sentencing does so I don't think there's anything inherently controversial about doing that and I think it might be a case of both and rather than either or in relation to your question I'll move back to that later yeah thank you I'm going to bring in Fulton then collect Russell and Rona so Fulton then collect thanks convener and I want to ask about resources that we've been talking about there and at this stage I'll draw members and the panel's attention to my judicial interest as well as a previous criminal justice social worker as well as Fergus I think it's for me this is sort of the crux of the question and having previously worked in that area as Fergus as you referred to there's community justice teams and there's occasionally I think it was Leslie that said that there's sometimes bail supervision teams for certain local authorities in different kind of forums but every team's got a community justice team so I'm not really clear and there probably wouldn't be anything in the legislation it would be for local authorities to say but I'm not really clear who would take on this work would it be a bail supervision teams would they be enhanced which I think would that would be a personal preference or would it be the community justice teams pick it up and almost do a sort of mirror of what they're doing with people who are who are convicted on community payback orders etc etc and I did ask social worker about this when they were in and I think they said we'll just need to see where it goes and and what sort of funding would be available I'm just wondering for the panel's point of view how do you see it working in in that respect and what what sort of additional resources are we talking about here is that something that from an academic point of view you've thought about I'm okay with any order I'll answer very briefly and say I can't answer on the question of resources I haven't haven't studied that sufficiently to offer any informed guesswork even and I think the answer to your other the other part of your question is that there are 32 ways of doing justice social work in Scotland and I don't think that the Scottish Government could or would seek to impose a mechanism for the implementation of the responsibility that it would create and I'm sure they would justify that on the grounds that they would need to allow each local authority to make arrangements that work immensely with the needs of its area which is different you know the situation in Highland is different from the situation in Glasgow so I think there's something reasonable about that however I think it's always a dilemma with justice social work that justice by its nature needs to be delivered in a way which is consistent nationally you know for reasons of fairness so it would not be to my mind appropriate not to have bail support and supervision available nationally if we implement legislation that seeks to alter the use of remand in Scotland so I think there's a delicate tension between local responsiveness and national consistency in this area which I'm sure the committee's well versed in other areas yeah and just to emphasise again the interim report of research that we do have the participants who are judicial or procurators fiscal are emphasising they're concerned about resourcing and availability mirrored in Scottish Sentencing Council issues paper with judicial perspectives predominantly shareval perspectives around time availability workload if you get notice of something there's been marking you might not get the information from police or the ffiscals that you need and you've got an hour or two to quickly do a turnaround with the greatest of professionalism if there's multiple cases where this might need to be considered how are you going to triage or emphasise that could I also perhaps with the joy of academic freedom we don't do research on costings that is for the Scottish Government the Scottish Parliament and the partners to perhaps do more on their budgets and spending but could I acknowledge the considerable amount that goes on prisons and prison building the electronic monitoring contract could be in the order of 44 million pounds the the digitalisation of the lscmi so the level of service case management inventory when there was an issue with that which is ongoing we can find three million pounds quite quickly for an it fix so my championing would be echoing the concerns expressed by community justice scotland and social work scotland in submissions to the committee on other fronts as well as by local authorities to say we know that funds are tight and that there's no magic money tree but please community justice ends up being what our colleague gwen robinson calls the Cinderella of the justice system expected to quietly do a lot of work with diminishing resources and we would emphasise the importance of them being able to do their work well people who are accused and people who are complainers would want professionals having the time to contribute towards an informed decision and justice social workers are central and pivotal to that they have the ability to communicate with empathy and to make those decisions or not decisions but to inform decisions about risk in a way that a letter can't and so we're not in danger in scotland of too much money being spent on justice social work or community justice relative to our other substantive commitments in clearing the court backlog police prisons we're talking hundreds of millions of pounds there so a play to to scrutinise what is available to justice social work would be my emphasis yeah Leslie yeah thank you um can i come in so I just want to go back to the points also that third is making there about the the need for some degree of uniformity of service or consistency of service across scotland whilst not undermining the sort of local responsibility but there does need to be that and it seems to me that um reflecting on what resources actually exist already that you are going to need to have probably specialist bail supervisory teams and services an additional set of services this is not something can just be added to justice social work responsibilities just now you're going to need that in order to be able to have that kind of uniformity of service and the capacity to respond in the kind of way that's going to be needed in this fast responsive and mobilised way one other aspect about the tightness of resources and house justice social work is as Hannah was saying is not always the thing that has the most money spent on it one of the things also is important in terms of some of the services that might need to be accessed there are also third sector services that might need to be accessed both in terms of this part of the bill but also to do with the through care provisions that are being proposed and third sector agencies at the moment are also very precarious in terms of funding and support and resource and capacity to continue to provide some of the fantastic services that they do so there is a big issue about how you sustain high quality services right across the piece and justice social work and the services that they need to actually mobilise things like mental health services and community mental health services again things might need to be mobilised as part of this whole bills offer that actually are deeply under resourced so there needs to be very careful planning here and I think additional social work resources support specialist bill supervisory teams if this is going to really work and it's a really important thing that the bill is trying to do remember that almost more than half of people who are remanded in custody don't end up with a custodial sentence that's a really important figure to remember as much as we know that most of the people who are put on remand do not transition to a prison sentence. Can I just jump in and just make a plea for fairly short and succinct questions and answers because members have got lots and lots of questions and I'm just trying to balance constructive fair responses with nice neat questions. Thanks, convener and thanks for that, Leslie. I think you've actually articulated pretty well where my thoughts just now are on this and I think that you know all the social work we are able to commit to that when the various organisations met with us recently I think that it would make sense that it's a separate team and therefore I think you are talking about significant resource implications there and the committee will need to take that account when speaking to the cabinet secretary and I'd be happy to take that forward. In terms of what the convener said there about being briefed, my final question is on the same basis but it might be something that you're not able to answer. There's also discussion that the investigations that the committee's having separately about the possibility of criminal justice social work coming over to the national care service, which I can see by some nods that you're aware of. Do you think what impact that might have on the discussion that we've just had there and that, based on what the convener said, is brief as possible? It's highly relevant. It's a fundamental structural proposal and the thing that I would emphasise is that there won't be a status quo for justice social work and community justice easily whether it is included or whether it is excluded from the institution of the national care service. Things won't continue the same if you just