 Fyelfaerdu fel y cyfnodol, a fyddai gydag i fynd i'r Gynllun Cymru. Mae 17 ffintyng, yna ganddo o'r ysgyniadau, yna gael ar gyfer y gondol, yna ganddo, i'r ddau'r ysgyniadau, ac mae'r ddau'r ddau'r ysgyniadau fydd yn gweld, yn y prif, sy'n gweld o'r ysgyniadau. Mae hi'n gael ar gyfer y gyfnodol? Mae hi'n gael. Mae hi'n gael i'n gael i'n gael i'r gyfnodol, ar gyfer frysgaf o rifei o bwysigais i ddigonwyr wedi'i prydysgfriedig iawn. Rwyf pan i weld bwysigau i gyfrifoeddachol fforddcegoflai a gwrddattu cyod, ac ei ddigonwyr eich ddigonwyr i gael ar gyfer rydw i ddigonwyr yn y prydysgfriedig iawn. Erddangoson. Y rhopwg hyfforddiant sefydlu i gofio i ddigonwyr gwaith i ddigonwyr i ddigonwyr i ddigonwyr i ddigonwyr sefydlu i ddigonwyr. I'm pleased to welcome the cabinet secretary and his officials today. David Doris, head of community justice interventions unit, Peter Konglong, head of justice analytical unit and Isabel Joyner, director of legal services with the Scottish Government. I refer members to paper one, which is a public paper and paper two, which is a private paper. I believe that you wish to make a short opening statement of up to two minutes, cabinet secretary. Okay, I'll speak quickly. Thank you, convener, for that. Thank you for inviting me to speak to this. We're seeking parliamentary approval to extend the presumption now that additional safeguards to protect victims in the Domestic Abuse Act are enforced as committed to in a programme for government. The presumption is not a ban. We're not abolishing sentences of under 12 months, and the judiciary will continue to be able to impose a custodial sentence where alternatives are not appropriate. Extending the presumption, of course, is not a silver bullet. It must be seen as part of a broader evidence-led preventative approach. The evidence that short periods of imprisonment don't work is clear. They disrupt all things that are most likely to help to reduce offending—family relationships, housing, employment, access to healthcare and support. People released from short custodial sentences of 12 months or under are reconvicted nearly twice as often as people who have received a community payback order. We've all heard community sentences being described as, quote-unquote, soft justice, which is both misleading and damaging. In its written evidence to this committee, the Scottish Sentencing Council stated that in its view, and I quote, community sentences are not a soft option, as is sometimes suggested. A recent Council of Europe report found that Scotland has the third highest correctional rate across Europe, with 548 people per 100,000. We currently have, as committee members will know, the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe, with 150 per 100,000 of the population incarcerated. Those are not statistics to be proud of. Despite the fact that we have taken bold action, which has helped to cut crime by around a third of the last decade and drive down reconviction rates to a 19-year low, we need to get away from the view that justice is either hard or soft, it needs to be proportionate, justice needs to be fair and, above all, needs to be smart and evidence-led. It needs to be tailored to the individual, while ensuring the safety of victims. It needs to provide the opportunity for rehabilitation, while ensuring that those who are offending harm the community pay back for their crimes. We need to have community sentences that sentences, offenders, communities and victims have confidence in. That is why we invested an additional £9.5 million per year on community justice services, which brings investment in community justice social work to more than £100 million. It is clear from the evidence that the committee has taken that the strong support for extending the presumption provided community-based interventions are appropriate, resourced and effective. During the committee's evidence session, I know that the issue of remand has often been raised, recognising that the impact of remand can be similar to a short custodial sentence. Prisoners on remand make up around 20 per cent of the prison population at any given time, 25 per cent of women. The number of people held in remand is at its highest level for more than five years. I know that your inquiry last year into use of remand in Scotland made a number of recommendations and observed that, in some of the cases, the conversion rate of remand to custodial sentence was relatively low. In responding to the report last year and delivering a programme for government commitments on bail supervision guidance and funding, we have taken action. However, we are open to considering, on a cross-party basis, further options that can help to respond to the high proportion of prisoners held in remand. I hope that that is helpful. I am, of course, happy to now answer any questions on the proposed extension. Thank you, cabinet secretary. Can we perhaps open by asking you what evidence there is on the impact of the current presumption of sentencing? Well, there are numerous pieces of evidence, numerous articles written in numerous academics that have researched the impact of short custodial sentences versus the rehabilitative effect of community sentencing. All of them are unequivocal. Short sentences are more disruptive. Short sentences are not as likely to help the rehabilitation journey as community sentences. In fact, if you want an independent view of this, the independent UK-based Crest advisory report on the impact of pass endorsed the rationale for the presumption that it stated, and again I'll quote, given that reconviction rates are particularly high for shorter custodial sentences compared to longer lengths, the reduction in reconviction rates correlate with the decrease in the use of short custodial sentences, as would be expected. We know from the figures that are available that those who have a short custodial sentence are reconvicted nearly twice as often as those in a community payback order. The evidence, I have to say, is absolutely overwhelming for this progressive reform. You'll be aware, cabinet secretary, that we took extensive evidence last week, including the fact that the use of those sentences was falling prior to the introduction of the presumption. It seems fair that the presumption has not had a significant impact on sentencing. That is something that would seem to follow from that. In addition to that, Professor Tata, and it's something else that you've reiterated today, questioned the presumption against sentences of three months and the use of CPOs and their introduction in 2011 have alongside other reformed helped to achieve a 19-year low in reconviction rates. He says that that really is an assertion that doesn't stand the scrutiny given that there's a mention about reconviction and so many other direct measures have been put into those criminal reconvictions, which would impact rather than relating it specifically to the presumption against three months sentence. The greatest of respect would be incredible if you were able to find a piece of evidence that showed to the contrary that short sentences do not have the rehabilitative impact that community sentences do. You're absolutely right that we can argue about some of the nuances about whether past and the current presumption as it exists, what the impact of that has been. There are some issues around control factors. I accept that. Those that would be more likely to get a custodial sentence versus a community payback order, perhaps the seriousness of their offence, there's a degree of difference in that. Yes, we can argue about the nuances for sure, but if you just let me finish this point, if you take a step back and look at the issue that we're discussing here, the evidence is absolutely unequivocal. That is why you have criminologists after academic saying that they support the presumption against short sentences because when it comes to rehabilitation there is absolutely no doubt that community sentences addressing the root causes, the root problems and the reasons why people offend are much more effective for rehabilitation than short custodial sentences. Can I be quite clear? Are you saying that the presumption against a three-month sentence is a direct consequence of or has achieved the 19-year low in reconviction rates? I'm certainly saying that I'm sure that it's a part of it. I don't doubt that for a minute, just to give you the numbers. The impact might be all be moderate, but I'm hoping that even a moderate impact will have a significant impact on anybody who might no longer be a future victim of crime. For example, the proportion of individuals receiving a custodial sentence of three months or less has fallen from 35 per cent in 2010 and living to 27 per cent in 2017-18, so that's around 3,200 individuals. While that is moderate, that's 3,200 individuals, which hopefully will be better placed in terms of their journey of rehabilitation and hopefully that means, of course, less victims of crime. I'm not asserting that the 19-year low in reconviction is simply because of that one measure. In my opening remark, I made the point that what we're presenting is not a silver bullet, but one important measure in a broader package of justice reform. I think that the point that was made last week is that there is no evidence that there is a direct correlation between the two, not least because the term conviction was used and because of the enormous growth in direct measures, such as the court offers of resettlement, fiscal fines and alternatives, which were absolutely impacting on the drop-in conviction rates. However, I'll bring others in if you've answered that, cabinet secretary. Supplementary Shona Den Danio. Thank you. On the point of the evidence that you mentioned, academics and criminologists, what about politicians and ministers from elsewhere, UK Government, have they shown any interest in the evidence of three months sentences? Well, really much so. As I say, the evidence is all well. We can dance on the pin, the head of a pin, if we wish to talk about specific nuances and fair enough. However, the evidence is absolutely overwhelming that short sentences simply do not work and community alternatives are much more effective. Yes, the UK Government, and I have made this point on numerous occasions, being on social media and others, the UK Government, of course, has often lauded Scotland looking towards Scotland in terms of what we are doing. In fact, one of the Conservative leadership candidates—I don't know where he is on the pecking order, but Rory Stewart himself is—I don't know if he has the backing of any of the Conservative members up here in Scotland, but Rory Stewart has come to Scotland to learn more about our approach to the presumption against short sentences. David Gawch, somebody who has a lot of time for in the UK Government, is the Secretary of State for Justice. He himself is quoted specifically that we need to move away from the labels of hard and soft justice and look towards smart justice. Of course, the UK Government is bringing in not a presumption, but going further, to some extent, I am bringing forward a ban on short sentences of six months or less. David Gawch said directly that I want a smarter justice system that reduces repeat crime by providing robust community alternatives to ineffective short prison sentences, supporting offenders to turn away from crime for good. Even those who are traditionally more conservative and perhaps not ones that you would associate with progressive justice reform, even they, can see that short sentences are simply not effective in dealing with the root causes of why people offend. Focusing on the evidence, cabinet secretary, since 2003, we have seen approximately halving of the number of sentences of up to three months being handed out. Over the same time period, we have seen sentences of between one and two years double, and we have also seen sentences of over two years rise by approximately a third. It is not a perfect displacement, but nonetheless, one inference from that is that there has perhaps been up-tariffing. I am wondering if you agree whether that is evidence of that, but, more important, what steps or measures will you take to make sure that that is not an outcome of the presumption against 12 centres of essentially sentences just increasing the tariff to put it over that threshold? That is an important point. I thank Andrew Johnson for making it. I hope that I can give you a couple of reassurances. One of the reasons why we went for 12 months, as opposed to any other timeframe, is that it fits into some of the proceedings and the maximum sentence that can be imposed for some of the proceedings, so there could not be an up-tariffing necessarily in that respect. It was to avoid that, because you are right that that is one inference that can be taken from the current presumption as it stands, so we want to avoid that being the case. One of the reasons why we went for 12 months is to prevent that up-tariffing. The broader issue that Andrew Johnson mentions is also a very important one, and I think that it is one that you took evidence on. We have to ensure that the judiciary has confidence in the community justice landscape. There is clearly some evidence that, in some localities and in some areas, the sheriffs need that confidence and need to be persuaded about the merits of community-based alternatives and the robustness of them in the locale. That has obviously got to be a part of the work that we do. The extension of the presumption, if it passes through committee, there is still a lot of work that we are doing and actively engaging in, and judicial confidence is absolutely a part of that. Just by way of clarification, David Gork mentioned that he wanted to learn from the mistakes that have been made up here, such as CPOs not being enforced. I think that the convener's point, cabinet secretary, I take your point about the effectiveness of three-month sentences, but what the committee heard last week was that there was shockingly poor data on the effectiveness of community sentences. I think that that is an important nuance to pick up. My question is just a very simple one. You talked about the fewer three-month sentences coming about. Are you able to help the committee to understand what does your modelling suggest? If you get this presumption against 12-month sentences in, what does the modelling suggest will be the outcome? How many fewer criminals will go to prison and, instead, go into the CPO system? Can I take the exception from what he said about what David Gork said? I mean, I quoted directly and I will quote again directly from David Gork just from this month on the fourth of June, he was answering questions in the chamber in response to Joanna Cherry MP saying again, I will quote. I hope to be able to say more about the details of what we want to do in the not too distant future, but in respect of the approach that has been taken in Scotland, it is worth bearing in mind that it is already the case in England that a custodial sentence should be pursued as a last resort. There is already something approaching a presumption in the English system. I am interested in seeing whether we could go further than that, but I welcome the honourable and learned ladies approach, our shared approach of skepticism about the effectiveness of short sentences. Rory Stewart, when he came up here, when he was in his previous position as Prisons Minister, did not come up here to berate the Scottish Government or to berate the Scottish experience, he came to learn from the Scottish experience, so I think that that is important. In terms of the modelling and the figures and the numbers and the stats that we have in front of us, of course it is difficult to forecast because judges ultimately are the ones