 I'm going to start. Everybody pay attention. Can I welcome everyone to the Justice Committee's 25th meeting in 2014? Can I ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices as they interfere with broadcasting even when they're switched to silent? I've got apologies from John Pentland and Graham Pearson as the substitute. Item 1, committee's invited to agree to consider items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Item 3 is on approach to our budget scrutiny. Item 4 is our work programme. Item 5 is consideration of a draft report on criminal justice and courts bill legislative consent memorandum. Are you agreed to take these items in private? Item 2, child sexual exploitation. I've set aside an hour for this and just let the committee know they can have longer, but that's at least an hour. We agree to hold the session following a recommendation of the Public Petitions Committee on tackling child sexual exploitation in Scotland report that we undertake post-legislative scrutiny of the protection of children and prevention of sexual offences Scotland Act 2005. The petition committee's concerns relate to the apparent lack of prosecutions under the 2005 act. I welcome meeting Katrina Dalrymple, head of policy division, and Stephen McGowan, procurator of fiscal major crime and fatalities investigation, Crown Office and procurator of fiscal service, and Assistant Chief Constable Malcolm Graham, Police Scotland. I thank you for your written submissions and you also have written submissions from Barnardo's in your papers, which are very useful. I'll go straight to questions from members, please. My first question will be on evidence that we received, first of all, from Barnardo's, who talked about the challenges for the need for collaboration, improving sexual offences and this evidence was corroborated by the Crown Office and particular fiscal service that says that grooming behaviour may be difficult to prove by corroborating evidence given that it will have occurred in private. I would like to have an answer to see if you feel the main barrier to prosecution for child sexual exploitation will be cases and corroboration. I do recognise that the requirement for corroboration is one of the barriers. I think that the committee has heard an enormous amount of evidence about corroboration, so I certainly do not think that this is necessarily the time of the place to open that debate up again. I think that we have made it clear in our written evidence that we see that the requirement for two sources of evidence is sometimes very difficult to reach in terms of those types of offences. As we all know, those types of offences are committed by clever individuals who will evade detection and they are often committed in private, and that is where the difficulty arises. Counselor, do you want to say something on the police point if you do not have to, but if you do, in that respect? I would echo what has been said about corroboration. We know the challenges and indeed the strengths that that brings to the justice system. In sexual offending and particularly where perpetrators set out explicitly to target a vulnerability that they will design into the nature of the offending a minimal chance of the victim being able to provide an account in a way that is likely to be heard, that poses multiple challenges for all the services that would seek to address that. Corroborating that account in terms of getting things into the justice system is just one of those barriers and there are many others, so I am sure that we will come on to speak about it in more detail. Thank you very much for the answer. Another barrier might be, as well, a barrier to prosecution for grooming. We had maybe some evidence that it's more the offence that has been prosecuted and grooming becomes only a narrative and evidence to support the offence at the end. Would that be the reason why grooming has not been prosecuted as much as it would have been? I think that you are probably referring to section 1 of the 2005 act, which I know is where some of the concern is. The policy behind section 1 of the 2005 act was very clear in terms of the memorandum, and I think that the cabinet secretary for justice wrote to the committee that section 1 was introduced for a particular reason to ensure that individuals that were making that online contact and arranging to meet, it was to ensure that that was in itself criminal. There are lots of other criminal offences in terms of Scottish criminal law that could capture a lot of behaviours that could still be described as grooming, for example. The section 1 was designed to capture a particular type of behaviour to ensure that that was made criminal. What I would advise the committee is that there are lots of other offences that are regularly prosecuted, and we regularly gain convictions in that do capture a lot of the type of behaviour that is in place. Is it in the case that there should be some kind of consolidating legislation, then we have bits and pieces all over the place, and why is that a ministerial thing? It seems to me that having a separate thing when you have a couple of other acts, let alone the common law, makes it complex. Obviously, there are bits of law all over the place, and we have statutory and we have the common law as well. We are very aware in the Crown Office of what the law is and how we apply it in terms of the criminal offences. The 2009 sexual offences act, I can give you some information about that if required, but we regularly prosecute a lot of sexual offences under that legislation, and I can give you details of the ages of the victims in those types of prosecutions and the high level of cases that we can take up. Is there not an issue there for about, raised by my colleague, that perhaps if we had a consolidating piece of legislation that it would be easier for, not necessarily inform people like yourself and the police, but other parties to understand where to look, where under statutory legislation, where legislation should say where crimes have been committed, that grooming should have been perhaps absorbed into the other parts? I wouldn't disagree with that. Obviously, that's a matter for ministers in the good way, but I wouldn't disagree with that. Consolated legislation would be helpful. Yes. Viewers have put a ton of that particular matter out there. We've provided some information about the use of section 1 and how we're using it more than we did at the start. I think that that's an acknowledgement that in 2005-06, when the legislation was launched, and it might be perhaps one of the reasons for our under-use of it initially was that it was a discrete piece of legislation. It wasn't as part of a wider act, and therefore I would acknowledge that we didn't, as a service then, and it's gone back some eight years, we didn't communicate that as well as we could have to our frontline officers to make sure that it was used in every circumstance where I think it could be, and that is work that we've undertaken with some pace over the course of the last year. The result of that is that it's now been used 162 times, as you've seen in the written submission. I think that what's important is the breakdown of that in terms of an analysis of many of those offences. It gives us an indication that a substantial proportion of them are actually having the intended effect of the legislation, so in a substantial proportion of those offences they are not subsumed with another contact offence, and if I can make sense for you of the way it's written here and add a bit of extra detail, 58% of those crimes that we looked at were non-contact grooming offences. That's where somebody's contacted with the intention of meeting or arranged a meet, but they haven't yet met with the individual who's the victim. In the remaining 42% of the crimes, there were contact offences, but two thirds of those, which I think is 28% of the total, in two thirds of those crimes, they were being charged alongside another sexual offence. In other words, the sexual contact had already been met, and therefore I assume, and I think very reasonably from that, that we were identifying the grooming as a result of having identified the sexual offending, and that wasn't the gap that the legislation was intended to fill, although I think it's appropriate that we use it in those cases to recognise that grooming has occurred that's led to the sexual crime, but then there are the final 14%, I think particularly important, where there has been some contact with an individual, but it's not sexual contact and we're able to evidence grooming, and again that is what the legislation was intended to fill. So that there isn't one particular dynamic that we're seeing here, but we're seeing a mixture of different circumstances, and I actually think those figures provide a good level of confidence that the gap that the legislation was intended to fill is being filled, and I don't think it was ever anticipated from my knowledge at the time of the discussion that there would be hugely significant numbers of this crime identified, and therefore it's difficult to put a number on what that should be, but if we were to compare it with charges that we put into the Procurator Fiscal and Reports, for instance in the 2009 act, then it's always going to be of a magnitude lower, which is. I think the papers clarify that fact that we're not just looking at one piece of legislation where grooming comes in, we're looking at other parts in common law. Margaret Hill, but then John Finnie. Margaret Hill. Yeah, just on that, I think part of the problem from the submissions was that if there's evidence you think of maybe a more substantial crime then to cross with an older child, then that is the charge that's gone for, and when it falls then there's nothing much to fall back on. So I'm very encouraged that the 2005 act is being used more. I remember being on the committee at the time, in fact I was intent on bringing a member's bill on grooming and instead this was put into the act, and it was to cover the situation where this is happening under the wire in the family home, child on the computer, now texting or whatever by mobile phone, and they're travelling to meet the intent, plus that really would hopefully be a preventative measure from stopping something worse having. So I'm very encouraged