leave it out. They will continue to work with people who may still need access to various services and supports and being outside of a rather large institution that is supposed to mirror the NHS could have an impact just the same as being inside and thinking, how did public protection considerations fit in a national care service? My submission to the Scottish Government on the national care service consultation was that not enough thought and planning and detail had gone into considerations of the inclusion or exclusion of justice social work. We could offer a more informed view when there's any detail beyond a few paragraphs being provided to us, but I'd say that the consequences are the way it could be far reaching. That's fair and probably quite reflective of other evidence that we've heard in this area because the proposals are at a very early stage. I'm happy for the last time, convener, of just to leave it at that at your discretion. Thank you very much. I'll bring in Colette and then Russell. Thanks, convener, and good morning. I was going to say that I should check the time there is still morning. It was just quickly a quick question based on what you've mentioned about uniformity. I had previously attended the youth court within Hamiltonshire of Court and the actual justice social work department are actually based within Hamiltonshire of Court, and I thought that that was really relevant and based on what you're talking about within each of the local authorities. I'm just wondering what research has been carried out by yourselves in terms of comparisons of each local authorities to see what good practice and how that's actually working out, but I personally found that really, really helpful that they were actually in house within Hamiltonshire of Court. I can maybe answer briefly. I mean, I've looked at that question historically in Scotland, and I've also looked at it comparatively in relation to European countries and different ways of structuring and organising probation or justice social work services. There's no straightforward answer to the best model, but I think that there is really instructive learning from different contexts and from our own history. In Scotland, in contrast with England, probation grew up in local services, so not court-linked services but services that were embedded within localities, and there was a very lively debate as far back in the 1930s about whether or not they should move like the English system to a court-based model. The then English system to a model where probation services were coterminous with court jurisdictions and closely linked to the role of being an officer of the court in serving the magistrates in England, and they argued vociferously against it in the Scottish context because of the importance of local connectivity, as they understood it, for rehabilitation, for reintegration. That debate comes and goes, and in different European jurisdictions of similar size to us, sometimes you have a national probation service, sometimes you have a single correctional service where prisons and probation functions are together, sometimes you have municipalities or local authorities heavily involved in the delivery and different sub-national variations. I think that the only lesson that I can draw from it all is that you absolutely need very clear and well-established and well-functioning relationships with courts and parole agencies as well and also with prisons that you cannot function effectively in doing probation work without those. However, if your end goal is the reintegration of people who have been through criminal justice systems so that they do not re-offend, you also absolutely need really rigorous and effective integration with the work of local authorities or municipalities. It is a bit of a fudge, but it is a both and. There is a third leg, which is the national, which is to say that it needs to be coherently linked to criminal justice and social policy at the national level. It is not just a criminal justice policy issue either because reintegration depends on health, on housing, on education and on all forms of social welfare. Whatever way you cut the cookie, whatever way you organise it, you need local, you need criminal justice connectivity and you need national policy coherence and consistency. I do not really answer the national care service question either, but I was only going to say in response to that that I agree with Hannah. It is almost impossible to comment at the moment, meaningfully, because I do not understand what the proposal would entail. My first question relates to Bail. As we know, judges make the decision as to whether someone should or should not be remanded. The judiciary has expressed some opposition to this bill. They seem downright hostile, but it is quite difficult for us to interpret this because they have declined our invitations to come here and give evidence and answer questions. That is making our job a little bit more difficult than it should be. Hannah, you are on the Scottish Sentencing Council. You are not a judge, but perhaps the closest we will get to hearing from that sector. I know that you are not speaking for the Scottish Sentencing Council because you already said that, but can any of you give any sense as to what the opposition is to the bill? Is it perceived to be meddling in judicial independence and also whether you view as to whether you think they should come and give evidence to us? The difference between myself and the judiciary could probably not be more pronounced if we tried, but I welcome trying to reflect on it. It is their prerogative to take that view, and I would have been surprised if they did not oppose this. The judiciary are famous for their love of their independence. Entire PhDs, including one by Fiona Jameson at the University of Edinburgh, have been written about how the judiciary feel about themselves as decision makers, and the Scottish judiciary in particular are infamous for wanting that discretionary decision making, but with regard to the law that they are enforcing. They have raised a few concerns, and I found the concerns very interesting and apt, as you would expect from our distinguished colleagues, but not necessarily persuasive enough to say that there is no justification in my own view for the bill, but the questions, if I could refer to comments that have been made in a public conference at the Inspectorate of Prisons with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Joe Griffin and Theresa Medhurst standing alongside Lady Dorri and the Lord Justice Clarke in a public forum around the bill were that the judiciary had a real emphasis on trying to visit prisons and keep themselves acquainted with the realities of not only their decision making, but the consequences of their decision making, and in her very articulate and formidable remarks, which were reflected in the written submission by the senators, some astute questions, and I have my hand written notes from the day. What is meant by public safety? Precision and detail is important while still having due regard to judicial independence, and also questioning around what would happen in the instances where there is the prospect or the potential for destruction of evidence that does not meet the public safety test. So what are the details and the further discussions and questions that you could be asking where there might be interference in the administration of justice or potential interference in the administration of justice? For example, maybe an instance where someone wants to destroy a device where it might implicate themselves. So how do we have a responsiveness in some cases where there could be things that are relevant to the fair administration of justice but are not necessarily of the level that they would pose a risk to public safety and to complainer and victim safety as such? Should they come and see us? I would very much welcome that. Perhaps they could correspond with you. They are very skillful communicators, and I note that Lord Carlaway emphasised in the beginning of his submission around consultation and engagement with the judiciary and how much the Scottish Government had or had not done that. I think they are key decision makers. They have a lot of experience and expertise. Their reasoning has been captured by modest research and in some data, but I would be supportive of their engagement with this because they can speak to things that we can only know or ask about. I think that what the bill is trying to target is reducing the use of remand with people who do not pose a significant risk to public safety but are troublesome because of persistent offending. That is effectively the same population that previous legislation has tried to address through the presumption against short sentences. That legislation has been passed and implemented and the ceiling has not collapsed. Crime rates have not shot through the roof. I am pretty sure that sheriffs and judges would have had reservations about the presumption on the same sorts of grounds that you are raising in relation to the way in which this test is being conceived in respect of bail. I understand why they would be reluctant or why they would be critical of a move that might restrict their discretion. I think that any professional would find it irksome to have their discretion constrained. From my perspective, from a criminological perspective, and this is not to criticise individual