that will have the decision to make about the presumption or not. There is a presumption. What we can do is base it on the current presumption as it exists, but even that is riddled with difficulties. It will be very much up to the judiciary. I will bring in Peter, if you don't mind, he is the independent expert in terms of the stats that we have worked for just for analytical services. In terms of completion rates, because he touched upon on CPOs, can I just make a point to the less than a third who do not complete? His inference is correct that the Government has to work hard to try to increase those completion rates. I absolutely accept that. We have done that, they have increased from 64 per cent to 70 per cent in the last decade, but of course we have to go further. I do ask the member genuinely what he thinks the alternative is, because if the alternative is continuing to give people short sentences, I do not know if he knows, but 35 per cent of those given a short sentence end up back in custody. That is a pretty serious offence that they must have committed to end up back in custody. For the less than a third who do not complete a CPO, they may not have attended their CPO. That is serious, of course, and they will be dealt with, but is it really as serious as the over 35 per cent that end up back in jail? I do not think that the alternative is much better at all, but much worse. In terms of the numbers around the stats, in the morning, if I bring in Peter, he may be able to give a little bit more detail on that. As you have already heard, there was a reduction in the use of three-month sentences before the presumption came in, so it is quite difficult to work out exactly what specific impact a three-month presumption might have made. There is a limit to how much we can extrapolate from that to a 12-month presumption. What we have done, though, is presented a few scenarios to help people plan. One of those scenarios was based on a fairly optimistic assumption that we might have a 20 per cent reduction in the use of sentences between three and 12 months. In terms of helping partners plan, that roughly equates to something like a 7.5 per cent increase in the number of community sentences, so that sort of bounces out the drop that we have seen in the last year. Forgive me, that is really useful, but could you, the people who are watching percentages, give me some numbers if you can? We are talking about that 7.5 per cent would be about 1,300 additional community sentences. If that modelling works, who would have gone to prison but are now going to be on the community sentences? It would be a decision that would have made in individual circumstances, but if there was a 20 per cent shift in sentences, then yes, that would be 1,300 additional community sentences. That would be 1,300 people with a better chance of rehabilitation than previous. If you deny Professor Tata's data that the… No, no, I think that you are absolutely incorrect. I mean, I have met Professor Tata and I am happy for you to seek his clarification, but actually, if you genuinely, I don't think, denying the fact, and I think that it would be really damaging to your credibility if you are denying the fact that all the research almost bar none shows that community sentences are more effective in rehabilitation than short custodial sentences. If you are denying that, I would be really happy to hear you to say it on the record because you would be isolated beyond your current isolation. With respect, cabinet secretary, I am simply replete it, reflecting back that Professor Tata told this committee that there was shockingly poor data. I am simply repeating back what the evidence that this committee has… No, no. Okay, but tell me, in your opinion, and I appreciate you guys and the ones that are meant to be asking the questions, but I would be really interested to know whether or not you think that community sentences are not more effective in terms of rehabilitation than short custodial sentences, because that is the inference that I am taking from what you are saying. If that is the case, then genuinely you are, as I say, more isolated than this issue than anyone else. I think that the question is the use and resourcing of current custodial sentences. I think that what Professor Tata was saying is, for one reason or another, by default, that people end up in their short-term sentences and, equally, we know they have absolutely no access to any rehabilitation services whatsoever. So what do we do? We put the resources into those people who find themselves by default on a short-term sentence. It does not happen just now, and even in three months, that is 12 weeks continuously, day by day, working with someone. As a former teacher, I can tell you that you can do a huge amount during that time to sign posts, to sort out issues if we move to a presumption of 12 months even more. I hope that answers the cabinet secretary's questions. We must move on. Fulton, supplementary, and then Rona. Thanks, convener. Just a very brief one. Cabinet secretary, I agree with the presumption, especially with the first step, but you mentioned earlier that the UK Government are considering a ban. Did we consider that at any stage in coming to the conclusion of the presumption, and if the UK Government does or does not go ahead with it, do we need to consider it in the future? I am sorry. I did not get the chance to respond back to you, convener, and I am afraid that I am going to have to, because the evidence from the chief executive of the prison service was right, and the prison cannot do everything. Even if it could, we know, again, going back to the evidence and the data, that community sentences are far more effective in rehabilitation than short custodial sentences, and that is just undeniable. On the question that is being asked by Fulton MacGregor, we did not consider a ban. I do not think that the ban is the right way to go, although I said that I have respect for David Gawch, as justice secretary. A ban is the wrong way, because, essentially, what you do is you have a ban and then a long list of exceptions to that ban, so perhaps exceptions for sexual offences or other offences. It also very much restricts the judiciary. I think that the judiciary is our best place to decide who should be given a short custodial sentence and who should be diverted away from custody. I think that presumption is a much better way to go about it. Rona, thank you convener. Good morning. I would like to ask you about prisoner numbers. Given that we know that for many people prisons are simply not effective and that we have the highest imprisonment rate in western Europe, do you agree with some witnesses that said that any reduction in the use of short custodial sentences resulting from the proposed presumption would have a limited impact on overall prisoner numbers and what kind of modelling has been done on what that might mean? That is correct. I do not think that that is an issue that I would take contention with or a premise that I would take contention with. That is correct. What we are looking at is relatively modest. Based on the projections that Peter talked about previously, the 20 per cent forecast, the reduction in the total prison population would probably be in between two to three hundred. That makes an impact, of course. That helps to ease some of the pressure that we have seen in recent months, no doubt about it, but it is relatively moderate. That is why the reason for doing that is not to ease the prison population, although that is a welcome side effect. It is because we think that it is the principled, correct, progressive reform to make so that more people are rehabilitated and there are more, I should say, not more, there are less victims of crime because of that. That is the hope and that is what the evidence tells us. There will be a reduction, albeit a modest one, in prison population. I suppose that the important point that I was trying to stress yesterday in various interviews that I did was that there might be a disproportionate effect in a good way on the female custodial population, where we know that those who receive a custodial sentence around about 90 per cent of women receive a custodial sentence of a year or less. That is absolutely crucial. Following on from that argument, you said in your opening statement that you had allocated £9.5 million more for community justice services. Do you agree that it follows that the proposed presumption will not free up resources that might be diverted to other prisoners or community sentences? What is the financial effect going to be on the short sentences? That is a really good question on how you prioritise that funding and what the profile of that spend will be in the future. In the short term, it is important that we have done what we have done, which is to protect that budget for more than £100 million for criminal justice social work, which includes an additional £9.5 million of which will help local authorities in the alternatives to custody. It is important to recognise that the number of community payback orders has actually reduced by 8.3 nationally, so, while we have increased the budget, increased the funding, the section 27 ring-fenced funding for criminal justice social work by 7.3 per cent, we have had a reduction of CPOs by 8.3 per cent. There is genuine confidence that the system can cope and can manage with its presumption. We will, of course, listen to each local authority on a case-by-case basis. On the broader question on the transfer from SPS, the prison service to social work over time, the member will completely understand that, in the short term, of course, we need to keep our prisons absolutely running and, therefore, we need to allocate the necessary funding for our prisons. In the long term, and I am an advocate for that, I would like to see our prison numbers drastically fall. I would like to see us on the preventative side, not sending as many people to prison, but also investing a lot in the rehabilitative measures so that we have a really dramatic reduction in our prison population. Therefore, hopefully, if that would happen to quite an extent—not the numbers that I am talking about here but quite a dramatic and significant extent—then, of course, I can see no reason why, in the future, we wouldn't reprofile spending from prisons into perhaps those alternatives, but that is, I'm afraid, not the stage that we are currently at. So would you agree that we are working towards almost a culture change in the way we look at prison and the use of prison by using more effective methods in the community? I think that we are in a very unique position in the current profile of this parliament, and it is important that we don't waste it. With the exception, frankly, of the Conservatives, with every other political party, I think that there is a genuine understanding of the progressive reforms that we have to bring forward in our punitive policy. That doesn't just involve politicians, it involves the judiciary. Of course, it involves the third sector, it involves schools, it involves early intervention, it involves social work, it involves many others, but the use of that word that Rona used was absolutely right. There has to be an absolute culture change or a mindset change in how we approach punitive policy. That high prison rate, that highest in Western Europe imprisonment rate, is a really stain in our conscience, but it is not a quick fix. I have spoken to previous Scottish Government and, at that time, Scottish Executive Justice Ministers to try to gain their understanding from different political parties, and they tell me that the issues that I was talking to them about were issues that they were grappling with when they were in position. We have to really try to take Parliament with us and take the public with us on a radically different journey when it comes to our punitive policy. I would like to go back to some of the evidence that we heard from Katrina Morrison last week from the Howard League for Scotland. She said that, if Scotland was an American state, it would have a prison rate comparable with, I think, Louisiana or Texas. In my line of questioning to her, she said, I struggle with the paradox of why a country that is so committed to social welfare investment makes huge use of such an incredibly expensive resource as prison. I would like to get your thoughts on the record as to how we got here. Why do we have such a high in prison rate? What is that cultural thing that we have in Scotland that does not exist in other European countries? I will try to give a brief because you can speak to him, I am sure, to quite an extent, on the reasons why. There is not really one reason why there are a number of factors probably behind the high prison rate. If I were to just give you three, one would be judicial behaviour. We know that the punishment part of a life sentence has dramatically increased over the last decade. I do not know the exact figures, but I will give you an approximation. From a decade ago, the punishment part—I looked towards Peter, who will keep me right, but approximately 12 or 13 years ago to now 18 or 19 years is what the punishment part is. People are in prison for a lot longer for committing the same crime than they were a decade ago, so that means that there is less churn that people are in. Another reason is that there is no doubt that the nature of the offences is coming in front of us. The good thing is that victims of rape and sexual offences and even victims of those historical sexual offences have more confidence to report them, more confidence than they have ever had before. That is a good thing, but, of course, those offences, by the nature of those offences, will often have a custodial sentence attached to them. We are seeing more and more people in prison for sexual offences, rape, attempted rape and historical sexual offences. Then, there is also undoubtedly the effect that the decisions that we choose to make have an impact. The HTC would be one of the most obvious ones. At one point, we had 300 people out in the HTC. The review took place. Those changes have now seen the numbers of HTC reduced to between 55 and 65. There is a belief that, perhaps, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Again, we are not having that churn of people going out in the HTC that previously would have gone out in the HTC. That is just three reasons. There are many more reasons for that, but it all goes back to the fact that there is not one civil bullet. If we are going to have a radically different approach to a punitive policy, then we have to bring in all the other stakeholders. I am working on doing some of that. I have to say some of the conversations with many people on this table have been effective to give me some good ideas on how we do that, but we have to take a radically different approach, because the evidence that you receive is absolutely right. For some reason, our punitive policy is somewhat odd to the progressive country that we are rightly proud of being. Thank you for that. In evidence last week, Dr Tata also told us that prisons are still used to this day as some sort of penal welfare when nothing else has worked. I wonder if you would agree with that assertion. We are talking about people here with serious mental health problems. Their life might have collapsed around them. There might have been a number of different things that have happened to them and it gets to this stage in the system whereby there is nowhere else for them to go. Prison is a last resort. Do you think that that is still the case? I do not disagree with the general premise. One academic described it to me that it is a very wide door into a prison but a very narrow door out of our prison. It was pretty easy to end up in jail