that it is being used more and that we're raising awareness, but just on the raising of the awareness, do you now consider it's time to adapt and change the definition for our CSE? I'm happy to have a good one. Yes, please, assistant chief counsel. No, I think the definition that we've got of CSE is pretty clear. I think that child abuse is a very complex area. I think that there are a huge number and sadly a growing number of ways in which children are abused, particularly sexually abused across the world as a highlight in the written submission that there are growing ways in which technology is used and the global reach of that continues to extend and perpetrators actively seek new ways of avoiding being detected as well. I don't think that a change to the definition that we have would necessarily help in any sense in protecting children and young people from that harm and I think that whilst it's always useful to have a discussion about what the pros and cons would be, I think that we should focus on making sure that people are aware of what is potentially going on out there in Scotland, as you rightly say, in homes and in streets and raising that level of public awareness to ensure that people are more attuned to the risks that children and young people face today and that all the agencies collectively are working together to share information and make sure that where we do identify any concern that that's getting brought forward to the right place and acted upon and that's everything that we've been doing since since Police Scotland's been created. I just wanted to read the definition because I think that speaks volumes. Any involvement of a child or a young person, the low 18 in sexual activity for which remuneration or cash or in kindness given to the young person or a third persons, the perpetrator will have the power over the child by virtue of one or more of the falling age emotional maturity, gender, physical strength, intellectual and economic and other resources, access to drugs, et cetera. That's hardly user friendly and something that the public could immediately relate to and think, I've just witnessed sexual grooming or I'm just aware of. Come back, I think that the definition is intended for professionals in terms of training and awareness. I don't think that it's intended as a public statement and an easy strapline, I suppose, for a public information campaign, which I would very, very much welcome there being around about these particular issues and wouldn't advise that the definition would be at the core of that. I started off by saying that child abuse takes many different forms and child sexual exploitation is only one of those forms and indeed we need to be alive to all of them in the different settings in which they happen. I think that the legislation that we're speaking about doesn't necessarily just cover child sexual exploitation either. Some of it covers other forms of child abuse, particularly the 2009 act, which is extensive and is the recently consolidated legislation, as members will be aware. I was just going to say that one of the barriers that we have identified in bringing about prosecutions is that the child often doesn't realise what is happening to them is wrong. I don't necessarily think—and I agree with ACC Graham—that the definition is necessarily going to change that. I think that it is much more about education and public awareness in schools from a very, very early stage about this type of behaviour is wrong and we know the types of children and the vulnerable children that are out there that are targeted. It's about making sure that they are aware that this behaviour is wrong so that we can help them to speak out. Can I just pick up on that? It's particularly the remuneration of cash and kind given to young person. As you say, very often they think that they're in a genuine relationship, but it's actually grooming. We're coming back in a full circle here. Shouldn't that be reflected in the definition or in some way that could be referred to? I mean, I don't have a difficulty in terms of the definition in what it reflects. I think that all the professionals know what we are dealing with when it comes to child sexual exploitation. And I think that the more important is education of the children themselves to make sure that they are aware of what is happening to them and that they are being exploited. Can I ask you to go back to that word? You said vulnerable, particular categories which you referred to. Maybe on your line of education could you perhaps say what's done there, children who are in care homes and so on? I mean, the example in England was a dreadful example that happened. What's happened on the ground there? Yeah, I'm happy to answer that. There's been a growing recognition, I think, of the different dynamics of child sexual exploitation over many years. Indeed, when the 2005 act came on and was enacted, the level of understanding about where digital technology would go and enable people to be contacted, contactable to share digital imagery and to be groomed couldn't have been conceived, I think it's safe to say. In a very short space of time in Scotland, we've recognised that we need to go out proactively and look for this type of offending. I think that when I spoke about the figures earlier in terms of the section 1 act, I would emphasise that that is a small portion of what we would use to tackle child sexual exploitation, that there's not a direct parallel of section 1 offences and what we've done to tackle child sexual exploitation. That very important 14 per cent of cases of children where there had been non-sexual contact, but the grooming offence was complete. We believe that that's as a result of our productivity in terms of seeking out these cases and recognising that we need to go looking where we think we might find it. One of the ways that we can do that is by working more closely with a whole range of agencies that are directly in contact with children and young people on a daily basis. We have far closer working relationships with third sector organisations. Barnardo is being one of the key organisations, as we know, that have submitted information today. I've lobbied hard to improve the responses that the CSE brought about the Public Petitions Committee that has resulted in us sitting here today. As a result of that, along with a whole range of other agencies, we are out on the ground educating not just our own police officers and staff, but directing them towards the other agencies and the areas that we think either geographically. We know that there are potentially hotspots where young people gather, so we need to be alive to that. Agencies would be working across the statutory sector. Local authorities clearly have a key role that are in the main responsible for those who are looked after and in care health services. We know that by improving our approach to identifying health issues at an early stage that might relate back to sexual abuse can lead to investigations in child sexual exploitation. In the third sector, I think that you highlighted the recent publicity that there has been following the most recent inquiry, a significant case review and Rotherham, which comes on the back of a long line of similar cases in large towns or cities in England and Wales, where the place that was first identified and the people who needed to be listened to were quite a small charitable organisation who were working very closely with young people. We need to continue strengthening our community links as a service and collectively into all those bodies. The way in which that needs to be done can be led by an organisation such as Police Scotland. We have an ability to stand up and demonstrate national leadership that we are a national service. That is one of the strengths of the service in coordinating that activity across our 14 local police divisions. Primarily, the responsibility for that rests with the devolved system that we have and that has many strengths in Scotland through the child protection committees and the chief officer groups at a local level. It was just an experience that I had when going out with the police. We went to hotspot in Glasgow and there were young girls there who had been drinking and were very vulnerable. The police officers and ourselves took them home. When they would take them home, would that automatically trigger off social services or is that what you mean by local agencies being involved? It might do, and I could not comment on that specific set of circumstances, depending on the assessment. However, we have developed a national model of recording concerns. That is in the lead-up to the Children and Young People Act, which will be enacted in 2016, as members will be aware. It will place a duty on the chief constable to gather, collect and share information where there are well-being concerns about young people. It might be in the circumstances that you described that we had a child protection concern about somebody. For instance, if there was to be information alongside finding young people who had been out drinking in an area of concern, if we thought that they had been at risk of being sexually abused, sexually assaulted, then that would be immediately dealt with as a child protection concern. Interagency procedures for that would be invoked and an investigation would be commenced. If there was not that type of information present and we were perhaps concerned just because they were out, it was late, they were in an area where we felt they could be vulnerable to exploitation, that would be a concern, that would be recorded and then that would be shared and assessed on an interagency basis in a slightly slower time fashion, if there was a child protection concern. We have a system for doing that across the whole of the country with all the statutory partners that have a role in that. Do you link in with the children's hearing system as well? Yes, we do. There may be issues of child welfare. Absolutely, and there are statutory grounds for referral. The police are required to refer in certain circumstances if we think that the grounds for that are met. That system is being slightly redesigned to take account of the new children and young people act, which will deal with a lower level of concerns intervening at an earlier stage in young people's