 Fy ngorllwdidd a gwaithio i ddechrau'r Cymru 15 mlyneddol 2018. Y pethau agendau, y cwrsiau y gallwn a'i ffit i'r pethau cwrsiau a ffwrn de smiles o gyfrifio sy'n cyfanyddiaeth ar y cwrsiau ei ddechrau, rydw i'r cwrsiau? Rydw i'n fan, rydw i'n fan, rydw i'r cwrsiau a gyd. Y pethau agendau, sefydli amounts eso ar y gyfrifio derbyn yng ngondol yng Nghymru, yn lleolio'r Cymru yng ngorrol iawn o Ffyrddiau, ac yn cymdeithasol. Rwy'n fawr i fynd i'r cymdeithasol. Rwy'n fawr i fynd i Llywyddyn Duggan, ymweld i Brasenol ac Oer, Lleon Cwilian, yng Nghymru, Dr Louise Brangan, yw ymddylliannol, ymddylliannol i ddweud, ymddylliannol i Lleon Cwilian, yw ddugliss Tomsen, ymddylliannol i gael y Cymru, ymddylliannol i ddweud ymddylliannol i gael ymddylliannol i gael ymddylliannol, i gefnodaeth fel Nifer, Hummentang. Glaim, Ly reciprowذ. Scottish Centre of Crime and Justice Research at the University of Stirling. F cavalry welcome, and particularly to those who have provided written evidence. As I say, and the committee members confirm that it is very very helpful to have that in advance of our evidence session. So, we move straight to questions starting with John Finnie.izenshau cychwyn i enteros wrth Lyburn- Grab dinner to seep yn gwneud deall紆�ogdaeth wander? Mae'r llistiad Caerdydd yn dangosddechrau a thesd, ac eisiau chlas' astÕngf modd, i'ch cri Wrthwy datganddio i'ch coucaeth erbyn gyrfa'n redu drawing sydd ar r invasion cyma про maen nhw'n gweithlu i ddechrau. Ffred of electronic monitoring in Scotland. Do you have any notions yourself what they might be at all? Well, what we and Herodic Scotland are very pleased to be invited to speak on this bill and given that it's such a considerable piece of legislation, one of our issues is, well, first of all, we, of course, welcome the extension of electronic monitoring and we're not opposed to the refinement and to the introduction of GPS. But one of the concerns that we've raised is about some of the opaqueness around why we might want these expansions and, as we said, if it is to do with some of the institutional issues, so those are our staggeringly high imprisonment rate, our courts huge and consistent reliance on the use of imprisonment that has remained steadfast across certainly the last 20 years, then this could be an effective and important means to reduce that. That's absolutely important. We talk about Scotland's incredibly high imprisonment rate and sometimes I get concerned that that turn of phrase, and it's become like a turn of phrase because it's almost threadbare from overuse, but we should remain learned that despite lots of the progressive moves around Scottish penal policy, our imprisonment rates, our per capita imprisonment rates, remain some of the highest in Western Europe. So if we can use GPS and electronic monitoring to address that by releasing people who are otherwise sent to prison on remand, by increasing the number of people on temporary release, by encouraging the courts to use it as an alternative to a carceral sanction, then this is an exciting and promising platform for that. If, however, it is to do with increasing public protection, risk of individuals, increasing surveillance in the community, if it is just used as a technological fix, then what we're concerned about is that we'll have an expansion of the net-widing and up-tariffing, we'll have an expansion of the number of people in the deeper end of the criminal justice system. So what we've seen in Scotland over the last 10, 15 years is that the expansion of the community sentence has happened and that's to be welcomed, but that's actually been at the expense of the fine. The rate at which the courts use the prison sentence has not changed at all, it's remained between 13 and 15%. So unless the bill addresses very explicitly to say this is about reducing the imprisonment rates of targets groups like long-term prisoners, remand prisoners, then we're not certain that it's going to achieve more than its surveillance aims in terms of tackling imprisonment rates and so what we'll have is we'll draw more people into the criminal justice system so less people will get a fine, which is a less intrusive punishment, and more people will receive something more onerous and more intrusive, like GPS, more community sanctions while the prison system, the prison rates, remain unchanged. So the risk here is between are we trying to reduce our imprisonment rates and create a more humane penal system or are we going to be able to use this to reduce our use of the most severe sanction, which is imprisonment? In your statement too, as you mentioned evidence a few times, I'd like to ask you a question on two bits of evidence, please. One relates to an evaluation in 2000, which you refer to, and you say that in the majority of cases, electronic monitoring did not displace a custodial sentence. One further bit of evidence you talk about, you go on to say, and I quote here, there must be a way to monitor and make public number of people who get temporary release with and without a tag and track how that fluctuates in the future, namely how many people are receiving TR, and you feel that that's relevant to the topic that we're discussing here. Can you comment on both of these, please? So the research from 2000 looked at trials of community sanctions and what they're looking at the core practices found that 60 per cent of the, well 40 per cent of the people who received the alternative sanction would have likely received a prison sentence, so it means that we're not using it effectively enough to reduce prison, we're not using it effectively