and it was very difficult, in some way, to get out of jail or to get out of that revolving door that brings you back in and out of jail. He said that we have to turn that on its head. There has to be a narrow door into prison and a very wide door out of prison through rehabilitation. I think that that is absolutely correct. The amount of people in prison, particularly if I focus on the female population in custody, are in our prisons that have serious mental health issues, substance abuse issues, homelessness issues, issues related to poverty and inequality. The Justice Committee knows that and knows it well. We have to think about how we do things absolutely radically different. There is not an easy answer to that. Taking the public with us on this journey is going to be hugely important. It is why I get so frustrated at the paradigm of hard versus soft justice, because it brings a simplicity to an issue that is very complex. If we are going to do that, regardless of who ends up as Justice Secretary in five, 10, 15 or 20 years down the line, we have to make sure that we take the public with us on this journey. Daniel Fulton. Is that not my main line of— We thought that you wanted to come in in the back of the resourcing of custodials. I asked that sentence in the back of your questions. I apologise if I have caused confusion. That is fine. Fulton, did you have anything that you wanted to say? I joined the same boat as Daniel Fulton. Liam McArthur. Can I start by welcoming the measure that has been brought forward? The evidence that you have alluded to is overwhelming, not just through community-based measures, but the move away from custodial sentences that have such a disruptive effect on housing, employment, relationships and all the rest, which again interferes with efforts to rehabilitate individuals. The resourcing issue, as Daniel Johnson and others have alluded to, is key and has come through very strongly in the evidence that we heard. I was taken a bit by James Mayby's evidence last week where he said that the Scottish Government has made some resources available to resist criminal justice social work to prepare for the presumption against short-term sentences, but we are playing catch-up and many of those resources are going into trying to maintain the status quo rather than building new capacity. He goes on to suggest that we are running to stand still with the demands on the service and the complexity of the work that we are doing. Very recently, Community Justice Scotland did some work that looked at the prison population at an up to 12-month sentences. The anticipation is that, if some of those individuals come on to community sentences, they will bring much more complex needs, particularly for mental health support, as well as other services. The message that is coming through from Social Work Scotland is that, yes, there have been additional resources put in, but at the moment, those are effectively plugging gaps and allowing the service to provide for those who are currently on community-based measures. However, if there is any uplift in the number of those community-based sentences being issued, and we hope that that is the outcome of those provisions, the resources are not there to meet not just the expansion of the need overall, but the more complex needs of certain individuals will fall within that group. Can I try to give some reassurances to Liam McArthur, and can I thank him for his support and his party's support for those progressive reforms? More generally, I know that he has been an advocate for alternatives to custody, as opposed to shorter sentences, for a long, long time. I take what James McArthur says very seriously, and what Social Work Scotland has to say very seriously. I did look at his evidence in a great amount of detail. I did not think that there was one or two things missing, but I hope that we will give some reassurances. He focused a lot on the co-org grant that is given to Social Work Scotland and spoke a lot about that, but he did not necessarily refer to the additional investment that we are putting into the agenda, which is in the offender services budget line. It is probably something for us to look at budget lines and how we make sure that they are more clearly brought to the surface. I also go back to what I said in response to a previous question, that CPOs have fallen nationally by 8.3 per cent, but the funding has been protected. I would like to think that there is resource. That does not take away from the point that Lee McArthur makes, and James McArthur may be made, that we are talking about people potentially with very complex needs. There is a conversation for us to have very openly with Social Work Scotland to evaluate some of the impact, and we will do that. We will monitor that impact on social work in Scotland. Of course, if those people were in prison, we would be spending NHS resource on trying to tackle those complex mental health issues, but it is really important that we address them, because addressing those issues might help them on the rehabilitative journey. I do not take away what has been said. Perhaps the other nuance to throw in, which I have mentioned, is that, with the presumption of going through, we think that there will be a moderate impact in terms of the numbers that we have had a short sentence of 12 months or less being given an alternative to custody in the short term, so I do not think that it is going to overwhelm the system. I was also interested in Dundee Cymru's evidence, and I will quote them on 3 June. It said that, based on calculations of possible increases in the number of CPOs if pass is extended, it is anticipated that the service is well placed to respond to any increase in structured community alternatives to custody. I know that some local authorities feel in a good place. I think that there are others, if I take Borders Council for example. I know that the recent inspection report highlighted some challenges there, so I am not complacent about the issue. We are investing, but I will work closely with Social Work Scotland to make sure that we can give them as many reassurances as possible and, where necessary, help them in relation to resource. On the resourcing of community sentences, where we are covering, is it still on that? It is still on the same issue, but I am happy to come back if it needs me yet. That would be good. Liam Kerr is yours on a different app, because we are just moving on to the use of resourcing of community sentences. I am keen to just pick up. The cabinet secretary said that we have to take the public with us, and I just wanted to explore that very briefly, if I could. On that, we have to take the public with us and understand the point that you are making, but we heard from victims groups last week. The victims groups will look at this and say, if you put a criminal in prison, they are being punished. They are a way that the public is being protected, but if we put them in a system where, as the cabinet secretary said earlier, a third of orders are never completed and a quarter of orders do not have any work element, surely the cabinet secretary can understand victims groups saying, well look, you are not protecting the public and you are not delivering any punishment? Does he recognise that? Let me just make reference to the evidence that you took. The committee asked for very targeted evidence and submissions from victims groups, from academics, from professionals in the field and working on the rehabilitative agenda. Out of all the organisations that submitted evidence, only two organisations were opposed to the extension of the presumption against short sentences. On the element that the percentage does not include unpaid work, it includes some really good projects. I would really... I do not dispute that. I am simply putting it that victims will look at what is going on and say, in prison there is an element of punishment and there is an element of public protection and do you not recognise that they would have legitimate concerns that that is not mirrored on the alternative system? I was exactly coming to that point. Of course, it is incumbent on all of us, Government and Opposition, to present a true picture of what the alternatives are and to give reassurance to the public and not scare munger about the alternatives. I will give you one example of the alternative that does not include unpaid work, which would be the excellent Caledonian project. If you have not visited it, I commend the Caledonian project to the member, but what you are talking about for a victim is that you are looking at a project that has a success rate of rehabilitating those who have committed domestic abuse offences. That is surely better for the victim than somebody being given a short sentence and not having that rehabilitative opportunity. Of course, and I say this to the member, even though he knows this perfectly well, that what we are talking about is a presumption. Every sheriff, every judge will still have the ability to give somebody a short sentence if that is needed for the protection of the public. Domestic abuse cases are perhaps one of the cases in point where they will be often perhaps a short sentence given to an individual because the protection of the victim is absolutely paramount. The extension of that presumption does not affect that. Since you have mentioned that, cabinet secretary, there should be in this presumption that domestic abuse should be excluded from the presumption. Scottish women's aid is very critical of the plans. It says that we are not convinced that the current practice around the use of community disposals is safe in cases of domestic abuse. We consider that there is a significant risk that some women and children will be endangered by the extension of the presumption. They have called for domestic abuse cases to be exempted from the presumption. I hold Scottish women's aid in the absolutely highest regard, but I do not agree with them on that. It should be up to the sheriff's discretion, the presumption. Of course, there is the ability still to send to prison even for a short sentence to those who commit domestic abuse offences. We have waited specifically for the new domestic abuse act to come and to force the training from the judiciary to have taken place, the training from police officers to have taken place before we brought this presumption into force, if it does pass the Parliament. We also know, because of that new act, that there is the ability to apply for non-harassment orders as well. I do not believe in creating exemptions to the presumption. It is our best place. The vast majority of stakeholders, including the sentencing council, also agree with that. I have told the committee that communities have no faith in community sentencing. That is because it takes too long for someone to be found in breach. Are they wrong with that, cabinet secretary? Did you quote exactly that they have no faith? Communities have no faith in community sentencing. That is because it takes too long for someone to be found in breach. As I said to Liam Kerr, there is genuine job for us to continue to see the completion rates of a CPO's increase. I will absolutely do that. If we are to take the public with us on this, we should present to them the evidence that shows that, if we want to have less victims of crime, we should do what is going to rehabilitate more individuals. If we can rehabilitate offenders, there will be less victims of crime. There is no doubt, as the evidence speaks of itself, that community alternatives are much more effective in that rehabilitative journey than short sentences. Because, again, Victim Support and Victim's Organisations Collaboration Forum both said in their written submissions that the protection of victims and their families under the three-month presumption right now is inadequate. Right now, it is inadequate. We are talking about extending it. Police also have said that fewer registered sex offenders will be subject to notification requirements after that comes into effect. That is not something that is giving either victims or the community-at-large confidence that this presumption should go ahead. I disagree with that. If you are to say to the public that those given a short sentence are more likely to commit another crime than those that are given a community alternative, then people will say, yes, we should deal with the root causes, we should absolutely make sure that those community alternatives are robust and I accept all of that. The public would be reassured by that as opposed to just people going in and out of the revolving door of prison. In terms of those convicted of a sexual offence who are sentenced to community protection order with an offender supervision requirement, they are required to comply with the sex offender notification register for the duration of the offender supervision requirement. If an offender is still assessed as posing a significant risk of sexual harm to the public at the point that their CPO ends, the police can apply for a sexual offence as prevention order SOPO, which includes the same notification register requirements. We are also introducing legislation, as the community knows well, on the management of offenders bill, which will allow electronic monitoring of SOPs as well. I hope that that gives some reassurances on the sexual offences side. I genuinely think that when it comes to victims and victims organisations, they will want to see less victims of crime in the future. That will be helped by this presumption as opposed to short sentences. I think that they want to ensure above all, cabinet secretary, that the protection for victims is adequate. Fulton, you had a supplementary, and then we are moving on to Rona. What is the supplementary, actually, and your questions to Rona? Oh, no, sorry, it was Daniel after that. Okay, supplementary. Fulton, then Rona. Thanks, convener. It is quite a specific point on the judiciary having faith in the community alternative that we have spoken about. I think that there is evidence that they do have that, but I wanted to ask about particularly community payback orders. If there is any any work going ahead to review any aspects of them and what I am talking about specifically is that the cabinet secretary will know that a community payback order needs to have a supervision requirement in place apart from, in the instance when it is a standalone, unpaid work. If there is any requirement at all, such as unpaid work with mental health requirement, a supervision requirement needs to be in place, that creates a situation where sentences, and it is the only situation that they have to do with community payback orders, they might have to give a requirement that they do not feel to be appropriate, and that would be a supervision requirement. I assume that that would be a small number of cases, because, for example, they could not give unpaid work with a mental health treatment requirement with a fine, they would need to add a supervision requirement to that. Is there any thought given to that aspect of community payback orders? I think that the member articulates the position fairly well. The unpaid work element has been quite successful. It has been seven million hours of unpaid work that has been carried out in communities. I think that probably every member's region or constituency that they represent will have been affected positively by some of that unpaid work. Of course, it is for the judge to be able to decide and select what type of CPO somebody should be given, but it is absolutely for the court to make that decision. It may well include, as a member has rightly articulated, that supervision may include specific requirements for the treatment of substance abuse, alcohol, drugs or, indeed, to tackle mental