judges or their individual decisions, if I look at the Scottish data, both in relation to the use of custody as a sentence and in relation to the use of remand, we are out of culture with comparable nations and something has to be done to change that. Part of that is best achieved through passing legislation which structures judicial discretion appropriately in pursuit of legitimate public policy objectives that relate to the proper use of public funds. Prison is a very expensive resource that we should use as sparingly as possible, both pre-trial and once people are convicted. I think that it is really important to engage the judiciary about all of this, because the efforts in the past, going back to 1992, when I was also working in the Scottish Office at then evaluating the implementation of national objectives and standards for social work justice services, which were aiming to reduce the use of custody by changing the behaviour of sentences, by increasing their confidence in what was happening in the community. That did not work because they did not get the confidence of the judiciary. It is important to engage them if the bill is going to harm and impact. However, I think that the way in which it is being framed within the bill at the moment, rather than in some level it is narrowing judicial discretion, but on another level it gives them enormous scope for decision making around public safety, including the safety of the complainer, or preventing significant risk of prejudice to the interests of justice. There is a lot of interpretation that can go into that. In some level, they have quite a lot of discretion. Some of the cases risk to the public, the concerns of the victims groups that we are talking about this morning, will already be covered by those provisions within the bill. I think that you need to engage the judiciary. I think that there is something to be discussed about how one might interpret public safety, but I think that there is quite a lot of discretion that will go with the way in which the bill is framed at the moment. I do not think that they should be too precious about how much is this narrowing discretion, if I am being frank. In the written submission from Dr Graham and Professor McNeill, 12 pages long, and there is a lot of quite strong opinion in there, I think. In the past, Dr Graham, you have been politically critical of myself and my party, and they were thick-skinned, and it is entirely your prerogative. However, I do wonder if such political commentary risks undermining academic neutrality. I wonder how that reflects on our ability to assess the evidence that you have submitted. Is it personal opinion, or is it academic research or something in between? With any piece of research that I have been involved with in terms of community justice, or prisons, or courts, or sentencing, the publications, I can assure that the rigor with which the methodology and the publishing of our studies, and where we present evidence and findings, that that is usually fairly transparently accounted for. If, for example, I have done research on electronic monitoring or have done research with the courts through the Aberdeen Community Justice Partnership and Sheriff Court and so on, research in Australia, the pieces of evidence where we do cite evidence and say in this study it was recommended that, I would hope that the committee could find that evidence to be of an academic standard that it has been released and published, and I haven't had substantive queries about methodology or around concerns of the quality of the academic evidence. I'm a social scientist and so I'm unapologetic about drawing attention to social structures, inequalities, the harms and the powers where institutions intend to do well but may have unintended consequences. Public academia or public criminology, of which Leslie, Fergus and others in our research centre are prone to, often asks for our opinion, and I guess things like opinion pieces, careful scrutiny, and I can suggest that I read and listen to nearly every speech that quite a few members of different parties here produce, that it's important to understand that the politicisation of crime and justice can have an impact, and it is not necessarily something that I would shy away from commenting on, but nor is academic quality and neutrality drastically underlined by highlighting that punitiveness or that something that might be considered progressive can have certain impacts. So, my career stands and I'm proud of it. I'm not a low Dr Greene, probably, but I was quite happy to answer the question. I'm not sure that my colleague Russell Finlay's question was appropriate. We get people in here who are councillors, maybe they're with Closler, but other than they have actual party allegiances, and I'm just not sure. I've not formed my discourse on this here, but I'm not sure whether that was an appropriate line of questioning or build up to the question, convener, and therefore I'm seeking yours or the class advice. Thank you for raising that. I'm happy with the question and I was happy to give Dr Greene a chance to respond. I'm very happy for the session to come back to the bill. On that note, I don't intend to take any more questions related to political views, so, on that note, I'll hand over to Rona. I wanted to go back to something that Professor MacNeill said at the start, and it's about gravity of risk. If I understood correctly, you're saying that you don't believe the bills for serious or solemn offences per se. If that's the case, the fact that there's one public safety test for all offences, does that not send out the wrong message to victims, for example, and should the current exceptions not still stand in relation to domestic abuse and sexual offences? Can I maybe have your opinion on the specific nature of individual risk and public safety around the bill? I'm not sure I understand or I think you might have misunderstood what I meant, so let me try to explain what I mean. Whenever the RMA can speak to this obviously as the body with specific responsibility for developing standards and practice in relation to risk assessment and management in Scotland, but from an academic perspective, whenever you're engaged in risk assessment, you're considering two things. One is the likelihood of an adverse event, and the second is the degree of the adversity. The two things are, it's easier to predict the probability part of that, the first part than it is to predict the severity or the gravity part. When we're dealing with gender-based violence, sexual offending, violence in domestic context and in intimate relationships, the tools that are developed to assess risk in those cases are more sophisticated because they're not just trying to calculate the likelihood. To roll back slightly, the LSCMI, which Hannah mentioned, is a generic tool that tells us only how likely it is that any further offence might happen. It doesn't tell us anything about severity or gravity if the offence happens. Other tools are then used in appropriate cases where we're concerned about violence of different sorts to try to reach a more informed and actually in a way to go back to the point about judges, a structured discretionary judgment about what the risk is and what the gravity is. All I'm saying is what the bill is asking or what the bill would require judges to do is to take into account not a mere calculation of the likelihood of any offence happening when a person is on bail, but rather whether such an offence would be so serious that it would pose a significant harm. I'm using that language, that's not defined in the bill, but that's my point. I think that that does need to be clarified, what the public safety test is. I think it applies both at the level of the risk to individual complainers which absolutely should be uppermost in the mind of sheriffs and judges when considering cases where there are crimes against individual persons, then clearly the bill decision must very seriously assess any risk to the safety of the complainer, but the wider question about risk to others is another question and a complicated question and I think that the bill is directing sheriffs and judges to pay more attention to that set of considerations and not merely the likelihood of any offence happening. So it's basically to put it in really simple terms the bill is saying to my mind and please do ask ministers and civil servants if I'm right about this later, it's saying persistent offending in and of itself might not be a reason to refuse bail, serious offending probably is. So in effect you're saying to take it at a very basic level common sense should be used in domestic abuse cases that it's, I mean there has to be a pattern anyway before there would be a conviction so surely that does come down to common sense without you having to use specific parameters. Yes, but I also agree with the previous panel that in respect of any form of gender based violence including in domestic violence I think clarity needs to be given here either in the bill or in guidance related to the bill so that both the social workers and others involved in informing judicial decision making about bail decisions are clear about what it is that they're assessing, who they're speaking to, how they gather evidence to inform those judgments that's critically important and to me if there's risk of violence whether psychological, physical or sexual or coercive control