enough to get used as an alternative to divert people away from imprisonment. So that's a serious issue, but if we know that if the research reveals that, then that's something that we can address with the bill, that we can explicitly state that's important, we want to increase those numbers. And the temporary release. So we could, in Ireland historically, we've had low imprisonment rates and the reason for that was because of our high use of temporary release. We could easily reduce the number of people in Scotland by expanding the use of temporary release and electronic monitoring and GPS is an important way in which it's an avenue in which we could use that, it's an important release file, but it also allows for the kind of public protection and those surveillance measures can support public reassurance around the issue of releasing people out of prison earlier or on and off using home leave, so people leave intermittently and return to prison intermittently. But we need data to monitor and to see how those patterns change, so how will we know that the number of people receiving electronic monitoring is increasing or stabilizing, we need lots of public data about that and there's lots of criminologists and researchers and NGOs and third sector groups eager to get their hands on information like that. And we also need to monitor the number of people who are being or receiving temporary release with electronic monitoring with GPS as well as with community sanctions and other support measures. We have to ensure that we're not just using temporary release with electronic monitoring, therefore making temporary release more in some ways more punitive because it's more onerous, it's more tightly controlled, we're denying people the independence and autonomy and the trust that temporary release is meant to garner and engage between the system and the prison who's been imprisoned, so we need data to be able to track how that is changing over time, so if we see that more people are using electronic monitoring or being subject to electronic monitoring but not an actual fact, we don't see a significant increase in the number of people being released from prison temporarily, so that data is incredibly important and important to make public as well, so it's not just the Hero League Scotland, not just the Government, where lots of people are interested in those issues. I'd just like to explore some of the points that you raised. You said that the bill needs to explicitly deal with those things and I hear the argument that you're making. Can you explain to me why the bill explicitly needs to deal with those things rather than being a matter of policy? Would that be simply about data or are there other things that you'd like to see on the face of the bill to try and ensure that that is about getting more people outside of prison rather than putting additional measures on the people that would otherwise already be out, as it were? It will certainly be an issue for policy. I don't want to draw lines and say that this is mainly to do with the bill, but I also get the impression that it is part of the motivation behind this legislation. I know that people are aware that the imprisonment rates are Scotland high, and I know that there's a real appetite right now to address that. There's certainly public support for that, but in some ways, perhaps not wanting to create too many media headlines, I wouldn't want to suggest. However, that aim is slightly less explicit. It could just be more centralised and say, we want to do this, we want to reduce the imprisonment rate so that we could tackle remand. Remand has not dealt with this and we could tackle the use of temporary release. I think about how many people are in prison on remand, how many people could be released on temporary release. It might just be a matter for policy, but I think that they're just getting clarity about whether it's just a technological fix or what's the ambition of making those extensions to the existing community justice system. Although John Finnie started asking you, Dr Lee, to run the Representing the Howard League, we'd like to hear the whole panel's view on those questions too, so please add anything to the question that if you have something to say on what Daniel just asked, then. I actually agree with the suggestion that it might be helpful to consider remand prisoners for tagging instead of them. For example, if someone appears in a summary complaint and has been able to refuse their remand for a period of up to 40 days for trial, I don't have any statistics, but I think it's probably quite a lot of the remand population and that would be ideal, I would submit, for being monitored on a tag, because the likelihood is that even if convicted, they're not going to receive a custodial sentence, so why should they be on remand for that first period? I think the aspect of the bill that refers to introducing electronic monitoring with temporary release on licence is in response to some of the recommendations made by the Scottish Government expert working group on electronic monitoring and their final report in 2016. I think it's about nuancing in addition to what Louise has said, how it's being used. If, as she's pointed out, that it's increasingly used in a risk averse way where prisoners have temporary release that would not otherwise have had electronic monitoring added to that, that could potentially lead to the prospect of what they call sort of backdoor or net widening or the potential for increased rates of recall at that end of the criminal justice system and that that may