lives where we think that support and assistance would be helpful, with the intention of preventing them from coming to some of the type of harm that we are speaking about under this legislation, which is quite clearly at the higher end and we would wish to prevent. I will take John Finnie, then Roderick, then Elaine. Thank you, convener. I have a few questions for me. First of all, to yourself, Mr Gremm, can I thank you for the very detailed response there and reassuring in your response, you say that this is a continuous learning and development process. Particularly, I would like to ask you about the risk of sexual harm orders and the comment that you make there about, if I may just quote, however, that they appear to have been instances where the requirement for the application within three months of their relevant conduct being reported has been a barrier to raising, a barrier to progressing an application. In addition, the orders are only available for those children under 16 years of age and where potential victims are now older than 16 at the time of reporting orders were not considered. Why isn't there that retrospective application, surely an offence is an offence or a concern, as I can say? Are you able to expand on that? I know that you go on to say more. I can do that. If I could, convener, before I answer that question, I would like to make a correction to the figures that were submitted, which, on further scrutiny yesterday, I realised were incorrectly attributed, which gives the wrong impression of the number of live orders. When it says in the bottom paragraph of the first section about the use of risk and sexual harm orders that there are currently 23 live orders, 10 of which are interim orders—what it should have said is 10 of which were interim orders, and those orders have actually lapsed, which means that there were 13 live orders in place. Now, I think that the magnitude is still relatively small and therefore it doesn't change the nature of the discussion that we're having. The difference, I should add, between the—if you take the 10 away, it doesn't leave 13 live orders, it leaves 11 because one full order has lapsed since we did that work, and one of the individuals with a raw show has moved to England and Wales, and therefore the record transfers with them. However, I just wanted that point of clarity when I picked up the inaccuracy yesterday. The record transfers with them. Do you explain that? So they keep that order—that jurisdictional thing continues in England? Yes, that's right, but the way that we manage the risk of sexual harm orders is the same as we manage other civil orders against sex offenders that we record them on a national UK system called Visor, which is the violent and sex offenders register. That system allows us to proactively manage and ensure clarity of ownership about the person in the police or in the criminal justice system that is taking a lead for the arrangements around about any particular offender. In the main, it's used for registered sex offenders, of which there are some 4,600 in Scotland, I think about 3,600 in the community, and the sex offender prevention orders, which the chief constable can seek, or indeed which can be sought on conviction by the Crown. There are some 472 of those in place across Scotland. It does put some scale in terms of the risk of sexual harm orders and the fact that we have a relatively low number of those proactively applied for. In relation to the question round about the limitations, there is a restriction in the legislation that the conduct must have been reported within three months of the application being made. I think that the point behind the question is perhaps, should that be longer, in our view, it would be yes, it would be helpful if it was, albeit that we accept that there may be a requirement for some limit to that, given that the legislation prescribes the minimum length of time that the orders can be sought. The age limitation, in common with a lot of other developments in the law more recently, we find that children quite rightly are being considered as under 18 and not under 16, and therefore there is a gap in there. I think that the legislation does allow for the case that if we identify someday that an order would be relevant for who is age 16 or 17, then we can invoke child protection procedures and, indeed, there can be a consideration that any further legislation can be on the schedule that would attribute that offence as a child protection offence, but it does not allow us to apply for the order. I have a few more questions about me. Just to find that you have got in your bit about applications, you know detailed data when applications were declined at court, would that not be useful? It would be useful. Why can't you have that? I have since done a bit of work on that by going and speaking to the lawyers personally, and I have discovered that, out of all the risk of sexual harm orders that we have sought, none of them have gone to a proof hearing, so they have not been challenged in terms of the evidential basis, which is on the civil proof, and therefore none of them have ever been rejected, albeit that some of the interim orders have been challenged and then later revoked, but they have always been initially granted, if that is helpful. How many current live orders have you got? I have lost track, and it is 11 now, so what you are saying is that they did not, because they were just accepted by the party against whom the order was sought. That is why you are not able to see how many were declined because they were not challenged. Were any challenged, just interim ones, were challenged? Only subsequently, at the point that they were granted by the court, none of them went to a proof in terms of an evidential hearing. I am just trying to get a complete picture of appeals and so on, how successful the applications are under the civil burden of proof and the standard of proof. The short answer is that we do not have any experience of that at all. Right. Sorry, John. Thank you. It is to the panel generally that this question here. Some of the evidence that we have, when we have evidence from children first in Bernados, the suggestion is that almost a sense of frustration that I wonder if there is a perceptual issue here that, just to be a devil's advocate, things are not as bad as people imagine, and it is good relates, because perception does feature in people's attitudes to crime, so I am sure that Mr Graham will be aware. And I wonder if there is perhaps a link in with something that children first say in relation to quote the lack of data and national reporting of statistics relevant to sexual offences, offenders and the use of static powers is an on-going concern. If anything, there is less data available than there was a few years ago, and a suggestion that they would welcome one national data set. I wonder if the panel could comment on that, please. I am very much welcome to that one national data set. I think that it is something that we have managed to improve again with the creation of a national police service that we have brought together. As best as we can with some of the IT systems that we still currently have, data into one place, and as an example of that, to put some scale on it, we know that last year there were 1,590 people reported that they were raped in 1314. They did not report that they had all been raped during those years, so some of those were historical, but of those 1,590 crimes, about a quarter of them were against children, which I think is a really big number of children reporting that they had been raped, or people reporting that they had been raped as children. It does dwarf some of the numbers that we are speaking about in this quite discreet piece of legislation. I think that if we were to put together something that looked at all the offences where children were the victims, whether of physical abuse, sexual abuse, child sexual exploitation and look at that as one data set, we would all have a much clearer picture of all the efforts that would be taken. Indeed, most importantly, as you have highlighted, Mr Finlay, where we need to continue to learn and to look at where the gaps are for the future. Mr Finlay, it may assist you if I could quote some statistics that I have in front of me. Those are convictions in terms of the 2009 sexual offences of Scotland act, and we have managed to break down the cases in which we have had a child between the ages of 13 to 15 as the victim and to where we have had a child under the age of 13. If I could just quote, for example, the last two years, 2012 to 2013, we have had 213 convictions under the 2009 act, and that encompasses all the charges under the 2009 act. As committee members will be aware, there are a large variety of charges under that act. 213 convictions where the victim has been between the ages of 13 to 15 and 87 convictions where the child has been under 13. In the last financial year 2013 to 2014, there were 151 convictions under those charges under that act, where the child was between the ages of 13 and 15 and 57 convictions where the child was under the age of 13. In terms of that year's statistics, there will probably be a significant number of cases still on-going. That has to be taken into consideration when you are looking at the age of the victims in terms of the sexual offences act, because there are so many offences under the sexual offences act that capture a lot of the behaviours that we are talking about in terms of sexual exploitation in furtherance of sexual abuse. I can write to the committee and follow-up with those statistics. I do not know if you can do that, but it is very important again, and data is important for us to see. Many of those cases were historic, if we can use that awful term, more historic cases of adults last coming forward. If that could be in there as well, would that be possible? I do not think that our database actually gives us that information, but there may be some sampling that we can do to give you a flavour of that. That would be useful to the committee as well, because that is another issue about people coming forward. As you say in your papers, it takes maybe not just months but decades for some people to come forward about what has happened to them. One brief final question, if I may convener. It is about