absolutely then we there's no question that we need the most rigorous risk assessment processes before making a decision about bail. Thank you, it's really helpful. Can I ask Professor McHara her opinion on that if you have? Yes, I completely agree with Fergus there. I don't think that the wording of the bill is going to mean that in very serious cases that real careful decision making will take place in terms of risk to the complainant and the risk to others whether remand may be appropriate in certain very serious cases so I agree with Fergus so I think that the waiting on the gravity here I think is is actually really important and I think that would be by by doing that actually the bill will both hopefully support victims of crime but also equally help to reduce the remand population itself so that certain people who are petty persistent offenders might not get caught up in the remand system but may have supervision that diminishes the risk of continuing to offend on bail but that actually then that the services and support in terms of what we can do in terms of remand within prison for people who have to be remanded that actually that will work more effectively and one of the issues about having so many people on remand is that the access to support people who have been put on remand is actually is diminished if you have a smaller and a more serious a more seriously offending population within that remand group you will have actually more capacity to work with them as well so there is a payoff in that respect as well so I'm very convinced that gravity important consideration here and with appropriate and robust and good risk assessment and good input good information given to the people who have to make the decisions that's a critical thing that actually the public safety would not necessarily be compromised by the bill thank you that's that's helpful to Dr Graham would you like to know you're happy with that well well thank you I think that's been really helpful and I think it's um it's good that you both agree maybe more clarity is needed on that point thank you that's enough I'm going to bring in Katie and then Jamie and then we'll bring if I can just say we'll we'll run just as long as we need but if questions and answers can be succinct and Katie over to you yes and I don't think it's clear whether the effect of this legislation is going to be to change the numbers of people on bail it's not really clear how the public safety test is going to operate um Fergus when you gave evidence you said that bail is used in quite a different way in Scotland than in in other European countries and we know that Scotland has both the highest numbers of people in jail and also within that the highest numbers on remand and it's approaching 30% now which is extremely high and could all of the witnesses if if they wish maybe comment on what the arguments are for and against the approach that we take in Scotland which is one where we send quite a lot of people on remand into the the prison system and whether there's lessons to be learned from other jurisdictions other comparable jurisdictions and if maybe ask Fergus first okay okay so i think my general point earlier was simply that we have a high prison population both in relation to numbers on remand and in relation to numbers of sentenced prisoners i think that the as was discussed with the previous panel the reference to the percentage the 30 figure is slightly misleading because that is the product of reducing numbers of sentenced prisoners and rising numbers of remand prisoners it's probably better to look at the raw data on the numbers that are being remanded which is rising and has risen precipitously in in the past year or two and then it as was discussed with the previous panel it's important to dig deeper and look at who's being remanded for what kinds of offenses it is true as was said in the previous panel that the numbers of people on remand for violent offenses and sexual offenses has risen significantly other categories have fallen back slightly but perhaps not as fast as the government might wish in pursuing a reduction in the prison population that's why i think that's what this bill is trying to do it's trying to further encourage a reduction in the use of remand for people who don't pose a serious risk to public safety to me that that's consistent with international standards it's consistent with conventions and rules that we are subscribed to in the council of europe in the united nations it's absolutely the right in principle approach but i think we we need to pay careful attention to the fact that we do have a a rise in the number of people remanded in custody for crimes of violence and sexual offenses even then though and this is a question that you might best direct at colleagues in justice analytical services we need to disaggregate those headings further because the category crimes of violence is a very broad category in scotland and so is the category that's classified as sexual offenses and it's not necessarily the case that every person who is remanded for an index offence which is categorised as a crime of violence actually represents a significant risk to public safety so i think you need analysts to be to be honest to give you the detail on the current remand population which aspects have grown and which aspect of it which proportions are falling in which categories and i think that that i think the bill aims to and would move us in the direction of coming closer into line with comparable european neighbours i think that's that's a laudable objective and i think we would agree with you on the need for better data i think that the committee would find that extremely helpful and hannah i know that when you spoke initially you spoke about the need for clarity and more detail in terms of the public interest test in particular a suspect but perhaps more generally in terms of the question asked about other european countries or other comparable jurisdictions are there lessons to be learned because you know that the aim of the government seems to be to reduce prison numbers and to ensure that if you like the most serious offenders are in custody bail is is obviously given to people who haven't been convicted of anything yet and i wonder if you think there's lessons to be learned given that the approach in scotland does seem quite different from many other european countries in particular yes so i think the policy intent of the bill as expressed at a high level is something that has been fundamentally highlighted as a concern and something needing change since um since i was a teenager and i can assure you that i'm not that anymore so with the sentencing commission for scotland or at scotland the scottish human rights commission the mcleish report the scottish prisons commission um an important inquiry held by a previous iteration of this committee has there's a fairly well established consensus that the rates are high and that there could be more community-based responses in scotland and given the gravity of the access to justice and the human rights issues involved tinkering around the edges elemental changes have not yet produced the substantive change that at least some stakeholders have expressed a desire on there are um three major comparative research studies on bail and remand two in europe i'm holding one of them and also one in australia where they've sought to learn what are the insights and the lessons that could be learned from multiple jurisdictions so this one is um from 10 countries um there's another EU funded one where they tried to look at it across borders and the australian one is within australian jurisdictions and those often highlight that the legislative levers are one aspect so limiting the public safety test or expanding or defining the public safety test is one important aspect and it will impact on judicial decision making notwithstanding the importance of their independence and discretion but these research projects three major international research projects also document all the other factors that multiple members of this committee and previous panels of witnesses have said there is in the law statements such as any material considerations have good reason have due regard to people who are familiar with judicial and court circles will be well aware of why that wording is there but in practice the evidence that you have been hearing and will be hearing and the evidence that these research studies in europe and australia have found is that there's a gulf between law and practice and that the causes of disparities or as this report by berkbeck university of london calls it pretrial injustice or questions of the implementation gap that highlight a series of systemic factors as to how bail reforms or bail law might be applied or misapplied to lead to disproportionate so if if there's a need for a very succinct and well contextualised supplementary synthesis of these three major studies as academics would be happy to summarise what our understanding of that is in writing if the committee is interested in that or at least send through the very credible international research which is pointing to things that are relevant to scotland and i believe we could be learning from but not a wholesale import there will be contextual factors here that are distinctive and my colleague leslie is an international authority on what makes scottish just as distinctive i think that