health issues, or, as I have mentioned, programme requirements such as the Caledonian programme, which is about dealing with those who have committed domestic abuse offences. CPOs are robust. I would say that they are credible community sentences, but they are not just about payback to the community, although, of course, an element is that there are some that are to do with addressing and dealing with the root causes of some of that offending behaviour. Just to add some context to what the convener was saying about breach, 75 per cent of CPOs in 2017-18 did not involve any breach applications, and the number of terminations are low—it is around 18 per cent—and that has been fairly consistent. It is just to add some context to what the convener was saying. I recognise that. I think that I have said in my answer that we have got to do as much as we possibly can and we will do to increase those completion rates for CPOs. That is not an argument against CPOs, because the alternative, as I say, is short-pissed sentences, where over the third 35 per cent are reconvicted and given a custodial sentence, so they end up back in jail for a much more serious offence than, for example, most likely to be a breach of a CPO that is not attending or failure to attend, which is, of course, serious, but you would suspect not as serious as the 35 per cent end-up back in custody for committing a crime. Just on that point, cabinet secretary, if someone breaches a CPO, then prison is often an alternative, and it is an alternative, because they have run out of things to do—fines, physical finds, work programmes—and someone is just refusing to us. We heard last week from the judge that sometimes there is no alternative. People are refusing to comply with the CPO, so there is no alternative to imposing a custodial sentence. That is the situation where we are resourcing and making sure that they actually get some help in prison could make a difference just now that they get no help. I heard you correctly when you were first asking that question. You said those on a CPO that may breach are often given a custodial sentence. I am not convinced that that is correct unless I misheard you. It will be up for a sheriff to decide what action to take. There is a whole range of actions that can be taken if there is a breach. Obviously, a CPO could possibly entail custody, but there could be a whole range of actions that a sheriff could absolutely take. Let us not take away from the fact. That is accepted, cabinet secretary, but when you run out of that or when I said, I asked Lord tumble, do they get a second chance? Yes, they get a second chance, but there comes a point. There may be another chance. There comes a point that that person is refusing to comply and the only alternative in those circumstances is a custodial sentence. Sure. That is why we have presumption and the discretion of the independent judiciary. I am not arguing with that point, but there are alternatives there. I go back to what I said to Rona Mackay just a moment ago. For those who are given a short prison sentence, 35 per cent will end up back in jail for a much more serious offence. If the argument—and, of course, it will be for you to vote on this presumption or not—if people vote against it, they will understand that the alternative that you are voting for is short sentences. I am afraid that the figures and the facts about those who end up back in prison are much more stark than those who do not complete a CPO. A number of members have already touched on the resourcing points, but I think that it is important that we understand what the implications are of this, especially if we want it to be successful. You have already alluded to the increases and the total spend on community justice, but my understanding is that, within that, the spend on community justice programmes is £13.6 million and on community justice services is £10.1, i.e., that comes to £23.7 million and actually delivering those community justice programmes. For custodial sentences, we know that we spend £35,293 per prisoner per year. Cabinet Secretary, do you know what the equivalent figure is for those who are given custodial sentences and what would you expect to see in terms of that spend, both per prisoner or per person sentenced and as a total budget sum in terms of the delivery of those sentences? Forgive me, I will ask him to elaborate slightly, but I do not have that exact figure in front of me. What we do know, of course, is that custody is much more expensive alternative to community sentences. As I said in answer to a question from Rona Mackay, as we radically explore and examine our punitive policy and shape it in a different direction, the hope would be that we can reprofile some of that spend that is currently in custody towards community alternatives. In terms of the additional spend, the investment that we have made in community criminal justice social work over the past few years, part of that, of course, is based on forecasting, and forecasting is not an exact science. Therefore, if there is a greater demand for community alternatives than we have forecast for, then clearly that is a conversation that I have to have with criminal justice social work, and we will take that in a year-by-year decision according to our spending review. However, if you forgive me, perhaps I did not quite get to the number of questions, so I am happy to explore it. I guess that the number that is this is that the only way that we will see reduction in spend on prisons is if we start closing institutions. They are largely fixed costs, even if there is an average. In all likelihood, while we may see a shift at the very least, there is going to be an interim period where we are spending an increased sum on community sentences in a thousand a year is the figure that we have just heard, and we will still be spending the same amount on prisons. What is the likely impact on the overall justice budget? How much more money will be spent in the interim, in the medium term, on community sentences? The key point is that the usefulness of that per prisoner figure is that it gives us a benchmark of what is actually being delivered. I think that it would be useful if we had a similar benchmark in terms of what is actually being delivered for people who are giving community sentences. It is a question of overall cost impact, but how are we going to monitor this and how it is being delivered? I can ask my colleagues to perhaps come back to the member via the convener on that. I think that he is right that the benchmark figure would be helpful. It may well exist, but forgive me, I do not have it. He is absolutely right that there is a period where we are going to keep our prisons well resourced and simultaneously continue to invest in greater amounts in the community alternatives. There will be an impact on the justice budget, but that is part of the conversations that we have year by year in the spending review. That is why we have seen the increase in the budget for criminal justice social work, and that is part of the conversation that I have to have for the finance secretary year on year. There are other pressures on the prison services, as the member may well know as well. As I said, those are conversations for spending reviews, but my hope and my desire would be that, in a longer term, we would be profiled at spending from prisons to community alternatives, but that would need a significant shift in the numbers, which is significant to the point where he is absolutely right. We can be in a position at which I hope to be in, because we are closing prisons and not building prisons. Another element in critical success factors for that is what happens in community sentences. If you take the 35 per cent recidivism figure that you quoted in short sentences, there are essentially two reasons why that is happening. One is, as I think you have implied, about the suitability of prison over a short period of time. The other critical element is that there is a lack of services that are provided to short-term prisoners for that rehabilitation. Do you not need to do much more to ensure that that is an essential component of whatever sentence people receive for whatever length of time, but including community sentences? Would it not be more to the point, rather than simply a presumption, to actually look at what sentence is handed down? I point to the example of enhanced combination orders in Northern Ireland, where explicitly judges are required to specify the different elements, both of rehabilitation and other services that they might require, and the punishment element, so that there is much greater clarity? Would that not be a better approach, or at least a requirement to make that successful? I am not adverse to looking at what other jurisdictions do and how they do what they do. I am happy to look at any example that may well help to improve matters here, particularly on the rehabilitative journey that we want offenders to be on. Just a couple of things. The 35 per cent figure actually is not necessarily the recidivism figure, it is the figure that will end up back into custody, so there will be many more that will necessarily commit or re-offend, but perhaps not end up back in custody, is my understanding. On the point that he makes around budgets, it is hugely important. For me, the point that he makes around the complex needs and addressing those complex needs and having an associated budget is hugely important. It is why, in Government, we are so keen to work cross-portfolio, so I am struggling to be more on hand right now, but the Health and Justice Collaboration Board is a key element to that closer collaboration, that closer cross-portfolio working where health officials and, indeed, the health secretary and I will be involved, which is trying to deal with some of the usual root causes. Obviously, before somebody commits an offence, clearly if we can get to the preventative agenda, but if somebody commits an offence, then where is the best place to deal with that? Prison can't be all things to all people, and I respect what he says. Should there be a more rehabilitative focus on short sentences? In an ideal world, well, yes, but in the previous question he rightly asked me about the pressures that I already face in my budget. The real politic of it is that we have challenging budgets and prison can't do everything. That's not to say that we shouldn't look at whether or not we can do rehabilitation better in prisons. For example, through care support is an important part of that, but I think that if we can deal with those issues in the community, before somebody offends preferably, but even if somebody commits an offence, I think that if we can deal with those issues in the community, I think that they will be more effective than perhaps dealing with them in prison. No question, cabinet secretary. I've essentially been asking questions about how much money will be spent because that's important, what it will be spent on because, again, that's important, but the other final point is really how that money is made available, and we hear time and time again from people in this sector, both in terms of delivering those programmes, but also from people involved in sentencing themselves. One of the biggest factors that holds back the use of community justice sentences is the fact that we don't have multi-year budgeting, that simply sentences don't know from one year to the next what services are available and what they are able to hand out in terms of sentences. Will you give the commitment to change that system so that that consistency and certainty that sentences need is available? Ultimately, is that not what is required to make that successful? I don't take away from Daniel Johnson's point, of course. We are often restricted because of the fact that we get single-year budgets coming our way from Westminster, and that's not to say that we can't do multi-year budgets because there are some areas where we're able to do that with some level of certainty. He does touch upon an important point, which I don't think has been raised so far in the discussions, which is that the third sector organisations are an important part of this puzzle. One of the digs saw that they are a vital component to help us to deliver community alternatives and we fund them. If we are able to—and I'll certainly give a commitment to explore it—I won't give a commitment to absolutely be able to enact multi-year budgets. On this agenda, I take what he says very seriously and I think it's a good point, so me and my officials will explore whether, in this particular agenda, in the community sentences front, I'll be able to explore multi-year budgets. I'll come back to the member with an answer. I just want to return to the exchange that we had earlier. James Mayby's evidence referred to the fact that several social work authorities receive support from the local authority in addition to the core grant for criminal justice social work. That is simply to maintain services at their current level, so I think that there is an issue that needs to be looked at in terms of funding. However, the comment that you made in relation to potentially easing some of the pressure on NHS and delivery of mental health support to the prison population, is wonder whether you can offer a reassurance there that what is needed in terms of that provision is a greater amount of focus within the prison population irrespective of what's happening in terms of community-based measures. I wouldn't like to see a removal of what resources are directed into community-based measures. I think that all the evidence suggests that we need more in terms of community-based measures for mental health support, but equally more than is currently being provided within the prison estate for the prison population in relation to mental health. On the first point, I take what James Mayby says in social work Scotland. I have to say very seriously. I reiterate the point that the increase in funding, the ring fence criminal justice social work funding, is in addition to increases to revenue funding, but that is notwithstanding that. We will, of course, listen to what social work Scotland has to say when the impact, hopefully, on this presumption passes and comes into force, then we will keep very close contact with the SWS and local authorities, COSLA and others, to see the real-life impact of that and see whether there may be resourcing and budgetary implications. His wider and broader and more substantial point is very well-made. I had a frank conversation with the EU's committee against torture that came here. I had a look at the number of our prisons in our prison estate, both male and female custody units. They presented a real challenge to the Government about how we do mental health services in our prisons. I added to that the recent report from the inspectorate and, jointly, by Dr Helen Smith, the expert review of mental health and depolmon, with 80-odd recommendations, presented some very stark challenges to the Government, to the NHS, on how we do mental health services in our prisons. There is a lot there for us to consider. I will make a statement next week to Parliament on that expert review, but I am very open to looking at wider issues across the prison estate on how we deal with some of those complex health needs. It is not all just resourcing, although I appreciate that that is not what the member was saying, but it is not all just about resourcing. Of course, that is an element of it, but even issues such as data sharing and information sharing are so important. We see that the information sharing between various bodies and public bodies and even the NHS in health workers in prisons versus the actual health board is not as good as it should be, so there