the challenge and the different roles that the agencies have. If we have a child-centred approach, there may be instances where it is not in the child's interest to progress matters in a certain way. What reassurance can you give that a known offender, or someone who clearly is an offender, is not going to slip through the cracks just because we cannot? Is that the role of these orders, for instance? That is a very fair point. I think that that is one of the roles of the orders, which also fell quite a discrete gap in terms of the evidence that you would need to present for the basic criteria to be fulfilled, as you will see from the briefings. There is a whole range of other things that we need to do more of, to be frank, to make sure that perpetrators do not slip through the gap. I think that one of the most important things is to challenge and seek a wider awareness and challenge behaviours. What I would have a concern about is increasingly concerning behaviours in society, where children and young people could be at risk because of the opportunities that exist through digital communications. Increasingly, what we are picking up is a growing normalisation of sexual imagery, the sharing of sexual imagery and, potentially, young people being under pressure to partake in that type of activity, which can lead in our experience to contact defending. I think that we need to be right up front about having conversations about that stuff very publicly and making sure that young people who are taking part in that, and it is often young people who are offenders as well, are aware that that is not a healthy part of our relationship. It will constitute criminal behaviour. I think that the legislation is one means of intervening to protect people and ensure that perpetrators can be controlled, but I think that there is a far wider piece to be done in terms of education, communication, and that goes not just publicly but for all the agencies that are involved in working in that area as well. I think that I have tried to articulate that in a very balanced way to say that I think that we have more work to do, that we are doing a lot, but I think that we have more work to do before we get there and that the problem is continuing to grow. It may assist if I can support ACC Graham in relation to that. In terms of the use of orders, I think that it is very important to note that, if the civil orders are breached, it is a criminal offence. As you will note from the evidence that we have provided, since 2009, we have prosecuted 37 breaches of risk of sexual harm orders. There has actually only been 31 orders in place, so that means that an order has been breached more than once, and we have robustly prosecuted them. My question was—sorry, I probably did not frame it right. It was more on the joint investigation where perhaps a police officer and a social worker will have shared interests, but they will also have unique interests to their professions. Historically, there has been attention there. How is that addressed if it is ultimately deemed not in the child's interest to proceed formally with prosecution and ensuring that any perpetrator is somehow swept up in that? I think that the orders have a part to play in that, and I would like to see us pushing the boundaries of where we can get orders. I would like to see them tested in the court to see the limits of the legislation used with the intention of making sure that children are protected where we have that information. We have some plans developing to co-ordinate that nationally so that we can pick up and highlight the cases where that might be applicable, so that if we do set out, as I think that you are inferring, the police will always set out to gather evidence to the standard of proof that we can expect it to go into a criminal court. We do not seek to gather evidence on the premise that we are going to seek a civil order. It is not largely within the mindset of how the police operate, so we need to make a bit of a shift there to make sure that it is seen as being a viable alternative if we are not going to get a sufficency of evidence to make a report to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. I would emphasise that the line between the two is quite a fine one, because you still need to be able to evidence, albeit to a different burden of proof, that somebody has contacted somebody on two occasions and that they have done it with the intention of what is classed as sexualised activity. That is quite a fine difference. I talked about all the other things and I apologise if I did that at some length in answering the question. I think that the most effective way of protecting children is to have a shared interest with social services and all the other agencies and ensuring that the interests of the child come first. I think that, in the medium and longer term, the most effective way of doing that is to influence the behaviour of the perpetrators. We need to make sure that the responsibility rests firmly with them for committing these offences whilst we do everything that we can to protect young children. I think that an awful lot of the debate at the moment—public class that we have seen over the course of the last year—has focused on victimisation and identifying victims. The police are really interested in identifying the perpetrators and bringing them to account, making sure that they are held responsible and trying to prevent more people from becoming offenders. I have got quite a list, so if I move on, I have got Elaine, followed by Alison, followed by—oh, sorry, I have got Roderick, and then I have got Elaine, followed by Alison, followed by Graham. Don't take that personally. I just didn't have my glasses on. A lot of the points that I was going to raise have been covered, but if I can, references have been made already to the Rotherham Inquiry. I would like to make a reference to some remarks that Professor Jane made to Holyrood magazine where she is quoted as saying, I don't know the situation in Scotland and I hesitate to be critical, but it's an interesting phenomenon. I don't believe that low levels of conviction mean low levels of crime, she says, albeit holding out hope that recent victim and witness legislation might provide better protection and support for vulnerable young people going through the court process. Does anyone like to comment on that? That low levels of conviction doesn't necessarily mean that there's a low level of CSE, and the committee asked about data sets. It's vital that we have more data about that. The new legislation will certainly assist us in helping victims through the court process, and it will assist in breaking down some of those barriers. I think that that's a legitimate question that Professor Jay asked about what that means and what the number of convictions means for the rate of child sexual exploitation. There is probably no correlation between the number of convictions and the amount of child sexual exploitation. We don't have the data at the moment to look at that. Since our report came out, because clearly we want to get as in-depth and understanding as we can of what she uncovered, I tried to put that into the context of what's happening in Scotland, given her extensive experience and in-depth understanding of how the Scottish system works. I think that she's acknowledged that, firstly, the relationship between the police and the Crown Office procreator fiscal services is very different than the relationship between the police and the CPS in England and Wales, which might answer in part some of that question. The fundamental point is that, no, we can't be reassured that this is not going on just because there isn't prima facie evidence of it being reported to us. We're increasingly aware of that. This is an area that we will only find when we proactively go looking for it. We have been proactively looking for it and a number of operations that are in progress, which have been in the public domain to a greater or lesser extent because of the interagency activity that has led to them. Although I cannot give precise details as some of the prosecutions are still in progress, some of that on-going activity is evidence of the increasingly proactive approach that we are taking. The other question, and I hope that it's helpful to relay this, that I've been asked a lot in the position that I'm in since Rotherham's come out, well, is Rotherham happening in Scotland? It's the appealing question to ask and understand that by colleagues, by leaders in other partnership organisations and indeed by elected members. I suppose that the answer that I give to that is that it depends on what you mean by Rotherham because there was a very strong and goes beyond inference in the report that there was a clear history. It describes a journey of members who have read it, quite a troubling and traumatic journey for the reader, never mind for those who were experiencing the victimisation and the abuse that is so eloquently described in a concise report that covers a lot of ground. I think it's very clear though that there was such a large amount of information about the scale and prevalence of what was going on in Rotherham that so many people knew about and the inference in the report is that there was active efforts for a long period of time to suppress that. If the question is, is that happening in Scotland? Absolutely not. There's absolutely nothing that's come to my attention of any large-scale or extensive co-ordinated group who are conducting child sexual exploitation on the scale that was described in that report. If there had been, we would be conducting investigations into it. However, if the question is, is there child sexual exploitation in Scotland and in the towns and cities and indeed the rural areas of Scotland, the answer is yes. We know there is because we're investigating it. We're investigating it successfully in many cases and we're increasingly understanding that the way to approach these investigations is by working more closely in partnership from the outset, making sure that there is strong, consistent and effective support in place for the victims to allow them to be able to understand and provide an account of what has happened to them with the hope and expectation that we can bring that into the justice system. However, the primary focus