would be really useful to hear from her and i think we'd be grateful for the information that you're referring to i mean leslie it would be useful to get your thoughts but also we obviously have to grapple with the black letter of the law we've got a bill that we'll be looking at and we need to make sure if you like first of all that we agree with the overriding policy objectives of the scottish government but then if we do agree the next issue is actually whether what's on this the piece of paper that's going to be put before the parliament is actually going to deliver what it is that they are planning on trying to deliver and if you have thoughts on that also in terms of whether actually the you know the words that we are being provided within this bill are likely to be looked at by the courts and implemented by the courts in the way that the scottish government intends okay so just to first want to go back to your first question which was about are there too many people on remands and there are too many people on remands in scotland and this is really important because all the indicators show that crime is falling it's been falling for a long time it's fallen by 57 percent since its peak in the sort of mid to 2000 and mid noughties so crime is dropping convictions are dropping everything is going down and yet the imprisonment rates tend to go up and remand rates are going up considerably a huge increase in remand particularly over the lockdown so a major increase in remand particularly in summary cases the numbers in summary cases and as we as i've said earlier that over half of the people who put on remand don't end up being sent to custody once they're actually convicted so that transition is not there so there's clearly something there's too many people there is always a need for remanding people who are presenting a risk to others that's absolutely the case there is a need for this but it could be considerably smaller and considerably smaller so that's one thing particularly in the context of crime dropping in terms of whether this will all work one of the great success stories in scotland has been what's happened in youth justice the whole system approach in youth justice which is looked at holistically at how people move through a system and how you can divert people to meaningful alternatives to certain bits of the system has actually really worked well we've had a major reduction in convictions among 16 and 70s it's gone down by 90 percent if you look at it as a rate of population offence referrals was a juvenile justice system to the reporter of gondam massively around about 83 per cent since the peak in the the mid noughties and we've seen how that has actually had real and meaningful reductions of people in the system so that they're ending up with a much smaller group of young people that they can actually work with more effectively now when we look at this bill as a whole aspects of this are actually leading to a much a sort of sense of a more holistic and systemic approach to adult justice we've seen how the Scottish government wants to have a whole system approach for women offenders as well as young people we should have it for adult male offenders as well and that the bail the bail requirements which is going to try and remove people from remand where possible then them to bail supervision and supervision that might support them and their needs that can only be a good thing in terms of managing risk if it works and then if it can actually be made that people do actually end up on bail supervision and not remand where they don't need to be on remand and then the through care propositions which we haven't actually talked about very much but trying to really manage that reintegrative process for longer term offenders back well into the community that whole wave but linking in with other bits of the system that's something that could really really make a major difference to public safety within Scotland so I really welcome those dimensions of it but it's going to need appropriate resources I keep going back to that it's the resources for me that's the most important thing of this in terms of the legal aspects of this I think will need some more definition around what public safety might be but in terms of actually how it will work in practice it is the devil's in the detail in terms of the resource implications I will go back that to that again if that helps answer your question that that's very helpful thank you thank you very much Jamie over to you thank you it's just a follow-on from the conversation we've just had and I think what one of the difficulties we're having is perhaps a keenness not to equate subjective assumptions or analysis into fact so it's quite an easy thing to say that there are too many people on remand that may or may not be true but that depends on your definition of what is right and what's wrong in terms of remand decisions under the status quo is it the case that there are too many people on remand or is it the case and I'm throwing it out there I'm not taking a view but that there are the right people rightly being held on remand but are wrongfully being held on remand for too long because the inevitability of that due to court backlogs and we've heard I think the total evidence of people being held for longer than the end result of their custodial sentence would have been even even after conviction is that there are simply too many people in prison on remand who should have been released much earlier because their cases should have been heard much earlier and that's off the back of the first evidence session that we had and it's something that I think that Professor Menil said around the data that goes around this it's not just the numbers that you should look at it's the context and the profile of those who are being held remand and the types of fences that are being held for so I'm just throwing it out there as a devil's advocate because it's quite easy to say this phrase there are too many people on remand and then it becomes a truth without challenging it so I'm keen to make sure that we do do challenge it in a way the answer applies equally to part two of the bill I'm conscious we haven't even got there yet but I think the answer applies to if you like and it also goes back to Russell Finlay's question to Hannah we're discussing an area of policy here which unavoidably engages normative questions right so there is no objective way to say what the size of a prison population should be you take a view on that depending on whether or not you want Scotland to be a country which complies with international standards in relation to human rights or you can take a view on that that relates to another kind of ideology and that's fine you know there's people can have different views on that once you establish principles then you can ask criminologists to say whether the principles are being applied in a way which is effective or ineffective and when we get to the evidence portion of our submission and we're citing all those studies we're basically arguing about whether or not the goals that have been set for the system are being achieved now if if the point of using the criminal justice system the processing of people through court is to secure justice or to provide retribution then that leads to a certain conclusion if it's to provide public safety that can sometimes point in a contradictory direction if it's eventually to work for the reintegration of people who have offended that can also so that this is a complex system with multiple objectives sometimes the normative principles that are being applied and tested here are actually somewhat contradictory or challenged one another I guess all I can say in response to your question is that I think that in relation to international comparisons and international standards we have an unusually high prison population and we have an unusually high remand population at a time when we have low crime rates and not just low recorded crime rates but also relatively low crime rates reported through victimisation surveys so the things which are driving our prison population are not crime problems there are policy choices and established cultures and practices in our system and I think and this is an opinion an normative opinion grounded in commitment to certain principles which are reflected in international standards I think that's that's wrong for Scotland and that we should be trying to change it I'm sympathetic to the legislation only because I think it points in the right direction although I agree with some of the lines of questioning that some of the ways in which it seeks to do that need to be ironed out and clarified it's interesting because based on what you said in the way that you said it one would assume if we talk about overall crime reducing yet prison population going up yet if we look at the period from when policy decisions did lead to legislative change for example presumption against short sentences which you mentioned in a previous answer in the year that there were presumption against short sentences was passed there were 68,000 violent crimes and I know that's a very wide category but under the exact same definition last year that number had risen to 6,000, 69,000 over the same period our prison population fell from 8,400 just to check the numbers 8,200 down to 7,400 so despite a rise in certain types of perceived to be more serious crimes our prison