is a lot there for us to address some of those complex needs in our prison population. We have touched a little bit on the variation of the use so far of the three-month presumption. You might have seen the evidence provided from Lord Turnbull, where it was clear that some areas were using community alternatives than others. For example, Alloa seems to be an area that has had quite a lot of success in doing that. We discussed at some length what might lie behind that, and we touched on things such as trust and confidence in the alternatives, and it was about even awareness of what those alternatives are. I guess that I want to ask you and find out from you what your view is on that and whether or not there is more that can be done, particularly moving to a 12-month presumption, that we really need to make sure that not just the disposals are there but that the chefs are aware of them, and that there is a trust in the confidence of those who are working. Judicial confidence is absolutely key to making the presumption a success, as well as resourcing. It is absolutely right that you focus in on that issue. It can be a little patchy in relation to the confidence that sheriff's judges will have across the country. That is why Community Justice Scotland is doing a power of work to try to instill that greater degree of confidence and reassurance among our judiciary, so Community Justice Scotland will often do events in which it will invite sheriff's judges, but mainly sheriff's, to meet with providers of community justice and community sentences, and they will have frank conversations. Some of the feedback from the judiciary has been that when they give somebody an alternative to custody, what is missing for them is the feedback loop, so that they do not get feedback on whether that person has been successful, has addressed some of those underlying issues, etc. The sheriffs tell us that if they had that, then they would be much more predisposed to give those community alternatives. We are working hard with Community Justice Scotland to bring everybody up to a really good standard of community sentences across the country, so that work is continuing. There are sheriffs who are real advocates for community alternatives, and we hope that we can persuade them to be advocates and ambassadors for community sentences. Clearly, that will be dependent on the work that Community Justice Scotland does to make sure that there are robust alternatives in place across the country. In addition, the collection of the data on community sentences is really important here, isn't it? I know that, again, the Scottish Government is working with Community Justice Scotland on that, because in order to pursue the skeptics lessons on what works and the evidence of what works and, importantly, that feedback loop. What actually happens is going to be really important. Do you accept that there is an issue there in terms of building that case as we go forward and making sure that, as well as the trailblazers, we have that underpinning evidence of saying, the evidence speaks for itself? I accept that we do not have everybody in the country up to the level that we would like to be at. There are definitely examples of really close collaboration between the judiciary and community sentence providers, but that is not the standard practice right across the country. We have to elevate everybody to that standard. I visited a very good project in our brothway. The sheriff there said that it was excellent. The sheriff would often send women to that project for female offenders and that he would regularly come down to see the project himself, the sheriff. He had a good rapport and relationship with the staff. He was really invested in the rehabilitative journey, if I can put it that way, of the offender. So much so to the extent that I was told by a Glen Eyre project—I am sure that I should be repeating this, but he did say that when the sheriff went on his annual leave, the sheriff who replaced him did not have the same understanding of that project. So many more women were diverted to custody as opposed to that. When the sheriff returned from his annual leave, he was quite upset that that happened. Building those relationships is absolutely key and is part of the work that we are doing in community justice Scotland. That is an important point, because there were a few projects that were named and pulled out like the Tay project in Dundee. If a sheriff is familiar and knows the project, he is more likely to refer. I think that the Lord Turbo had mentioned potentially a role for the judicial council in terms of training and raising awareness of and maybe building those relationships with the projects themselves. Is that something you would encourage? Yes, it is probably the judicial institute that he is referring to, but I absolutely see a role for all those stakeholders. If I am being very frank with you, it can be sometimes a bit tricky from the side of the table that I am on. Judiciary is understandably the fiercely guarded independence. Ministers and politicians are generally telling them what they should be doing and they should not really land well with them. At the same time, completely understand that they should guard that independence fiercely. It is fair to say that the vast majority of sheriffs, if they could and felt they could give an alternative to custody, then that is where they would want to be, as opposed to throwing people into jail. There is a power of work for us to do in that regard, and we are doing it. Perhaps the judicial institute is part of that, and the sheriffs association is part of that conversation, as well as many others. We can just say that some of the members of the committee had the opportunity to go and meet with the judicial institute. We are very impressed with the work that they were doing, just to make all sheriffs aware of alternative sun, to talk about current issues that are certainly going to improve the criminal justice system. John Finnie. John Finnie, I am still on the issue of resources and the question of impact assessments. Now, if I check the various impact assessments that would normally cover legislation, primarily they all say the same thing that is an extension of existing policy. We have talked about the judicial awareness of local options. Can I ask what consideration is given, given that we do not have an islands impact assessment, but there are particular unique features to the four island sheriffs courts and, indeed, mainland sheriffs courts that deal with residents from islands? We give you the example of, by no means unique example of the Caledonian project, where you need an optimum number of people to be participating in a programme to make it effective. Is there a danger that there is a reduced range of options for those convicted in island sheriffs courts as a result of the... That is a really good point. Obviously, the member knows about the island proofing concept, but he has a point about secondary legislation and doing things through orders. I will absolutely take back to my officials what I would say from the evidence that was received from Orkney and Shetland islands councils. We have to be aware of those nuances for sure. We deal with that even when it comes to those in custody. There are nuances in island communities, maybe not particularly, but absolutely unique to island communities, because they might be in rural communities, too. There are issues around community alternatives in the stigma that is associated with them, and we have to be aware and alert absolutely to them. Having looked at the evidence by some of the island councils, I think that we will be able to meet the challenges of those nuances. If there are particular conversations that we have to have, then I am absolutely all ears to that. The member knows that I have a good relationship with our island councils from a previous portfolio, but we absolutely do not want those in island communities to be disproportionately affected in a negative way. We want them to have the full range of opportunities for community sentences that anybody else would have. I am grateful for that response, cabinet secretary. On a number of occasions, you have mentioned sums of money that have been allocated in the views terms such as increases ring fenced. I wonder if you can advise if there is sufficient flexibility within criminal justice social work budgets in the island areas and, indeed, rural areas to accommodate facilitating individuals participating in disposal switch might involve groups. I understand that there is flexibility within that money, although, as I said, it is ring fenced and protected, but within that there is flexibility. However, if island communities would like to come to me or island councils and raise any specific issues, I will do my best to try to address some of those challenges. If they feel that there are particular challenges to their communities, I would be absolutely open to that. Throughout today's cabinet secretary, a lot of the case founds upon this idea that community sentences are much more effective in terms of re-offending. The committee heard last week that making a straight comparison of re-offending rates between those given a short custodial sentence and those given a community sentence can actually be somewhat misleading because of the difference in the extent of previous offending among the two groups. I would be interested to know whether the cabinet secretary accepts that, and, if so, doesn't it make it rather challenging to make this change without a further analysis and understanding of what is going on there? The first thing that I would say is that it is not an idea, as he describes it. The research really does bear it out. I have said to him, even the convener, that if you would like to present an alternative to that overwhelming research, you will find yourself really isolated. It was borne out very much by the evidence. The point that he makes is an absolutely correct one. People have made that point, that the profile of individuals who may well be diverted from custody would perhaps be different to those who are given a custodial sentence, so I absolutely accept that. My colleagues, just as analytical services, have looked at that issue and it is possible to control for those differences. While the gap may well narrow, you may, if you control for those factors, the figures may not be that those who are given a short custodial sentence are reconvicted twice as often or nearly twice as often, even if the gap does narrow. It still very much finds that there is a statistical significant difference in rates of reconviction, even if you control for those factors. You are right, again, that there might be a difference in the rate, but statistically there is still a significant difference between reconviction rates, those given a short sentence versus community sentence, even controlling for those differences. Finally, cabinet secretary, what types of cases may attract custodial sentences of up to 12 months or even 18 months, considering the possibility of a one-third sentence discount for an early play? Will that be for a sheriff to decide? For the judiciary to decide what cases? When it comes to discounts, I know that Lord Turnbull will give some evidence to the effect that there may be an 18-month sentence in an early discount. We bring that down to 12 months potentially in the end within the gambit of the presumption, but again I go back to that point that this is just a presumption. Two things. One, this is a presumption, so it is up to the individual sheriff to decide whether or not, even if that person falls into the gambit of this 12-month or less sentence or whether that person should go to jail or not, so they absolutely can send somebody still to jail if they think that that is the most appropriate place for them. For the more serious offences that would take you to that point, you could imagine that that may well be what a sheriff decides to do. The second point is that I think that sheriffs are clearly very intelligent. You have mentioned that you have been impressed by the work that the judicial institute has done. Sheriff Duff and his team, in terms of training judiciary, will be very aware that this presumption has come into force if it passes. Therefore, you would think that they would bear that somewhat in mind. Lord Turnbull Babs was sceptical on that point, but you would think that they would take that on board. Ultimately, the answer to your question is that this is a presumption, not a ban. Therefore, anybody who has given any sentence, be it 12 months, be it 10 months or 5 months, they can still be very much sent to jail. That is up to the discretion of the judiciary. Can I perhaps quote from Lord Turnbull? Offences that might be in the category could include causing death by careless driving, causing death while driving while disqualified, possession of indecent photographs of children, possibly the distribution of lower category images, possession of offensive knives and weapons, assaults and perhaps some drug supply charges, sexual offences charges and charges of multiple housebreaking. By any stretch of the imagination, those are very serious potential offences that will be covered by any presumption of 18. The risk assessment is fit for purpose, given that we heard last week from James Mayby, Social Work Scotland, that their risk assessment relies only on what the offender tells them, not the evidence in court. Yes, I think that a risk assessment is solid, it is robust on this. We cannot, never in the justice portfolio, be able to eliminate the risk to absolutely zero, even when somebody is in custody, of course, they can go on to commit crimes. Unfortunately, those can be the most heinous and worst of crimes in custody. They can commit sexual crimes, murder in the prison estate. Whether somebody is in custody or not in custody, then, of course, eliminating that risk to zero is simply not possible. On the list of offences that you mentioned and you quote Lord Turnbull, on that, I would make two points. One is that, again, the discretion lies with the sheriff. The individual sheriffs, the judges have the discretion on whether the seriousness of offence merits a custodial sentence or, indeed, a community alternative, regardless of whether it falls into the presumption of 12 months or not. The second point that I would make is, particularly as the justice secretary, but, even as the convener of this committee, we have to believe in people's ability to rehabilitate. I have to believe that people have that ability, regardless of the crime—and that is perhaps the controversial bit—that even those who have committed the most heinous of crimes, I have to believe that they have the ability to rehabilitate. Some, of course, will be on that, but I have to believe that the overwhelming majority have the ability to rehabilitate. Even the list of offences—and she is right to call them serious offences—that I have to believe, and I do believe, that people have the ability to rehabilitate. If I believe that as I do, then I have to ask myself what does the evidence show me and demonstrate is the most effective way to rehabilitate somebody. Is it a short sentence, or is it a community alternative that addresses root causes? Again, as I have said throughout this committee session, it is undoubtedly community alternatives. Yes, judicial discretion is important, but we cannot take away from the fact that the rehabilitative impact of community sentences is far greater than short sentences. Cabinet Secretary, we have to ensure that we pass legislation that protects the public. It has been the cabinet secretary's choice to extend the presumption to 12 months. The Law Society has asked why not six months, why not nine months? Of course, we all believe in rehabilitation, but, as the wise group has told us time and time again, that rehabilitation has to be properly resourced. For the three months presumption, it has not been, and certainly there must be a question over how extending it to 12 months is a sensible way forward. I do not agree with the fact that the three months have not been properly resourced at all. The 12 months that I thought I made mention of this in a previous answer, but perhaps I did not, but the 12 months were chosen for very good and legitimate reasons for avoiding the issues around up-tariffing because of the 12-month summary sentencing limits that we have. It is also because you quoted Lord Turnbull worth mentioning that Lord Turnbull himself says that community sentences are recognised as robust and I am quoting directly, recognised as robust and not a soft option. I think that those are important points to make on the record. I think that the official record will show that immediately after reading out that list, Lord Turnbull then went on to say, and I am paraphrasing here, that he had faith and confidence that if the crime was of a serious enough nature to merit a custodial sentence, that is what would happen. For completeness, it is important to put that on the record. I think that that concludes our questioning. Thank you for that. Agenda item 3 is formal consideration of the motion in relation to the affirmative instrument. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has considered and reported on the instrument and had no comments on it. The motion will be moved and an opportunity for a formal debate if that is necessary. The motion is motion 17438 that the Justice Committee recommends that the presumption again short periods of imprisonment Scotland order 2019 draft be approved. Cabinet Secretary to speak and move the motion. I move the motion in my name. Do any members wish to speak against it? I will only reiterate what I have said during the debate that I am not convinced that this is a sensible way forward to protect the public. For that reason, I am not in favour of it. Cabinet Secretary, do you wish to wind up? Only to say that I am disappointed, of course, convener, but I am pleased that the evidence is so robust and that I hope that this presumption is passed. Therefore, we will have more people rehabilitated and, of course, less victims of crime. The question is that motion 17438, in the name of Humza Yousaf, be approved. Are we all agreed? No. Those in favour, please show. Those against, please show. Seven in favour, two against. Next week, we will consider the final report on the basis of today's result. I thank the cabinet secretary and his officials for attending, who will suspend and suspend for a five-minute comfort break. Agenda item 4 is continuation of our inquiry into secure care for children and young people in Scotland. I am pleased to welcome a panel of witnesses for today's meeting comprising of Christine Hogg, head of policy, Bernardo Scotland, Deborah Nolan, practice development manager, centre for youth and criminal justice and current eyeball, head of children's services, North West Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership. I thank all the witnesses for their written evidence, which the committee finds really helpful and advanced so far as actually hearing from you in person. I refer members to paper 3, which is public paper and paper 4, which is private paper. I start by asking the committee—sorry, the panel—the committee has heard of the complex health issues and needs that many children and young people present when they enter secure custody. Can a witness say, have those issues and needs changed over time, and if so, our responses to those issues should they be managed and should they be keeping up with developments. Who would like to start? From my perspective in Glasgow, the numbers of young people who come in and out of secure care have reduced over the years, but that is really with quite a focus on alternatives from our perspective in a Glasgow context. That probably looks different across Scotland, but in Glasgow we have a number of effective interventions where we try and support young people to stay in their own communities. I think that from that perspective the numbers have changed from Glasgow, so at its height we might have had 35 young people. Today we have 10. The numbers and the focus has changed from sentencing to welfare provision in secure care. I think that we are very much focused in the community in trying to support young people to stay in their families, and I know that you have taken evidence before where there has been quite a focus on the issue of social isolation. We are really clear from a Glasgow perspective if we are to address social isolation, we want children and young people to stay in their own homes to have that done in the widest sense. I think that people have talked before about fixing young people and fixing mental health issues in a secure context, and I think that we are clear that while we can try and reduce the worst effects, we are not effectively fixing young people, so we need to look at solutions for young people beyond the period of secure care before and after so that we can get the best possible outcomes. We would absolutely agree with the evidence that you heard from the chief inspector of prisons around the complexity of the needs that are faced by the young people that we are supporting through our services in Poland. We would also add to the evidence that you heard around a greater instant of mental health need, but not necessarily that manifesting as a greater instance of mental health diagnosable conditions. I think that in some cases that is less about changing needs or increasing needs, but it is about a greater understanding of those needs and in particular a greater understanding of the impact of adverse childhood experiences, developmental trauma. That is not to say that those experiences are deterministic, not all young people who grow up in adversity will go on to develop these symptoms of trauma, but many of them will. In particular, the prison population that we see, the young people who are in Poland, many of them will have experienced trauma, bereavement, lost different experiences which need to be supported. That would certainly be something where we would want to see a focus and sometimes that can be something as simple as focusing on the relationships that those young people have. They needn't be always very complex interventions. I think that we would echo that certainly in terms of the secure care kind of data and information as well as the information on the number of young people in custody. We all have seen a reduction, so if we take custody in the first instance, we have seen a significant reduction in the number of young people in custody. However, what we are hearing is that there is a massive increase in the complexity of need of those young people. Last month, on average, we had 38 under-18s in our young offenders' institution. Certainly, the information that is available to us would suggest that that complexity is much higher, so much higher levels of adverse childhood experiences, often manifesting in trauma, high levels of mental health and emotional wellbeing needs, high prevalence of things such as learning disabilities and substance misuse for those young people. Likewise, in terms of secure care, we know that secure care is our most restrictive form of care, and those children who are in secure care will often be presented with very high, very extreme levels of needs and vulnerability. Likewise, as was mentioned previously, while there has been a real change and there has been on-going fluctuations in terms of our number of young people in secure care, those young people are presenting with an extremely high level of needs. I think that the crux of this and the crux of probably a lot of the discussion that we will have today is how do we ensure that we can most appropriately meet those complex range of needs of those children, as opposed to being a service-driven in terms of how we respond and being really based on what the needs of those children are. Both Kirsten and Deborah have mentioned adverse childhood experiences, which is a term that has become more in vogue, but by no means a new term, because we know for decades now that children have experienced these kinds of problems. In particular, the victims of childhood sexual abuse are being done enough, so people can disclose in a safe environment, within schools and other places where it could perhaps have an early intervention, because we know that the vast majority of the perpetrators are in a position of trust, often family members. Is enough being done to tackle that particular issue? Being able to disclose is obviously a very important first step, but where my colleagues in the NSPCC, through their right to recover report about a year ago, have identified that where we do have a gap in Scotland is in the support services that, once people have disclosed, once people have come forward, we have a real lack of that specialist support for those particular circumstances. Is there a genuine commitment to creating as many opportunities as possible? I know that, in Glasgow, some of the peff money has been used for an increase in councillor, time and availability, and there is a commitment in Glasgow that every school will have a councillor, so that every young person will have access to councillor. In Glasgow, there are a number of bespoke services to support children and young people. I think that there is a growing understanding and awareness that young people need the opportunity to seek support, not necessarily from statutory services, but that we create a range of opportunities through partnership with third sector to allow children and families to make the approach that feels comfortable for them. I think that that is very important that, at the time, they do not feel that it is out of their hands, things are growing arms and legs, that they are comfortable about the way ahead. I would like to ask a question about social isolation, which has already been mentioned this morning. The HMIPS report from Pullman says that social isolation as a key trigger for self-harm and suicide should be minimised with a particular focus on those held on remand and during the early weeks of custody. I would like to get the panel's thoughts on the impact of social isolation on young people in general. The evidence in the mental health review and the evidence that was completed in terms of suicide by SCJR was very clear about the detrimental impact of social isolation on children. What was very helpful from that review was the broadened definition of what social isolation is and the various factors that contribute on social isolation, particularly for our children. In custody, remand was clearly a huge factor in that report and was a very large factor in the isolation of those children. That has given us an important window of opportunity to again think about our use of remand for those children and how we can ensure that, if children are being remanded, they are enabled to have the maximum benefit of that time in custody, whereas what that report has made extremely clear is that, during that period, often those opportunities are not available for the children. Likewise, that really echoes some of our findings from our own work with young people in custody and with partners, partner organisations that access to services for children and remand can be inherently difficult. As well as saying that social isolation is a factor in and of itself, we can also consider it if we look through a trauma lens as a sort of a layering factor because relationships are something that can really be very, very beneficial. Trusting relationships built up over time can be very, very beneficial to young people who have experienced that sort of mental health, who need mental health support because of their experiences of trauma. Social isolation then becomes not only a factor in and of itself but prevents you from getting some of the support that you need. As part of our youth work support employment, we have youth workers who will go out to the young people who you heard about in the previous session, some young people who simply do not feel able to come out who just want to stay in their rooms. Our youth workers will go in to try to develop those relationships with those young people, try to help them, support them perhaps to feel confident to come to maybe smaller group work or something along those lines. There is support there but resource issues has always come into play. There is a limit to the amount of time that can be devoted to trying to break down those barriers and develop those trusting relationships. I would like to pick up on that point because the Centre for Youth and Criminal Justice also pointed to the fact that there is no requirement for individuals on remand to undertake work or educational classes. Many young people on remand refuse offers to do so thereby exacerbating those problems of social isolation. Should it be enforced then that you are talking about your colleagues having to go into cells, for example, to get young people to engage with educational opportunities? Should there be a choice factor in there if they are cutting themselves off while they are in custody, or should there be enforcement of educational opportunities? All our services and support that we offer are available to young people on remand, but it is highly subscribed. In contrast to the reports that you heard last time about young people not wanting to engage, we found that our youth work service and our here and now service, which specifically helps young people who have experienced trauma bereavement and loss, are massively oversubscribed. I suppose that the resource element of that would be very important. If all young people who are on remand are also asked to access those services, then at this point, certainly the ones that we provide are full to capacity, and they are the ones that we understand that young people are saying. We like to come and work with you. We like the relationships that you build with us. We like that you trust us. That has come through in a number of the reports, including the chief inspector's report. Even within ac compulsion, I would imagine that there still needs to be a degree of choice, and if the services that people want to support are oversubscribed, then that is another part of the dynamic. I suppose that from a statutory service provision perspective, I would see the focus on developing good relationships with young people as a conduit in to encouraging them to participate. I suppose that relationship with third sector, where you have investment in services that can and do have the capacity to build those relationships, is the way forward in custody and outwith custody, that we are developing services. There are a range of services available to lots of young people pre-custody that they choose not to take, and I think that we need to see a shift in service provision so that we are clear that we are providing the right types of services so that young people feel they can safely engage and build relationships pre and post custody. I hope that we will avoid custody. Liam McArthur Good morning. I just wanted to follow up the line of questioning that the convener was pursuing earlier. I think that you have identified that, while we have seen a reduction in numbers, the complexity of some of the issues that the children and young people are dealing with are more significant. It would be fair to say that, across the secure care sector and custodial units, that the provision of CAMHS and other support for mental health issues is patchy, or is there a consistency there to your mind? It