has to lay in the interests of the child. One of the operations that's on-going that I spoke about as an example of that is operation dash. It's a widespread operation focusing on a premise of child sexual exploitation in the west of Scotland. There are now 55 crimes that have been recorded in relation to that operation against, I think, 22 different accused persons. A large number of reports, I think, 23 reports being submitted to the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service and some of those cases are in train. Some of them have resulted. I think I mentioned in my evidence that one of them is due to be sentenced tomorrow. It includes section 1, grooming offence, the other charges that are being preferred, there are nine rape charges, there are five other sexual assault charges, there are various sexual coercion charges, all sexually related and there are various other non-sexual but violent related offences as well. As I say, I'm not able to go into more detail about those cases, which will unfold on a case by case basis, but I think it's important to highlight the strength of the efforts that I've gone into tackling. I don't think that the committee would expect you to go into your operational methods either, because you'd be disclosing them to people listening to this committee who would simply then say, that's what you're up to now and know what to do differently or something. We appreciate that. Mr Rimpol wants to come in. Thank you. No, it was just the crime that I've also met with Professor Jay. One of the lessons learned from Professor Jay's report and one of the things that she identified was the approach to decision making by prosecutors down south. I just wanted to reassure the committee and I'm quite sure that Lord Advocate said the same when he was here previously, is that the approach to making a decision in those cases is entirely different. Historically down south, the approach to decision making was looking at the credibility of the victim. We will obviously take the credibility of the victim into consideration, but we look at the credibility of the allegation that has been made and we look at what supporting evidence there is to support that. The victim's credibility will be one part of that, of course, but we absolutely recognise that there will be occasions when victims will not tell us the truth for very, very sound reasons because they are scared. We've further developed, and maybe Stephen may want to explain further, a bespoke victim strategy in all high court cases where there's serious sexual offending, which is bespoke individual victim strategy. The victim strategy is something that we've introduced in the spring of this year. Really what that does is it looks at the victim and looks at what support that victim, as an individual person, needs going through the process of investigation and prosecution. At the same stage as the evidence is gathered and decisions are being made about the evidence in that case, we look at the victim and we look at the victim as a person, what level of information they need about the case, what their background is, and how they are supported throughout the whole process. All of that is done with a view to having a very early meeting with them, to explore that, to tell them what we can do, to tell them, signpost them, the direction of other people that can assist them, and all of it is about managing the experience of the victim through the criminal justice system. It's done in every sexual offence that there's a particular focus on it, with the additional vulnerabilities that you have over any complaint on a sexual case that you would have in relation to a victim of child sexual exploitation, who we know have some of the most complex needs out of any people that we will deal with in the criminal justice system. That's something that we introduced recently. It's all been managed through our national sexual crimes unit, which, as the committee will be aware, was the first unit of its kind that was introduced in Europe. We introduced it in Scotland in 2009, and we've got a network of sexual offences teams throughout the country that are involved in local liaison with the police in bringing those cases to the specialist Crown Council at NSCU to make the decisions. It's interesting for the committee to note that the volume of sexual offences that we deal with, generally speaking, has increased recently, and a substantial proportion of that is offences against children. Of our 36 advocate deputies, 20 of them are now based in the national sexual crimes unit and 20 are specialist sexual crimes prosecutors, so there has been additional resource put into that area of our business to improve the way that we take those cases forward. That's very helpful. I've got one small further question. Before I do, I just wanted to refer to the executive summary that Professor Jay put out in terms of Rotherham, when she commented on changes between 2009 and 2013 and said, the police are now well-resourced for child sexual exploitation and well-trained. Their prosecutions remain low in number, so that's an indication of the complexity of some of these issues. I could just ask ACC Markham Grain, slightly confused in your submission as to what was actually meant by the strategic analytical profile. Perhaps you could give us a bit more information on that and how that's been developed and how that's going to assist. Okay. That's a piece of work that will be driven by all of the intelligence and information sources that Police Scotland can gather together. It comes directly from a recommendation that was made following the Public Petitions Committee report where they were of the view, I think, quite rightly, and this is where Professor Jay starts her report as well, I think, by saying that nobody will know what the true scale of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham was or is. I think that's true in Scotland and the recommendation from the Petitions Committee was that there should be an assessment, a strategic analysis of the information that is held. We've conducted that and the report is a restricted document in terms of the information that it holds, in terms of the data sources that it's drawn from. It looks at all the areas that we've discussed this morning, but I think that the sum total of the findings in it for me are that it will only tell us what we already know and actually it doesn't give us a representation of the true scale of the problem. In advance of the ministerial working group around child sexual exploitation, the Scottish Government commissioned Bedfordshire University to do a study that is known as being a leader in this particular field in terms of academic research, and they came to a similar conclusion, which I wouldn't say characterises all academic research, but the final part was certainly more research needs to be done to accurately establish the scale of the problem. I think that I go back to the comments that I made previously that we will always underestimate the scale of the problem if we only use the data that we hold, because we know that we don't hold data about everything that's going on. I can give you an example from the wider sexual offences where the best assessment that we have from Scottish crime survey data is that probably about 20 per cent of serious sexual crimes are reported to the police. As I said earlier, 1,590 rapes were recorded across Scotland last year, and the best assessment from independent survey data is that that's 20 per cent of the crimes that have happened. We have to acknowledge that we're never going to know what the true scale of it is, and we need to increasingly work together so that the likes of the strategic analysis that we've done in the police draw on data from the third sector and from other statutory agencies where it's available. I think that we have to continue developing that, and one way of continuing to develop that would be to work with the Government and the other agencies in a more coherent fashion. We're working towards that at the moment to join up all the information that everybody holds, but I still don't think that it'll ever give us a complete picture of what we're dealing with, and we need to get on with the action that addresses the problem in that knowledge. Can I just ask a really stupid question? If 20 per cent only have reported to the police, how do you know that it's 20 per cent? That comes from the... It's independent, it's the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, which came out in July this year, comes out every two years, I think, now. They survey a statistically valid number of people from across Scotland about their experience of crime and justice in a way that you could never attribute inaccuracy towards from the amount of crime that is recorded by the police. I think that it's widely acknowledged that crime recording figures only give you a picture of what's reported. I understand that, but so it's a random sample of people? I don't think it's random. I think that they approach people. I'm getting slightly into the territory that I'm not an expert in, I have to say, in terms of the survey. Does anybody help me with that? I don't know how you know that it's 20 per cent. Well, I think that it's the approach... Excuse me if I'm being helped. Sorry. So it is a representative, of course. What I call random, so that people... Your experiences and from that you're able to say 80 per cent don't tell us. That's what the survey says. They've developed specific modules around about sexual offending and it includes different age strata within it. I don't have it in front of me, so I'm quoting from memory. No, I just wondered, and you know, I take myself where I didn't want to go, but there we are. But that was helpful. Finish, Roddy, of you. Yes, thank you for helping out as well. Elaine, followed by Alison, followed by Graham, followed by Sandra. I was quite struck by ACC Graham's evidence on the risk of sexual harm orders and particularly the point that he makes that at the moment there has to be at least two occasions where activity has taken place, which can lead to a civil order being imposed on the individual. Is there ACC Graham argues that that should be reduced to one? Is there actually any argument to say that once should not be enough, particularly given it's not