population has actually been reducing so I mean it's very difficult I know you can you can divvy up statistics in a number of ways to get what you want out of them but it does lead to the importance of proper statistical and data analysis which I think we have been severely lacking and probably still are some massive gaps in that because that may help inform some of the decisions that we make moving forward does anyone have it in into ad or back over that issue coil no problem the only one was is an interesting question is I appreciate you've made your views clearer that you think that it's completely appropriate for legislation to to narrow the grounds in which bail can refuse or to use legislations as a mechanism to do that but equally I think it's interesting you do also state that that cannot be done in isolation that some of the views that have been expressed around the conditions around bail and the service around bail could be improved but equally access to public services for those who are released on bail that has to happen alongside that and I thought maybe I'd explore that perhaps with you Hannah because I think it's easy just to focus on the bail aspect which is all the bill does actually and it doesn't in any great way and meaningfully address any of the other perceived failings in the system which something perhaps on the victims organizations would feel would be necessary alongside this type of intervention yes indeed and also it doesn't something that I know that members here care about is it doesn't it doesn't necessarily help address the reasons that continue to see people breaching bail breaching bail conditions which in some cases are harm and alleged offence related or crime specific but in other cases I was reading the committee's inquiry report into the use of remand in 2018 and my colleague Neil Hutton's small scale study on the reasons for bail refusal and then some of the rhetoric that we see coming through in comments from the judiciary in Fiscal's and also in research where there can be low level sort of repeated things that might produce re-offending but at a low level that's not as serious as some at some of the sensitive things that we've already heard about but something that that inquiry report Neil's research which he presented as evidence to the committee at that point the McLeish report of the Scottish prisons commission very much emphasises that in order to tackle and better support and respond to some of these issues it's going to take a multi disciplinary multi sectoral approach so a phrase that comes through commonly is that the individual had a chaotic lifestyle the the tenacity of commitment of this committee to understanding things like trauma and drug related issues and harms you can call it a chaotic lifestyle but people who are failing to do things that they've been reasonably required to do it may be offence alleged offence related reasons it may also be poverty health welfare social care things that need a range of support that's not to condone those issues but to say compliance could be much better supported with the multi disciplinary aspect so that we can we can avoid what the McLeish commission or the Scottish prisons commission called the warehousing problem and the remand problem where it's warehousing a place to hold the damage and traumatised for problematic and largely unnecessary use of prison. Fergus was an advisor to that commission and I believe it's held in very wide and well regarded across professions across perhaps different ideological or normative positions and so I draw attention to the qualitative research by our colleagues Emily Tweed and colleagues has pointed to the fact that if remand is used it could result in much more acute mental health distress. I know that members are concerned around the use of custody where remand is implicated in a higher risk of self-inflicted death by drug overdose or by suicide and so getting to grips with not only the statistics and the reality but also implicating that it's going to take health and social care employment unemployment housing homelessness bailed to what early released or reintegrated to what and it's certainly not something that I would expect this committee to have to solve on your own your other committees will need to have due regard to the health welfare social issues that are coming through and whether they are being adequately met by the provisions in the bill but also in the resourcing of the multi-disciplinary services because we very much have an empathy and a passion for fewer victims in future. I don't want us to be having this conversation in the same conversation in 18 years time like we have been doing for the last 18 years. We're just about we have well run over but I think this has been a really important and valuable session I would like to just finish with one question and if I can ask for answers to be fairly succinct as you were saying Fergus we've really kind of found it difficult to move off bail but I would just like to ask a little bit about release planning and through care support what you have touched on so I can maybe come to yourself Fergus first with the aim of supporting the successful reintegration of prisoners back into the community the bill includes provisions on release planning and standards of through care support in your view are the proposals in the bill helpful and what if any changes you would like to see in the provisions outlined so I'll start with you Fergus and then come to Leslie. Big question and difficult to answer briefly but I'll really try hard so yes I think the measures are helpful I think anything which enables progression through the custodial part of a sentence to the completion of a sentence in the community is to be welcomed and I think that as with bail and actually as with bail supervision and support we cannot underestimate the complexity of the task of supporting people in those transitions whether it's instead of going into a mandate or whether it's coming out potentially from a longer prison sentence people need support in a huge range of areas there's some recent research undertaken at Glasgow University by Alejandro Rubio Arnal which looked at post-prison reintegration in Glasgow used a a dialogical method of inquiry with a whole group of people with different forms of experience, lived experience, practice experience, professional experience and academic experience and he argued in conclusion that reintegration has six key facets that have to be addressed people need material reintegration that's about basics of systems housing access to public assistance if they need it until they can get work assistance with personal development and developing the skills and capacities to live well in the community legal reintegration in terms of restoration of a person's legal status and that relates to the question of how we deal with criminal records in this country which I think is often problematic in terms of allowing people access to the labour market civic and political participation including in the political life of our country which we're I think not necessarily good at supporting in disadvantaged communities generally but in particular people that are process through our criminal justice system are generally very much politically disenfranchised there's moral reintegration which relates to the restoration of relationships with communities and with victims or at least mediation of those relationships and then finally there's social reintegration which is about acceptance and belonging in a community and about dealing with the stigmatisation that people face as they try to move on from imprisonment from involvement with criminal justice from problematic substance use in all of those interlinked contexts people are hamstrung in their efforts to change themselves and transform their lives by the reactions of people around them so to support that transition for people in through and out of prison and to support that for people who are bailed instead of being remanded is no small thing so there are huge resource implications I think everybody's made that clear one thing I'll say though to finish the money exists the money's locked up with people in prison and if we want money to make these systems work effectively then we need political courage to get the money out of jail along with the people unless as politicians you believe that there is a magic money tree to shake in which case shake it and spend it on reintegration as a criminologist actually setting aside normative questions I have no hesitation in arguing that on the available evidence imprisonment is a shockingly bad public investment when it comes to reoffending and reintegration and therefore the longer term pursuit of public safety so I think thinking hard about how we get our money is our money out of jails and into communities should be at the heart of the reform efforts that we're discussing today not just the technical legal reforms on the face of this bill but the kind of wider project of developing a more evidence based progressive and coherent penal policy in Scotland that complies with international standards thank you very much Leslie if it's remotely feasible to give me a succinct answer to that question but I'll bring you in yeah so I mean I agree with things that fergus have said that would could be a succinct answer I think that they I really welcome the there is a very robust research evidence base