not necessarily be widely supported where if it is given to try and increase the amount of people who are given temporary release on licence and for the purposes, some of the purposes that I believe are referred to in the policy memorandum with the bill for supporting reintegrative activities, so focusing on activities that would lead towards prospects of work, volunteering, education, connection with family and social relationships that would be supportive of reintegration and assistance from crime, that could potentially yield some good results in cases that might not otherwise have been granted it, but it's down to some, a need for on-going, very skilled individualised assessment of the person as to whether temporary release on licence without electronic monitoring is appropriate or if there might be some reason for that and then what technology would be used there. Leanne, do you think that you wanted to? I just wanted to say, and I think that the Edinburgh Bar Association included this in their submissions, that I definitely see a big potential for using electronic monitoring to reduce the remand population and I think that the committee has the statistics that I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's certainly right that the percentage of people who are remandered in custody is a very low percentage who ultimately receive a custodial sentence because I think that the committee knows that the reasons behind remand is entirely different from the sentencing considerations and I think that I raised the issue of curfews that if those were electronically monitored, I think that there would be a huge potential for saving police time and ensuring compliance as long as I think that it's been raised in a lot of the responses to this consultation, as long as it just doesn't become automatic that if you're being released on a curfew, you're electronically monitored because there's always a danger that if the power is available that the procured fiscal will ask for it and the sheriff will say that, yeah, that's fine. The other issue that I see, there is real good potential for is that in domestic abuse cases, an awful lot of people appearing from custody are appearing from custody because they have breached bail conditions to go back to an address where their partner is residing and if the GPS was able to widen the scope of electronic monitoring to say that you can't go to this address, then I think that it would deter people from breaching bail because I don't know the figures, but in the custody court a large number of people are appearing from custody for breaching bail and that would be something that electronic monitoring could very much reduce. I just want to follow up on something that Dr Hannah Graham just said. Last week we had quite an interesting discussion about if this is going to be successful then people with electronic hags need support around them, but that's only going to be possible if there's sufficient risk assessment and that is provided to the right people, particularly criminal social work, but I think in the opposite direction, if you're going to use this effectively for prisoners on remand or others, likewise the courts would need the information. To what extent do you think there's a scope to improve this bill around risk assessment, making sure that both courts and criminal social work have the right information so that they know both the requirements of the prison and what support they need? Do you think that that's an avenue that could be looked at? I'd be interested, Dr Hannah Graham, but any other members of the panel, what they think about that? Indeed, so electronic monitoring as it currently exists with radio frequency technology and more often curfews at home, that involves risk assessment at present because they need to think about the property that is involved. It will be interesting to see that if we move more towards new technologies, the introduction of GPS electronic monitoring, there are instances where that could be used around exclusion zones, but it can also perhaps not necessarily the best use of it, but it can be used in restrictions to a place or a curfew could still be imposed. I think there's fairly coherent voices amongst electronic monitoring researchers that where a person is being restricted to a place and where that place involves other people, for example fellow members of the household, partners, children, no matter what the technology that needs to continue to involve individualised and also multi-faceted risk assessment. From having conducted research on this already in Scotland with the existing technology, criminal justice social workers are quite prominent in their conversations about that and I don't know of widespread existing concerns about the risk assessment that they use at the moment. They are also involved in risk assessments for people leaving prison on home detention curfew. The current approach involves a fair degree of risk assessment and that information is provided to the authorising agency, be it the court, the Scottish Prison Service or the Parole Board. I don't know that it's necessary that we need to look at can we get another brand new framework of risk assessment or a brand new tool other than to emphasise that it is important and it must continue to be done well by helping professionals who are qualified to do so. We've also got a line of questioning on risk assessment and more specifically on the GPS so if we could leave that just now we will be going into and any supplementaries because you make sure it's the point that you know isn't going to