actually triggering the criminal prosecution at that point? Well, I don't think there is. I mean, I think in the vast majority of cases where we identify that there's been a sexual contact to be in the position of saying, right, we'll have to wait for another and see if that happens before we can apply for an order is bizarre. And in many cases where we're able to identify two forms of sexual contact that's going to constitute an offence that we would report in any case rather than going for an order, so that's why I say there's quite a discrete band of circumstances in which we would be applying for the order where we wouldn't be looking to report to the crown. Now, I should say what I would like to see are more circumstances where we are applying for risk of sexual harm orders alongside reporting information to the crown and using the civil orders more proactively in that manner and we've got plans to do that but that hasn't come through in the figures yet. My other question really was around the issues about education in particular given the exposure of young people to pornography and other ablant forms of sexual behaviour online, which they can obviously clearly feel are normal if they don't have the appropriate forms of education. I mean, I don't want to stray on to another petition, which has had a bit of publicity recently but in your view, is the education offered to young people sufficient nowadays to address that sort of problem and to enable those who might perpetrate that sort of behaviour to realise that it's an offence and indeed to allow people who are potentially victims, the confidence to say that we can refuse this type of behaviour or this type of approach? I think that more needs to be done to assess the impact and the scale of the problem around about news or digital technologies, which in the main, if I'm being frank, the people that are making the decisions about the policy and the laws are not actively using on a daily basis and I put myself into that category as well. To get yourself into the mindset of what it feels like to be, and I say from personal experience, I'm not talking about 13, 14-year-olds, I'm talking about eight, nine, 10-year-olds who have probably got a fairly active digital presence in terms of living their lives through some sort of virtual or online community in a way that many of us certainly could never have conceived of in our childhood and probably have some difficulty, I speak from personal experience, identifying with in adulthood and therefore education has to be at the heart of making sure that people understand what is and isn't acceptable and healthy and I think there's huge opportunity for that not to be the case from everything that we see. I would focus my attention in relation to today's questions back to child sexual exploitation, I think there's a specific role for education authorities in identifying and picking up that children who are at school are likely to be exposed in some way to something during the course of their school life that could lead to this type of behaviour and I think we need to make them aware of that, the children and young people, but I think we need to make the schools more aware of that as well, make sure that teachers and staff are key as being well informed about what's happening and I think that was laid out and rather I'm actually very starkly in the report which struck me that there was a number of instances where young girls who were being abused were being picked up by taxes from the school gates to perform sexual acts on some of the perpetrators and then returned at the end of lunchtime. I mean that's a particularly traumatic account of somebody's school day and the fact that that wasn't picked up and enacted upon timeously by education authorities. Now, I'm not saying there's any experience of that in Scotland, but I think it's a salutary tale that we should never be complacent about the potential for people who are at school being targeted. That's true, thank you. Alison followed by Graham, followed by Sandra. Mr Rimpill said when responding to Margaret Mitchell that we all know what we're dealing with as professionals when you said what constituted grooming and what child sexual exploitation was, but one of the saddest things about the Rotherham inquiry findings was that the police considered the children as young as 11 as being consenting to sexual behaviour and we heard red evidence of the police considering the girls to be undesirables and not worthy of protection. I mean that's one of the most appalling things that has come out of the findings, so girls that were most vulnerable not being given that protection. ACC Graham, you say in your report to us, you written evidence to us that you have tried to embed the understanding of CSE within the force. Can you give me a greater understanding of the extent to which there is still learning to be done in the force? Okay, I'll cover about what we have done. We've embedded that requirement to reassure ourselves that any of the culture that you've highlighted that Professor Jay highlighted in her report and much of it did go back to an earlier period during that journey between 1997 and 2013 that the report covered and I think that she acknowledges in her report that that behaviour in South Yorkshire police was quite clearly no longer evident and it was a result of action that they'd taken. What we've done is embedded that culture change coming from the whole ethics and values that the service is based on, that Police Scotland was founded upon and building on, the ethics and values of the police service through every strand of training for frontline officers when they enter the organisation, so into probationary training, into specialist detective training who are likely to be the people that are conducting these investigations in different roles and by making sure that through the senior management there's a high level of awareness of the issues that need to be tackled and the leadership that needs to be shown throughout the organisation to ensure that people are well attuned and picking up to any aberration from the culture that quite rightly we expect, where every young person is recognised and valued as an individual and there isn't any attribution to their worth in the way that you've described because of the circumstances they find themselves in and indeed that every investigation is dealt with in a fair and appropriate manner to make sure that we do everything we can to bring any perpetrators to justice and quite clearly that was not always the case from the report that you've described in South Yorkshire and I'm very clear now that if we find any circumstances where that's not the case in Scotland it would be dealt with very robustly. That's reassuring. On a separate question if I might just ask, one of the other things that was highlighted in the Rotherham inquiry was children absconding from care being basically escorted back to care without any kind of interview or understanding as to what was going on. Can you explain what processes happen if you're involved in taking children back who have absconded? Yeah, we've done a huge amount of work around about missing person inquiries. We started that off by getting a better understanding of what was happening across Scotland so we did to go back to the question of Mr Campbell, strategic analysis of the data that we held about people that were missing, not just young people and perhaps not surprisingly what that flagged up was that the most frequently identified locations for people to go missing from in each of the 14 local policing divisions were a combination of hospitals and care homes for young people, not normally both of those featuring heavily in the top 10 sites. Each of the local policing divisions now has a plan to engage and work with those institutions to look at understanding better why people go missing, to try and reduce the number of instances that people go missing. Most importantly, when they do, we now have a robust policy around about return interviews, how they must be conducted by the police, how they must then be communicated with the people who are either parents or in many cases of vulnerability carers of the young people who have gone missing in instances like this. To make sure that we get all the information that we need that would flag up if there's a concern, that doesn't mean that we just stop because we have an expectation that young people are going to provide an account that they're being sexually exploited because they've gone missing on frequent occasions. In fact, we know it's highly unlikely that that will be the case, but it gives us a far better sense of what's happening in that young person's life, that the police are most likely to get at that point that we can then share with all the other agencies who can provide the support and hopefully lead to either protecting that young person if they are at harm and making sure that if there's information that would lead to a criminal investigation that that will come to the police. Perhaps on that returning interview, do you think that you could work closely with the sub-sector, perhaps say, Barnardo's, to provide a more supportive environment where the children might open up a bit more about what's happened? Yeah, I think it's one area that we're looking actively at and again came from the work of the Public Petitions Committee and indeed from the quite rightly proactive work of a number of charities working in this area to highlight the role that they can play. You know, the police have got a wide ranging remit in terms of protecting people, keeping people safe, investigating crime, but I also understand from my experience as a police officer over many years that we're not always the agency that young people are most likely to feel that they want to share some very private, confidential and challenging information to pass across to, so we need to make sure that we're working most closely with the people that we think are likely to be most close to those young people and we're in discussions about a number of different ways of doing that locally and perhaps nationally as well. I miss me again, and it's still ring plus, haven't it? I miss me again. I'll go back to your first question. Go on, you're blushing. The Crime Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has