to support the better reintegration and a focus on reintegration for long-term prisoners that's the bill is trying to enable that the robust evidence base would support efforts to make that process smoother and more supportive because that would actually lead to greater enhanced public safety I think that at the moment the the getting rid of through care support offices within prisons I think was is being unfortunate and I think the kind of pre-release preparation within prisons could be very much more enhanced particularly as it relates to the integration with the community-based dimensions of supervision and support so the sort of the suggestions for this new license to be created I think is a very good one I think the issues about people being reintegrated into the community it's hugely challenging for people results of our research from the Edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime which have been tracking this cohort for a 4,300 people who are now in their mid 30s will be tracking them that the research evidence from that shows the complex needs of people it reinforces other research that's been done around drugs and a need for relationship building along the need into to support resistance from offending to support relationship building to support mental health issues people have the complex needs that they have needs a kind of complex set of resources within the community that are not always there at the moment particularly things around sort of mental community mental health support for example about adequate housing a whole range of things that they need therefore it has to be very careful planning there has to be good essential decision making and leadership around that decision making how you can can actually support and mobilise services and particularly for justice social work a need to recognise that actually the things that really make a difference to people who are on licence are the relationships with the key worker we know this from our research about the continuity about good relationships advocacy and support and empowerment for people those are the things that really make a difference and that needs time it needs well trained staff it needs nurtured staff it needs well paid staff so actually putting resource transferring resource from jailing people into community justice and the mobilised services that they need to support people is actually would in fact be a tough way of dealing with crime in scotland it would enhance public safety and so I really support the intentions of the bill in terms of that integrative approach thank you very much indeed and on that note I'd like to thank all our panel members today we could probably speak for another couple of hours on this and so thank you very much indeed I'll just have a very short suspension to allow our panel members to leave thank you thank you very much members the next agenda item is consideration of legislative consent issues for the UK government's public order bill and I refer members to paper three now you'll see that the relevant provision in the bill is to extend powers similar to those currently held by police scotland to British transport police in scotland for the policing of protests on railway land and the Scottish government is recommending legislative consent to be given to this provision so I'm happy now to open up the discussion to members and then we will consider what recommendation we want to make to parliament on legislative consent so do any members have any queries or questions nope okay thank you very much the question is does the committee agree with the Scottish Government that the Scottish Parliament should consent to the relevant provisions in this bill as set out in the Scottish Government's draft motion and are members content to delegate to me the publication of a short report that summarises the outcome of our deliberations on the LCM thank you so the issue will now move to the chamber for all members to decide based on our report okay thank you very much so our next agenda item is to consider an update to our action plan this item was delayed from our previous meeting in the spirit of time I would ask members if they are happy for us to rather than consider page by page the action plan today if you have specific additions queries or amendments that you would like to be made to the action plan if you would let the clerks team know and we can come back to the action plan at a future meeting are members in agreement to that what would the timescale for that be would you think one of the clerks need to know if there's anything clerks don't really have a don't really have a specific time table you can send it over the next few days but at your leisure because I'm not sure when we'll be able to reschedule the action plan given amount of evidence you've got coming up over the next week or two so we've got a reasonable timeframe for that many responses okay thank you you happy with that thank you yep genie yeah it's just briefly to add that I I think essentially what we're doing is ditching it from today's agenda because we're out of time but I don't think that means it should completely go offline I think it's it's the sort of thing because it's one of the few documents that we do share quite widely with the public and stakeholders on progress that we're making as a committee it's something that we should revisit probably in quite deep great detail but we need to afford it proper time I would rather do that than simply just become a paper trail of correspondence between members and the clerks for a purpose of update we should have an open public session on it so that people can follow what we're saying so yeah I agree and just for clarification I would intend that where we can bring it back onto the agenda we absolutely will I agree you don't want it just to be a bit of email correspondence from now on in okay thank you very much so our next agenda item is to consider correspondence from the cabinet secretary for justice and veterans on the issues of virtual trials and on the current practice of charging for court transcripts and I refer members to paper five and I'd like to thank the cabinet secretary for his letter so firstly in relation to the use of virtual trials I should just point out and remind members that the committee recognises that the use of virtual trials is already provided for in the coronavirus recovery and reform Scotland act of 2022 however despite this and the practice note that was issued by the law justice general very few fully virtual trials have been held and the committee has been keen to see more take place particularly in relation to cases of rape and serious sexual offences so the question remains how can we see more of these types of trials in order to build up an evidence base to inform whether they could become an option for prosecution of appropriate sexual offences cases and secondly on the issue of the charging of the current practice of charging for court transcripts I also welcome the cabinet secretary's comments and I note to support in principle however he does refer in his correspondence to the possibility that further consultation could be required now members will recall that we have written to the cabinet secretary previously on this issue as we're keen that it is considered prior to the introduction of the forthcoming criminal justice reform bill to enable us to consider such a provision as part of the scrutiny of the forthcoming bill which could provide a suitable legislative opportunity to resolve this issue so there's a bit in there so do members firstly have any comments that they wish to make on the matter of the virtual trials first of all so Russell then collect so about halfway through the letter the last paragraph in the first page we learned that these virtual summary domestic abuse trials have been taking place for about three years and the cabinet secretary tells us that this has been at the direction of the law justice clerk which all makes perfect sense but I'm somewhat surprised when you read further that he goes on to say if we want to know how many have actually taken place and he doesn't appear to have this information Scottish Government don't appear to have that information and I find that quite surprising and I think we've already had about two and four already and it shouldn't be this difficult I don't think to get such basic data because I think there's been some anecdotal suggestion that the numbers are very very small and he goes on to say in the following paragraph that these powers run for the next 10 months and then they expire but they can be extended until 2025 so in the one breath we're talking about we don't have basic data in the next breath we're talking about extending it without that basic data it's just really poor in respect of the transcripts I feel like again we've been kind of batter about a little bit we've not had a very clear explanation from anyone as to how much this costs I'm understanding as a private company provides this service one thing that struck me about parliament is how quickly transcribed debates are online it's incredibly efficient and I'm not saying that the courts could do it easily or without cost but we've not really had an explanation as to why it can't be done probably. I would just be keen to see the consultation response that's coming out it's just it says in in these responses that it's going to be published in due course in