is important that we differentiate between secure care and custody, okay? In our submission, we spoke about some of the risks that young people find about the equation of those two environments, because they are very different environments, and we may well come on to discuss that. In both environments, there have been significant concerns raised about the health provision and the in-reach of services in terms of the previous evidence session. I know that there was discussion about access to mental health services for the secure care providers, and that some of the challenges that have been raised and that were raised in that session were in terms of responsibility, in terms of lack of clear health pathway for children and secure care to access health services, in terms of equity of access. I think that there was also some issues raised, and certainly we are raised through the national secure care project about the interface between a child's placing, health board and authority, as well as the health board or authority that we are hosting, the secure centre and the child there. There are some real challenges around that access to services for our children and secure care. There are, as I am sure the committee will be well aware, also numerous concerns about children in the community's ability to access health services, mental health services in particular. There is quite a complex picture there that is magnified for our children in secure care. The national standards for secure care have recently been developed and they very much build on the course fraction that came from the national secure care project. They give a focus to how we ensure that young people gain the health support that they require. The standards are due to be launched in due course, which should help to assist with that situation. However, we need to ensure that our health boards are recognised and are on board as key partners to them as well. It might be an unfair question, but from all of that, are there priority areas to your mind that need to be focused on? Maybe not as a silver bullet, but it would make a significant difference in addressing those sorts of concerns. For our children, at the point where they are in secure care, we need to be ensuring that we are meeting their health needs fully, and that needs to be a partnership approach so that secure care centres provide a high level of mental health support and they provide programmes and interventions. However, there is much more of a holistic focus on what that whole system can provide to the children while they are in secure care. However, that needs to be a partnership approach as well with community partners to ensure that there is that in reach and that continuity of care when those children are leaving secure care centres and returning to their home environment. I want to echo Deborah's point on that. Even young people who have access to CAMHS and forensic CAMHS in the community, as soon as they move, they have to shift who is delivering their mental health services, which is an issue for young people. That will even be an issue when we have a hospital based in Irvine because that is in Irvine and if you are getting a service delivered from Glasgow, you will not get that. That will be a different delivery of the service. What has been a thread throughout all the evidence is the importance of relationships and at the point where you come into secure care. We have described that, the law describes that as a last resort. You are then having the further challenge of a complete change in caregiver, including mental health services, even where the provision was good. I think that at best we are able to use services available to us. In Glasgow, we are very fortunate that we have forensic CAMHS and that allows us to have a formulation for the young people. That allows you to say, here are the particular challenges for that young person and here is how the caregivers should meet their needs, regardless of where they go. I would say that that is something really important to build on in the future to get the best possible care for young people. We have both talked about the importance of continuity, which again was the message that we were getting from the previous panel. However, the concern was highlighted around the funding structure that can almost rub against that in terms of the uncertainty about who is going to be providing services over the longer term. Is that a concern that you would share? Does that need to build in a greater visibility of funding and uncertainty about who is going to be providing services? I am not entirely sure of the question there. I am not sure if you are referring to the model of funding for secure care and secure care services. The evidence indicates that there are various concerns about our current approach to commissioning secure care services for our children. Those concerns have been illustrated on multiple levels in terms of the market approach in terms of the lack of national commissioning model. However, we should still be able to provide a continuity of care for our children because health boards will have a responsibility to those children throughout their journey. Likewise for the local authority who are responsible for that child while they are placed in secure care, they will still have that responsibility when that child transitions out from secure care by virtue of their position as the lead professional. There are structures in place to support continuity. However, it is how they are working at the current time, which is part of the challenge. Is that a view that you have shared by yourselves in Glasgow? Yes, and I think that it is further complicated by it. It may well come up, the placement of children from English local authorities, so at any given point, between 13 and 50 per cent over the last couple of years have been. You are then diluting your local knowledge and expertise of CAMHS services to deliver services that are not developing the themes around Scottish children who have different needs, different placement times, so that further complicates an already complicated picture, I think. I think that it is very important that we are talking about how mental health supports within Pullman or mental health supports that can be accessed within secure care and how they interact with services in the community. It is really important, as Debbie said, to put that in the context of some of the challenges that are faced by young people across the board trying to access mental health support within the community. We have examples where, for young people, entry to Pullman is the first time that their mental health needs have been properly addressed. It is the first time that they have been able to access that support, so that is by no means the norm for everyone, but the challenges around accessing mental health support, particularly for young people who perhaps are looked after, where the instability of your lifestyle, which is caused by the system that might move you between placements, might mean that you could not access CAMHS, or that young people who we know are using drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism for their mental health problems might sometimes not be able to access CAMHS because of that. Sometimes the mental health support for people in particular who have a diagnosed with mental health condition, some of the young people that we have worked with who have not been able to access CAMHS to support them through that in the community, have been able to get access to that support once they are in Pullman. The evidence that the behaviour is much around trying to put themselves in the position where they are going to get the support for CAMHS that they are not getting in the community, that there is a pattern of offending behaviour in order to put themselves back into either secure care or indeed to Pullman. I do not think that the numbers that we work with are great enough for me to be able to make that sort of point. Supplementary, Daniel Johnson. I think that the partnership working point that the panel has made is absolutely key, and obviously a key element to that being successful is making sure that the practitioners on the ground, whether it is in secure care or within Pullman, have the relevant training so that they can identify and refer. Indeed, that point is made very clear in the HMIPS report on mental health services at HMP Pullman, but I think that one point of concern that I had was discovering that the mental health training that was being provided was not covering neuroventile disorders. In particular, that same report pointed to the fact that 50 per cent of people in Pullman may have some form of learning disability or difficulty and are diagnosable. That seems to be an oversight. I was just wondering what the panel's thoughts are in terms of delivering that training and what the content of that training should be, and in particular whether there needs to be particular focus on neurodevelopmental disorders. I think that we need to equip our workforce to meet the identified needs of the children who they will be providing care to. Is there any training input that would need to cover that broad spectrum of needs? We have spoken about adversity, we have spoken about trauma, the high level of, for example, young people with learning disabilities or speech language and communication needs, so maybe 50 to 90 per cent of the population of young people in young friends' institution having speech language communication needs. We have also got to grow in development about the impact of traumatic brain injury, for example, and the high prevalence of that, as well as diagnosed and undiagnosed mental health needs. It is really important that we equip our workforce to understand those needs, to understand how best to support those children who have those needs, but that we are able to recognise the distinctive nature of child development and what children need as children. Fundamentally, those are all children first and foremost, so we need to be ensuring that our training is tailored to an understanding of children, because very often what we do is we use either adult programmes or adult training courses or, for example, training that has been developed around working with adults and trying to apply that to working with children, which we know fundamentally does not work because it is based on an understanding of a different cohort. Training is fundamentally important, however, there is something else that is extremely important that is round about the culture and environment that we provide for those children. We are talking about relationships are hugely important, having well trained staff is hugely important, having specialist interventions is very important, but the culture and environment that those children are living within is hugely important as well and will shape their day-to-day experiences that they have. There has been a lot of discussion about trauma-informed environments and how we can make trauma-informed environments. We need to be very realistic about how challenging it is to do that within facilities that are very often set up and have a key component of punishment, and there was a lot of discussion in the earlier session about that. Through the work that CYCJ and Barnardo's have done in conjunction in trying to support our employment in terms of their journey to become trauma-informed, which is absolutely admirable and has good intention to have, we need to be realistic about how difficult that is to achieve in practice. Some of the real complicating factors about providing a trauma-informed environment are resources, about staff availability, about time, about staff support, so things like training but also supervision for staff and caring for our staff to care for the children who they are looking after, but also about the environment, the physical environment that is provided and the cultural environment can all be real barriers to the ability to provide trauma-informed care to the children who are within a young fitness institution. Can I just ask you one point of clarification? Did you say that 50 to 90 per cent of children or young people have speech and language? There are very wide estimates, but for our young people in young offenders institutions would be the estimates that are within Nilesbowl Park. If we flip that on its head, if we approach it for the majority of children who are in a young offenders institution, we will have speech, language and communication needs. We should then be tailoring our approach to providing communication inclusive environments for all children because most of those children will be presenting with those levels of need. I suppose from my perspective whether there is an opportunity today in respect to the work that has been done to think about a different service provision other than the as is, that yes, it would be better to have training for the staff and the current provision, but whether there is an opportunity for us to think about visioning what we would like for Scottish children beyond polemont and the existing secure care delivery, so could we be doing something different? Briefly also about variability. In the HMIPS report, it stated that there was a typically innate day referral period for a young person to be referred to CAMHS. I think that the panel subsequently reflected that that was much better than what was experienced in the secure care environment. I am just wondering more broadly what the variation there is, both between polemont and secure care, but also within the secure care in terms of referral and also levels of training. Anyone? I do not think that I can comment on the referral timescales. I know that there has been a lot of work done on that. I think that we can certainly comment on training, so there will be, again, echo in my previous points about ensuring that our training is child-focused, but also about a role and programme of training within both environments being hugely important, because we know people change, people move on, and ensuring that the training is tailored to the needs of the child is really important as well. You can always follow up in writing anything that occurs to you after this evidence session. We are now moving to Rona Fulton, John Anshona. Rona Fulton, I will be brief because a lot of what you have said has kind of answered my question. I do not want to labour the point about training, but the HMIPS report stated that no NHS staff with training in adolescence and none of the clinical staff have undergone the essential CAMHS competition training that would be routine in staff appointed to a CAMHS service. Given that prison staff are dealing with very vulnerable children on a day-to-day basis, has the report resulted in a change? Is there a positive change in training for staff to deal with the children outwith the specialist CAMHS services? Is that what I am trying to say? I do not think that we can answer that question. It would be Scottish Prison Service who would need to advise what they have done. I understand that there has been some commitments made in the inspection report that went alongside the mental health review. Some commitments had already been progressed in training and support to staff, but it would be for SPS to give you a clear breakdown of what it intended to do on the back of that. Would you agree that that is critical for children in polemont to have given that day-to-day staff that they see that they are trained properly? I think that there is a raft of complicating factors in ensuring that that happens, but it is absolutely necessary. I know that you touched on this briefly in your last answer. I apologise if it came up most substantially and I have missed it, but I wanted a comment on the interaction between the secure