be raised later on so are there any more supplementaries on that basis? I had one that was from a point a bit earlier and it is just a brief one it was to the hardly in particular because it was when you talked about in your written submission to the committee about the electronic monitoring is unlikely to reduce the prison population and you cited a study which showed that only 40 per cent of those who received a tag would in fact have received a custodial sentence but I noticed that that study was from the year 2000. I was wondering if you had any more up-to-date statistics from that or if there is any other research on going? I absolutely don't have but I can certainly seek out something and speak to colleagues about that because there were studies going on in England and Wales and in the United States but I chose that because it was Scotland specific but one of the things so I used that to make the point but also one of the pieces of evidence I have is in relation to a Herodic Scotland report that we released earlier this year which was showing that the expansion of community penalties in the last 10 years has actually displaced the fine not the prison sentence. The reason prison numbers have dropped moderately in the past several years is absolutely to be welcomed. The reason that has happened is because there is less crime. The number of people being preceded against by the courts has dropped but the rate at which the courts are giving out prison sentences has remained steadfast so we see expansion of the community sentence in Scotland but we are seeing a reduction in the fine. That is my concern about penal expansion and in actual fact it is very hard to say how we know and how we can assertively direct electronic monitoring towards addressing the prison population. We can do it at the point of sentence. We want to make judges more confident about the use of electronic monitoring through criminal justice social workers saying this will be a useful interventionally useful tactic as part of their suite of measures but it is also a means to tackle we might call it back end sentencing so we are talking about again remand prisoners. Right now 15 per cent of the prison population are there who have never been convicted and as Yamakunin was saying the majority of those will not go on to receive a prison sentence. Whatever fine they have been or whatever crime they have been convicted of has not seemed to be to be fit a period of incarceration but we have already incarcerated them so that is incredibly serious and often the reason we use remand in that way and I believe that David Strang, the chief inspector of prison makes this point regularly and forcefully is that we are trying to make sure and ensure that people turn up to a court sentence so that the people we most regularly incarcerate who are not found guilty are the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalised and the homeless which is why electronic monitoring and tagging can help reduce remand but we also need to think about expanding bail services, bail support and in that way we are reducing the prison numbers using this new measure but also thinking more holistically about the social supports required to prevent that diminuation of our justice of using the prison sentence against people who have not been found guilty and likely will not go on to receive a sentence either. A very wide subject and you know you then gone to talk about there we have specific questions so I'm very conscious Douglas you haven't had an opportunity to say anything you're happy to wait to risk assessment or is there something you want to add to what we've just heard? I'm noting at this point that the bill which is before us relates only to disposals post conviction so there's been a great deal of discussion about the position of remand prisoners but the bill works on those assumptions as presently drafted and presently introduced that the person has been convicted and that it is called the management of offenders bill and therefore the person is by definition an offender so we're looking perhaps at something that's not before the Parliament at this stage. That's a fair point obviously we're going to look and see how the bill can be improved potentially and stage 2 would be bringing forward potentially amendments whether that would interfere with the actual title of the bill and be what's word legitimate within the scope of the bill remains to be seen but it's an absolute fair point if you could at this stage just concentrate on what's in the bill but of course we want to hear specifically about what's not and we have questions on that. Now supplementaries if we're going to be straying too far then I'll cut these out we'll just go straight to questions if you're quite clear, Liam Kerr and then John you just small supplementary. Very briefly thank you convener Dr Brangan you mentioned studies in other countries taking place do any of you have any comment on how proposals in the bill around electronic monitoring compare to approaches in other countries what are other countries doing that we might copy? So that is what the Scottish Government expert working group on electronic monitoring commissioned myself and Gil McIver my colleague from the University of Stirling to do a 137 page Scottish and international review of the uses and we've done some more through an EU funded comparative research study in recent years which was the first of its kind in Europe to look at electronic monitoring in Scotland, England, Wales, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands but also to consider