order to make in a more informed choice. I'd be really keen to see that response and I know as well that the research that's been carried out by University of Glasgow and Ipsley Moray as well so I think that that will give us more information in terms of virtual trials as well and what the public considers and the questions that have been put forward as well on that. I actually welcome the opening position of the cabinet secretary where he says that a greater evidence base should be developed before there are made a permanent feature of Scotland's justice system and by they I mean fully virtual trials he says I continue to agree with that approach I actually agree with his agreement of that approach but I do also share the concern made by a colleague that we are being passed back to the SCTS for data on what something that has been taking place for three years it seems unusual for the government not to have kept a watching brief on it or to have the data that we asked of them nonetheless if the SCTS have that data let's ask them for and for a report back to is on use of the use of virtuality within trials or fully virtual trials themselves because again we are living off the back of other legislation of which this was part of not full legislation which deals with fully virtual trials I think there'd be a lot of interest in it both from from what many stakeholders not just those victims organizations who are clear proponents of the use further use of it in certain types of trials but those who have reservations about it as well and I feel like it I don't really know what the end goal is here every every is there a plan within government to move to some form of permanence either in law or otherwise or simply just say these are matters for the courts and not for us to intervene on so I feel that we're a little bit limbo with that and whilst I look forward to the consultation response has been published I don't think that I'll necessarily answer that question so the government's plans are and I think on the issue of transcripts it's a perennial issue where we seem to be going round in circles on asking for resolution but the government's pushing back that they just keep saying there are several matters that we need to consider well we know there are several matters we've been talking about it for a year now so I'd like to hope that 2023 is the year of resolution and one resolution might be we get to the bottom of this court transcript this year because it's also friendly rightly said we managed to transcribe 22 hours of quite robust chamber debate in a matter of 40 hours if it can be done here I'm sure it can be done in courts okay thank you very much I mean I broadly agree with what Jamie Greene has been saying I think it's really important that we know what the situation is with virtual trials and we have that that data actually can I ask when was the last time we asked the Scottish Courts and Tribunal service for that information because I can't remember yes yes so we during the coronavirus recovery bill consideration that would have been earlier this year earlier last year oh yes last year 2022 yes so it would have been then yeah I mean I would suggest that we we contact them again and stress that it's really important that we know I mean they obviously know and we need to know that too I think and on the court transcripts thing you know again I don't know when the last time we asked for that was and um clearly we've been referred back to the the scts but um yeah we need to we need to press them on on that as well it's not that they're not doing it presumably is you know it is being done it's just that we don't have access to it so yeah okay Katie do you want to come in yeah I mean on transcripts I suspect one of the issues is cost but I really think we should be provided with that information and it's a huge amount of the committee's time that we're spending talking and asking about this and and there doesn't seem to be a willingness to share information I mean on the virtual trials we I think we'll all remember that we discussed at length during the bill and we asked repeatedly for the kind of information that Ronas talking about and it wasn't really forthcoming it took us an awful lot of time to get any information and I think our conclusion was actually that far less was happening than was being presented and I suspect that's still the case but I think as a committee what we'd be concerned about is that you know we're going to be sort of bounced into making permanent decisions when the evidence base isn't there so I think we should actually be quite robust in terms of our correspondence with the cabinet secretary outlining that history and saying that it's not that in principle we would have an objection but that we it does need to be evidenced and it needs to be subject to democratic scrutiny given the the serious and considerable implications for the justice system so whether we do that now or whether we do that later stage I do think we we want to put that in writing really going back as to why it is that we're asking for this information. Do you want to come back in Jamie? It's appropriate to interview and someone making comment but I felt that it was very relevant and it's not just about the volume or quantity or scale of trials that seem to be fully virtual it's actually about the outcomes of them because that's the other side of the data that was far more useful in some ways and I think that's the piece of data that we were missing during the passing of the previous legislation because the volume in itself is is superfluous if you don't know what effect that's having on outcomes which may address some of the issues that people have around it so I think it's that sort of level of data that we need to see. The evidence we did get from the pilot was that a very small number of cases had gone ahead but actually there was a very high number of acquittals that there was far more people found not guilty than we would normally have expected now it was a very small sample so I don't think that you could really take much of that but actually the evidence that we've had particularly in domestic abuse cases was that it was actually leading to more people being found innocent rather than more people being found guilty which is perhaps what the concern had been that was that actually the accused wouldn't get a fair trial so if anything the evidence that we've had is surprising and wouldn't mean that we'd need even more information I think before making any decisions so I think it just you know what Jamie is saying reinforces the fact that you know I think we need to lay down a marker that we wouldn't agree to permanent changes unless the evidence base is there and that we would want that over a period of time because these are permanent changes which potentially I'm could have major implications in cases okay did you want to come back I will go quickly response to very quickly let's say about the two ongoing bits of research one of them specifies there's a date which is spring this year for the episode more than one the other one just says in due course which is perhaps worth seeking some clarity that's in relation to the issue at hand the summary trials just a bit of a steer from them could be useful okay that's fine okay thank you okay thanks very much I concur with the kind of views that have been expressed I do think it would be helpful for us to go back and seek up-to-date data from scts on the numbers of fully virtual trials since we had the last figures which is probably coming up for a year ago when we were looking at the coronavirus legislation so happy to take that away on behalf of members I think in relation to some of the concerns that were raised around the role of defence agents in opposing virtual trials and despite the practice note that has been issued by the law justice clerk I think there's perhaps an opportunity for us to maybe ask the law justice clerk why despite the practice note that was issued the practical reality is that there seems to be very few trials taking place and finally in relation to the comments made around the cabinet secretary I wonder if members would be in agreement that we perhaps ask the cabinet secretary if he would refer to the justice board in the governance group that's overseeing lady Dorian's report to get a bit more clarity on why there are still very few virtual trials despite the fact that there is a provision for them so would members be in agreement to take these tasks away rona I'm just wondering about the chronological order of that so if we're going to ask the scts how many trials they've done should we not wait till we get that information and then contact the cabinet secretary absolutely yeah I agree and on the matter of court transcripts again I agree with what members have have raised and I'm happy to propose that we perhaps clarify with the cabinet secretary if indeed there is a plan to undertake a consultation on the proposals in advance of the introduction of the criminal justice law reform bill or what he has outlined in his letter referring to the fact that it might be done sometime in the future but there's a bit of lack of clarity about timescales I'm quite keen that we maybe get some more detail on that too members happy with that yep okay thank you very much indeed okay and on that note I think that completes our final business in public and we now move into private session thank you