recently set up an independent scrutiny panel, and the first function that we have been looking at has been domestic and sexual abuse across the organisation. We have invited about nine or ten of our critical friends, as we like to call them, from the third sector, and we have police and government as well. The cases have been selected at random, and we have cases where we have taken prosecutions and cases where we have not taken prosecutions, but there perhaps has been a detailed investigation and we've concluded that there's been insufficient evidence. At the last panel, we considered four cases, two domestic and two of a sexual nature, one of a sexual case of rape where we were unable to take proceedings, and we opened up our files to the third sector. No holds barred, they saw everything, they saw the police report, they saw our precognitions, they saw our analysis, they saw all the evidence that we had collated in the investigation. And the purpose of those panels is exactly what you say if there were attitudes that were within the fiscal service or in the police that were being displayed, then our critical friends should pick up on these. I'm glad to say that there weren't, but I recognise that obviously we are looking at a sample. Our purpose in those scrutiny panels is to make sure that we test our own policies. We don't want to make assumptions that we know all the time what's best. We want to make sure that we rely on our third sector. And that they tell us, because we recognise that they are at the front line and they are dealing with those people that come into contact with the criminal justice system. The panel will make recommendations, which will go to the officers and the officers from the recent panel have agreed with all the recommendations, and we will report back to the next panel. Just recently, I met with Barnardo's and we invited Barnardo's on to the next panel to make sure, and we will ensure that on our next panel, we deal with a sexual case involving the child victim. In passing, is one of the agencies that you deal with, the care inspectorate at all, in dealing with care homes for young people? We haven't got the care inspectorate on our review panel, will that be something that we could certainly look at? That's certainly the police there at the time, I think, to ask if they know it's fine. I just wondered if the care inspectorate had a role there, given that we were talking about home in England that was put at my line, not properly managed. So let's just look at, do you deal with the care inspectorate at all? We work very closely with the care inspectorate in terms of developing the inspection regime. I think that the very interesting point about playing it back to the Rotherham as well, because I think that the point that comes out of the report, the observation that I would make anyway, is that there was a large amount of inspection and scrutiny activity over what was happening in Rotherham over many years. It's laid out in a timeline in the report, which is quite stark when you read it, that people not only sought, but they took reassurance from the reports that were being conducted. Therefore, I think that it's a role for all of us to be challenging in terms of the effectiveness of the scrutiny and the inspection regimes that we have in place to make sure that they are. I know as a result of that, the care inspectorate sit on the Scottish Government-led ministerial working group into child sexual exploitation, the action plan from which the police and all the other agencies around the table have developed and will be being launched soon, and the care inspectorate, as a result of their learning from that and everything else that's going on, have introduced a specific module in their inspections already into child sexual exploitation. This is the children services inspection that they are doing in each of the local authorities area, and I have asked for a summary as quickly as possible from their findings in each local authority area of any common themes that are emerging so that we can make sure that we're picking up on the learning, so I think that they're alive to the... That's very helpful about, I hope, our tighter inspection regime. Graham, please. Thank you. Fogwad bai, Sandra. Thank you. I think that the outline that Mr Imple gave about the Crown Office opening files in the way that she described was likely to be unprecedented and I think is to be welcomed. In that light, Mr Graham, you mentioned the restricted document that had been created in terms of the strategic assessment. Is that document shared with your partner agencies and do they feed into that document after they've read it? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very good point and I think I covered it when I described it in relation to Mr Campbell's question at the moment not as much as I would like. I think that we need to get a greater level of co-operation into that document. In fact, I would like to see it led by the Scottish Government as a piece of work that we could all feed into equally, but I think quite rightly that the Public Petitions Committee recommendation was that the police should start by analysing all the information that they hold and anything else that we can access. I don't think that we've accessed everything that we can from across the third sector. I think that the areas that are perhaps most important are those that might be hardest for us to reach. They'll be held by perhaps a small service or a small agency in a local area that's got a very good relationship with young people and I need to make sure that their voice can be heard at a national level. In terms of sharing the results of that, in the format that it's in, as you'll understand, with the level of detail and attribution, no. I think that down the line I would like to produce something that's a public document that gives an assessment of the scale and nature and hopefully confidence and reassurance that we're serious in tackling the problem and trying to get a better understanding. In that environment that the Crown Office described, do you think that it's feasible as an action point that that strategic assessment would be shared in that kind of forum here on in? Oh, absolutely, absolutely, yes. Second point before I come to the more substantial question about IT links and the ability to collect information not only within the service but across the agencies. Are you confident that we have the kind of IT collection processes which advises and gives the kind of knowledge that's necessary for decisions to be taken? Yes, I think that, as ever, is a strengthening picture. We have introduced a vulnerable person's database with that very purpose in mind, as the committee might be aware. We did that very old and clunky system. However, do you feel that currently you're going to fit state to properly access the kind of knowledge and intelligence and facts that are necessary? If I could return to the vulnerable person's database as a new system, it's an interim system that was designed within Police Scotland. It was launched after the inception of Police Scotland and I don't think it is an old and clunky system. I think that it's a system that, across the whole of the country, gathers information about a whole range of vulnerabilities and causes the police to be able to link different vulnerabilities between children and adults, whether it's coming from domestic abuse, child protection, concerns about a child, which might not reach the level of some statutory means of intervention for protection, hate crime, missing persons, as I've already mentioned, and youth offending as well, which can be a sign of a young person in trouble for a whole lot of different reasons that we need to look behind. That system is up and running across the whole of Scotland. It is allowing Police Scotland to understand when people move from one area to another within the country, which is absolutely vital. It's allowing us to develop protocols in each of the local areas that we work in with whatever information sharing systems there are. It isn't joined in, in a strategic sense, to a national system beyond the police, but there isn't a national system that exists within local authorities or healthcare that we could plug into for that reason. The next stage of that system will be under the I6 programme, where there will be a vulnerable persons module that will build on the learning of the interim vulnerable persons database that we've developed. I think that it's a fantastic credit to the people that have worked on it and a real success that we've got up and running and that we're gathering that information, we're sharing it and it puts the police in a strong position to understand what we know across the whole of the country in a way that we never could have conceived of doing before Police Scotland was created. My final question. The stats that you gave us earlier outlining possibly up to 400 child rapes a year being reported and you acknowledge that that might only be 20 per cent of the actuality. Do you feel that with the 4,600 sex offenders that are known to the system that MAPA currently is fit for purpose, would you welcome a review of MAPA arrangements to see if they can be upgraded and refreshed? It's a very current question. The care inspectorate are launching an inspection of MAPA arrangements across the country. They'll be supported by HMIC and we're working closely with inspection agencies to shape what that inspection should look like and ensure that the scrutiny is put in place over the effectiveness of the arrangements. I think that the current position that we're in is again continually evolving. I think that it's largely effective. I think that the legislation is effective and the nature of the interagency working is leading to a lot of people being protected. It's very difficult to attribute a figure to that, but I think that the scale of the issue, 3,600 sex offenders in the community in Scotland, 472 prevention orders being actively pleased across the country, gives members some measure of the nature of the scale of the resource that's put towards that across Scotland. I think that it's having a really positive effect. I was asking your own personal opinion on the basis of your experience, would you welcome the review of MAPA and would you like to see it refreshed for the challenges that are now being identified? I think that I'd like to wait the outcome of the inspection to see what the findings of that are. I think that at the moment I'm very satisfied that we're working well in partnership and it's having a positive effect. That figure of 3,600 sex offenders is huge. Perhaps you could planify what that is, what that range that covers as sex offenders. Is that everybody in the sex offenders register or is that serious? I'm just trying to get a grasp of it. I think that I'd probably give you the precise figures that would be more helpful. Everybody that's in the sex offender register, somebody that's committed an offence that's been required to register since the act in 1998 and who hasn't come off the register, so the scale of that is always growing because quite a proportion of people who are required to register are required to register for life, so they never come off. That 4,600 number is the total number, but there are 3,600 of those who are in the community. Those are rough figures. I do have the exact figures here, if I can find the right page. I think that people would be frightened to hear that 3,600 sex offenders are out there. I'm trying to get clarification on what that actually means when you say 472 prevention orders, so we get a perspective on it. I've found the page. There are 4,650 people that have been required to register on the sex offender's register under the legislation. 