the broader literature. So electronic monitoring is used moderately commonly in a lot of jurisdictions in Europe the European literature and practice evidence is I don't want to make a generalisation but overall tends to have more constructive outcomes or findings whereas some of the uses of electronic monitoring in some aspects of the United States have perhaps more mixed results and that could be quite strongly influenced by approaches to criminal justice and punishment in America. In terms of electronic monitoring's use within community sanctions and measures there's plenty of other countries that use it within a way so the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and several others who use electronic monitoring within for example like a probation order and so electronic monitoring is is led or overseen by their national probation service and there's some things that we can learn in how they do that there to have the proposals here of it being added as a potential option within the community payback order. So its use within a probation order or a community payback order is moderately widespread in some other countries and it hasn't led to particularly concerning results so they've got quite high levels of order completion where there's electronic monitoring involved and moderately high levels of compliance and I can't foretell the future of what might happen in Scotland but we could expect that where it is used proportionately within a community based sanction and measure people tend to comply to their electronically monitored order because it's usually coimposed with supervision and other forms of support that help people leave crime behind and address some of the issues that might contribute to that. I'm aware that Douglas Thomson wants to come in but can I ask Dr Graham just on that? Is it your view then that having studied all these other countries that this bill sufficiently distills the essence of what's working in those other countries such that the outcomes, the positive outcomes that you've identified will if not naturally follow then at least be implied or is the bill lacking in some regard? The part one provisions are broadly coherent with the Scottish Government expert working group on electronic monitoring who cited the international evidence quite frequently so I'd say that there is a broad coherence with the international learnings and thankfully where we have some questions around how it might be implemented in practice but it doesn't appear to be mirroring some of the particularly punitive uses and lessons from the international literature for example in the US where some people are subject to it for a lifetime in very punitive and disproportionate ways we're not seeing that reflected in the bill so I'd say it's broadly coherent with European examples and it's also broadly coherent I'll raise some questions and critiques about its implementation but it's broadly coherent with the Council of Europe electronic monitoring recommendations or soft law rules on basic thresholds of how electronic monitoring should be used in Europe. I'll bow to Dr Graham's greater knowledge of the subject. My understanding from the court system is that while electronic monitoring is not rarely used and certainly the courts will quite often when considering a custodial sentence in summary proceedings ask for a restrictor loyalty order assessment my understanding is it's not used as much in Scotland as it could be and it's not as used as much in Scotland as in a number of other European countries which have gripped the technology with a great deal more enthusiasm certainly I've seen examples of courts that have imposed such orders sometimes on people who have non-fixed addresses which is perhaps setting them up to fail a number of people who have been given a restrictor liberty order assessment when the pre-sentence report reveals details of a dysfunctional family setup and that's perhaps bound to create a difficulty but we're going perhaps into specifics there and on the general point of how it works I think Scotland could be using it much more commonly than it is at present and why is Scotland not using it is that something that requires a legislative fix or something that requires a different approach I suspect that some sheriffs are still a little uncertain about the technological advantages of it and some are uncertain of the extent to which it's seen as a realistic punishment now I think the reality is that requiring somebody to be monitored or and be in a certain place has a particularly clear benefit but it's something that's relatively new and perhaps something that's not as well understood by sentences as it might be. John Swinney is a question about the system that they use, GPS now the term increased surveillance already being used and there's no doubt that this equipment would be capable of harvesting significant data wonder if the committee have concerns the witness have concerns about their attention or access or indeed potential use of that data not least as it's as things stand at the moment in the hands of a private company I think we we briefly addressed this in our in our submission just in that it didn't seem entirely clear but because that's actually genu go growths it wasn't a supplementary we will return to that later and because I know you have a lot to say on that it's actually been allocated already. All right, but I'm doing a bigger panel I didn't realise that I was doing a bigger panel. No, I realise that sometimes it's not clear. Rona. Thank you convener, good morning panel. I'd like to return to a line