care services and polemont at the point when a young person is moving over. Do you think that that process is working well just now? I think that that is a very welcomed question and a very welcomed area of focus for us as transitions. We know that transitions for young people are very often major life events and traumatic life events. That can be for children entering secure care or custody from the community, moving within establishments and then returning back to the community. Under the whole systems approach, which is Scottish Government's policy and framework and national approach to working with children at risk of or involved in offending behaviour, there is a raft of guidance to support young people making that transition and to inform practice. There are various different pieces of guidance to inform that practice. We also have a real raft of evidence from young people, as well as from stakeholders about what can work and what can aid those transitions and what can make them most effectively, as well as lots of examples of extremely good practice, to support young people making that transition. There are a couple of very complicated factors at times in those transitions, however. One is that when those moves are done on an unplanned basis for whatever reason, it can make it extremely difficult to ensure that those transitions are managed appropriately or done in the best possible way that they can be. At times, that can make it very difficult to make sure that the guidance and the good practice that there is implemented if that young person is moving on a crisis basis. What is important is where we have examples of young people moving on unplanned or crisis basis. We are able to reflect on the reasons that led to that and what we did during those periods of times and what we could do more effectively in future, either to prevent unplanned crisis moves or to make sure that, when those do happen, we are able to manage them as effectively as possible. What the mental health review has done has highlighted that, at times, those transitions are not handled as well as they could be and that, at times, the flow of information can be troublesome. Clink back to what we said earlier about the importance of continuity, addressing all those factors, is therefore extremely important. On that last point, do you or any of the other panel members have any evidence or information regarding what the actual impact is of those transitions, perhaps when they are not done well or even when they are done well, on a young person's mental health? The wealth of an evidence base talks at length about the impact of depriving a child of their liberty. If we are talking about subsequent transitions from that, there has been a lot of work done by colleagues who have spoken at length about the transition from a young person moving from the community to a custodial or secure environment and returning back the impact that that can have and the detrimental impact that that can have on a young person's mental health and how challenging that period can be. I think that there is a lot of evidence out there that indicates how challenging for a child those experiences can be. We would also draw attention to the transition out of either secure care or indeed out-of-pollment, particularly in relation to trauma. We know that symptoms relating to trauma spike before people are going to transition out of that support and that the first six to eight weeks back in the community are really critical, but we also know that that is where it is really difficult to find a support service. I were hearing now trauma bereavement and loss service for a while, had a transitions worker who particularly tried to work with young people who were to be released to make sure that they had support within the community and in some local authority areas that was possible and in some local authority and health boards areas that wasn't possible, the support just wasn't there, so I think that focusing on that transition out as well is also very important. We have two staff dedicated to pole-mont to support young people to make that transition back out. I think that it's enormously difficult for young people who go into secure to get the right route for them to come out of. It becomes a really big challenge when young people have been in secure care, getting the right package post secure care, and there's a real reluctance sometimes across providers to take young people with the kind of profiles that have gone into secure care and come back out, so it takes a lot of planning to get the right resource and wherever possible to try and support that young person to go back to the placement they've come out of. Again, the secure placement is an additional placement which adds to the profile of trauma for the young person. I think that in the previous session there was a discussion about children moving at the age of 18, so children who have maybe been in secure then have almost enforced transition to move into a young vendors institution even if they have a very short period of time left whereby they could remain in secure care. I think that that highlights some more of the kind of legislative barriers and some of the challenges to ensuring that we really take a needs and developmentally led approach to ensuring that we can provide care for these children in the best possible facilities to meet their needs. For those children who do or young people who do make the transition, has there been any work done on collating what they have said? Is there a difference between secure care and a young vendors institution? We have done a piece of work whereby we worked with children who had experience or who are currently in a young vendors institution who had previous, some of those children had previous experience of secure and we detailed this in our report entitled, just a wee boy not cut out for prison, which was what one of the young people told us was that he had seen a young person who had been remanded to custody and to him and to some of his peers. It was very evident that he was just a wee boy not cut out for prison. In that time, these were young people who were able to reflect back on their experiences of being in secure care. What they told us was that, in secure care, they felt what was particularly beneficial was the relationships that they had with staff. They felt that they were able to have much easier access to family contact and much more beneficial access to family contact when they were in secure care than when they were in custody. They felt that their educational opportunities in secure care were better than when they were in custody. They felt that secure care prepared them much more for their return to the community than custody did. What I should add to the caveat is that that was very small numbers of children, but it is very important that we hear from those children. We have also done some work with young people captured in our secure care voices report whereby young people who had previously been insecure or young people who are currently insecure were able to reflect back on their experiences. As much as many of those young people said that there were things that they would like to be different, what many of them said was that secure care was the right choice for them at that point in time, was able to provide them with positive help and support, and some of those young people were able to say that secure care had changed or saved their lives. Likewise, in our Just A We Boy study, some of the young people were able to say to us that custody had prevented more serious harm coming to them or someone else because they were able to say that they needed to be removed from the community at that point in time. I suppose that that takes us on nicely in terms of what secure care should be used for, but I do believe that someone else has got that line of questioning. Is that Shona's? No, I think that you are okay. Or is it Shona's? Okay, let's see if it's not covered, can we come back to it then? John, your line of questioning has been covered. It's covered, thank you. Okay, Shona. We have touched on that, but just to be clear, as you are probably aware, the HMIPS report talked about interagency communication and says that systemic interagency shortcomings of communication and information exchange across justice that inhibits the management and care of young people entering and leaving Pullman. I just wanted briefly to hear your view on whether the agencies—this is not exhaustive, but the prisons, the courts, the police, the NHS, the third sector—whether they work well together, the report would suggest not as well as they could. Most importantly, what could be done to improve that interagency communication? That's whether it's an unplanned or planned change. Sometimes when it's unplanned it'll be last minute, and there might be difficulties in sharing communication—we heard that in previous evidence—but what do your view could be done to improve that? Certainly, in previous experience, we've had really difficult outcomes, I would say, from a local authority perspective. We've tried really hard to get the information and the right information. I think that some of the complexity for us historically and that's been well recognised is that the whole population is so complex. It's difficult to pick and choose one particular young person with need because it's reflective of the need of the entire population in. I think that, certainly in my experience, we've had some examples where we've been very clear. Obviously, there's a social worker at court who can also be very clear that where young people have self-reported, that they feel okay, that's overridden, some of the information that would be available to the contrary. But to be fair, by way of the report, I think that's recognised and everybody concerned is committed to doing the best for young people, but sometimes I think that communication has got lost. There are certainly reports available for us in localities, for young people going into secure and young people going into custody. They are the highest focus for us, so it shouldn't be difficult to improve that communication and set up systems where we're able to share as far as possible some of the concerns and needs of those young people. There are many occasions where agencies do work extremely well together. I think that there are real challenges about consistency and consistency of joint working can be very challenging. In terms of the whole system approach, again, difficult to local authorities do that slightly differently, so there can be some challenges around about consistency with that. There are very clear processes in place for information sharing. Clearly, that evidence could be improved, but there are many processes and structures in place to enable that. For example, in terms of children entering into custody, for example, there is clear guidance on what information should be shared, when it should be shared and arrangements for an initial custody review to be held for those children within very short timescales to ensure that the team around that child are coming together for the purpose of information sharing, discussing need and risk, discussing supports and ensuring continuities of supports. What was reflected in the review report was that setting some sort of minimum expectations of what information should be shared may well be beneficial, but there's also something about monitoring and accountability within that as well. I'm identifying where breakdowns are happening so that we're identifying them in a timely manner to enable them to be addressed so we're not ending up in the circumstances where people are being asked to provide care for children without information about need and risk. I finally ask you about, first of all, remand. I think that you mentioned it particularly, Deborah, and the fact that there's a real lack of uptake for education and work. It's not clear if it's just education, but it's also in remind in terms of the isolation and then the increase in suicides. Could you comment on that? I think that we could only really echo what was in the mental health review report, that there are obviously significant challenges for children on remand. If we talk about children on remand in custody, there's obviously significant challenges about the uptake, as was mentioned earlier, the availability and being able to access those services, which can then be a contributor to isolation. When we talk about remand in general, I suppose there is obviously some differences there in terms of whether that young person will, for a period of remand, be in secure care or will be in custody. At times, there's legislative and financial imperatives that can factor into that decision making process, as opposed to that decision always being based on the needs and what is in the best interests of that child, which can prove challenging. Finally, perhaps the whole panel could comment. Barnardo, I noticed you comment on the uncertainty of one-year funding relationships and the impact that has, which I know is an issue. That returns to my previous point about the importance of long-term trusting relationships and the restorative impact of that and the healing impact of that for young people who have experienced trauma. That being an absolutely key element of those services, and sometimes against our best wishes and intentions, short-term funding can make that difficult. Staff have lives to lead, and if they don't know if they are going to have a job next month, then sometimes they need to go and look for another one. One small thing can be very, very impactful for the young people that they've been working with over a long period of time, and also for that member of staff who doesn't want to do that, who wants to continue with those relationships in that way of working. That's absolutely a challenge. It's a challenge across third sector services, but it's particularly written large here. Anyone else like to comment? We've been doing lots of work in Glasgow to try and shift that relationship so that we're trying to release funding that's our money to spend over much longer periods of time, so that we can get that sustainability in this context and in a much broader context. We are really clear that third sector colleagues sometimes are in a better position to form those kind of relationships than statutory agencies, so we need to think about how we can fund that and how, in a Glasgow context, we've been quite successful in some of the high cost out-of-city placements and the high cost of those bringing those young people back into the city and spending the money and thinking about how we would invest, so we are about investing in an intensive service to avoid young people coming in, and that's about giving the funding to third sector partners and thinking about that over a five-year period to ensure that sustainability, so that we can guarantee relationships over time and build up those quality services. Anything to add to that? No, I'll just really echo in what has already been said. Can I thank all the witnesses for their evidence? This has been a really worthwhile service and the committee will be looking in depth at the evidence that you presented today. Thank you for attending. Before we conclude the public part of the meeting, I note the comments in the media reporting that the chief executive of the Scottish Police Authority has resigned. Should those reports be confirmed, it is disappointing that the committee was not informed. Given that, if the committee agrees, I'll write to the chair of SPA to seek more information. That concludes the public part of our meeting. The next meeting of the committee will be on 18 June, when we'll consider two draft reports. Now close this public session of the meeting.