3,604 of those are currently in the community, 1,046 in custody still. We have 472 live sex offender prevention orders, which is a civil order that the police can apply for or indeed can be applied at the point of conviction, which prohibits a registered sex offender from carrying out a certain course of conduct or requires them to do something, so it might prevent somebody from entering a certain area, it might prevent them from approaching a certain person and then we can police that and a breach of that order, although it's a civil order as a criminal offence as well, would be reported to the Crown. It's a means of controlling somebody who you know poses a higher risk than many of the sex offenders who are managed in the community actively. All of this information is already in the public domain through the annual map of reporting, maybe not as currently as this. I don't give the reads that. I just think that if you were listening to the committee and you heard of 3,606 offenders out there, you might think, and I'm not diminishing the sex offenders that with 3,600 rapids out there or serious sexual assaults out there, I'm asking for clarification what that actually means. It's the full range of the legislation that would be encompassed by the act that would require somebody to register, somebody from the Crown might be better able to give the details of that. Any offence where there's a substantial sexual element, so it would go from rape to breach of the peace where there's a substantial sexual element. It's the whole range of potential offences with a sexual element. I understand that. I'm just trying to get that on the record. It actually means across the range of things. I don't know if that's helped me particularly, but 3,600 was quite startling if you were just listening to this, thinking that all these very serious sex offenders out there, I mean sex offenders bad anyway, but depending on the range that's out there, is there any way of clarifying what that range is, if you're saying? You've just said 3,600. How would we clarify the various categories? Where would you find that? I'd have to go away and look at that. You have to go away and look at it, but I think it'd be useful. Sandra? Thank you very much, convener. I think that if we need to remember if I want to ask a supplementary, then unfortunately you'd put down to the very bottom of the list, but I shall certainly remember that anyway. I assure you, if you're going to be peaked like that, you might slip down again without asking a supplementary. Well, I think, you know, I should say, perhaps I should say that. It should be for everyone that interrupts, but apart from that, that's absolutely fine. Excuse me a minute, it's not a good thing to challenge the chair. It's not a good idea, but proceed. I'm not challenging anybody, convener. Oh well. Thank you very much for your evidence and listening to the projects that are on board. I think that you're doing an absolutely fantastic job. Obviously, there are questions to be raised. I was pleased when you mentioned the fact that you're working with voluntary sectors, Dr Barnadows in particular, who I've been along and visited in regards to how they approach it and the projects that they have in regards to grooming and young children as well, so I'm pleased to hear about that. There's just a point of clarification, and then I wanted to ask a question also to MCC Graham. You mentioned the fact that the risk of sexual harm orders in, you know, basically the 2005 act, you wanted to put some amendments or you would like to see some amendments in that. I don't think we explored that as much as perhaps we could. My understanding is that the three months you would like extended and the age group you would like extended to 18 and also to take in physical and psychological abuse. That would be your recommendations to the committee as such, coming from the Petitions Committee. Yeah, so I don't think it's come out of the Petitions Committee. I think that they went as far as suggesting that it might be worth examining how the legislation could be enhanced, and these are our suggestions as to some ways of enhancing them. I mean, I haven't put a time limit on, you know, what it should be extended from three months to. My understanding might be some proportionality around about that, but I think three months is constraining in terms of the point I made earlier that we seek to gather evidence about there being the potential of a crime. Sometimes that takes some time. We'll have discussions with the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service. It can be the case that by the time we would get to the stage of seeking an order that the three months has already passed and we haven't got any evidence of further reporting. There have been some instances of that. I think that the age limit that I already spoke about, I think it does leave us in a difficult position, where we know that in effect 16, 17-year-olds are treated by the law as children in many cases, and I think it would be consistent if that was the case in this particular area, especially. The third point was round about the courses of conduct, which we did discuss earlier. I think that it's unusual that we might be in a situation where we would identify one contact that we were concerned about in being in the position of needing to await a second to make the order. Indeed, if we were to find evidence, in some cases one sexual conduct could be evidenced as a crime, but it wouldn't be enough for an order because it wasn't too separate contact even if each of them wicked evidence, if you see the point. I'm not sure what lay behind the legislation and how it was drafted in that sense, but I think it's overly restrictive. Thank you very much. That gives us something positive to go forward with. The other question that I wanted to ask was about cross-border. You mentioned the fact that if someone who obviously has committed an offence came in Scotland and they moved down to England wherever, that order will carry forward with them. If someone in Scotland committed an offence in France, then you could actually do something about it if there was a jurisdiction from Scotland. If it's in England, you can't. Could you elaborate on that and what could we do as a committee to rectify that anomaly? I think that that's probably one better answer by the crown in terms of the legal position around about taking a prosecution rather than it doesn't limit the police investigation as such. I think that the Lord Advocate mentioned this the last time he came to give evidence. If I remember correctly, and I'm not sure my colleague will correct me if I'm wrong, the difficulty is with the cross-border provisions. If somebody grooms in Scotland at a Scottish national, grooms in Scotland and then goes on to commit an offence of rape, for example, in France, then in Scotland we can at the moment prosecute the grooming and the rape in France. However, if a Scottish national grooms in Scotland and then commits an offence of rape in England, we are unable to prosecute that rape in Scotland. That seems to us to be slightly unusual, a quandary, so to speak, and that appears to be a loophole in the legislation that was highlighted on the last occasion. I understand that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice is talking about looking at legislation to sort out this loophole for a slot. I'll just point those two areas up where it's something practical that perhaps we, as a committee, could do. We would certainly support that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sandra. Of course, that was good, because she preempted the question that Elaine was going to ask, which is fine, because we'd noticed that that question hadn't been asked. I have no other questions. Nobody else grumping at me because they've slipped down any list in my head or on paper. Yes, Ms Delrin. Sorry, I meant to say it at the beginning, but we went straight into questions that Steven and I, Mr Macgammon and myself, apologise for being poor replacements for the Lord Advocate or the slistered groom. Poor replacements? Unfortunately, I know. You protest too much. You were magnificent. In fact, you were far better than the Lord Advocate. Me shall tell him, so that's the trouble for you. All I was going to say was if you wished one of the officers to come at a later stage, then unfortunately today they were not available due to prior existing commitments, but they would be more than happy to come. You're looking for a round of applause. You're not going to get it. No, no, I'm not. I'm looking for a round of applause. But thank you anyway. I just want to come back up once. Thank you very much, your evidence. Thank you, ACC Graham. Thank you. We are now moving, as we agreed, into private sessions, so I'll suspend for a couple of minutes to allow the publicarian witnesses to leave. Thank you.