of questioning that we had earlier about assessment and risks. We've heard in previous evidence that you know, while generally people are generally supportive of electronic monitoring that the need for greater support and assessment is very much going to be there, in particular I'm thinking of Dr Marcia Scott's evidence last week where she talked about posing a bit of a dilemma for them because while it could obviously have benefits in monitoring perpetrators, the fact that a breach of a CPO doesn't automatically constitute, if they go on to commit an offence, it doesn't constitute a breach of the CPO. I wonder if you could talk a wee bit about just the risk and support that's going to be out there when this happens. A fender has made the subject of a restriction of liberty order, there's no, they fit the equipment and that's it, there's no support at all and one of the, I agree with Douglas that the courts don't tend to use restriction of liberty orders for whatever reason. I think one reason is they feel that if a person's liberty is to be restricted then perhaps the gut reaction is to send them to prison and there are concerns about restricting someone's liberty to a family home where there's perhaps children, there's difficult relationships and we see often even if people are just on a curfew condition without any electronic monitoring that there's a big fallout and they're thrown out of the house and it's difficult to expect a parent or a spouse or a child to have someone restricted to that address and at the moment there is absolutely, when they're made the subject of an order there's no other support and they can only be restricted for up to 12 hours a day understandably because if you're restricted in someone for up to 24 hours a day that's very very punitive but if they want to offend then they can go and offend in the 12 hours a day where they're not restricted so there's not so much of a rehabilitation there, the restriction of liberty order is very much a punitive sentence I think designed to try and reduce the prison population but I'm not convinced it's had that effect at all. Well you mentioned children, children and families and that was you know part of my the rest of my question was you know there would surely need to be support given in counseling given to children who if they're going to be if these methods are going to be used more surely there needs to be more support. Would you agree with that as a panel that there needs to be more support services in place? Having standalone restriction of liberty orders it might be better to have them ancillary to a community payback order with a supervision requirement in that case there would be an allocated social worker for the person subject to the order and as part of their remit they could ask questions of those living within the home and various family members about how it's actually working. There is the opportunity at present for the monitoring services of a community payback order and the local authority to submit a review of a community payback order to the court if they believe that either for example the order has run its course or it's no longer required or perhaps it's not working in some way that the person subject to the order is not perhaps getting as much out of the order as it had initially been envisaged so that if the restriction of liberty element was factored into a community payback order with a supervising officer they can fulfil that role and it's already in the framework that's in place. I endorse that entirely. I note that in our submissions the law society state that electronic monitoring can never be a goal in itself but always a way to reach other goals such as changing behaviour and protecting victims so the monitoring is important but it has to be part of a look at the behaviour of the offender what caused the offending and what can be done to manage risk in the future so the monitoring allows the state to be clear what the offender is doing and also more important what the offender is not doing but as a standalone measure it simply puts somebody in a place for a number of weeks or months if we're not looking at the whole picture of that offender and that offender's past behaviour and future behaviour it's not going to be of any benefit to society. Can you just clarify for me please in the case of domestic abuse did I interpret Dr Scott's evidence correctly that if a perpetrator goes on to offend again while on a monitor it's not constituted as a breach it doesn't you know it's not a breach of the order if they offend again so she's you know obviously there's a high the high proportion of domestic abuse perpetrators do it re-offend constantly so that's the dilemma for them is that is that correct? I think it's not it's not automatic but I would say my experience is that where somebody is a subject to an order and is accused of a fresh offence when subject to that order it will be rare in my experience for the Crown not to take proceedings and for the court not to take some fairly condined steps in that regard but technically it is not strictly speaking an automatic requirement but one would assume that a police force in the Procurator Fiscal Service becoming aware of somebody who's breached a restricted liberty order assessment would submit it as breach proceedings and should it should be done with a degree of urgency in all cases. Okay, thank you. Dr Graham did you have something you wanted to add? I mean don't feel you have to do it. Don't have to, sorry I just thought you wanted to come in and I think... You like to have a nice heart and you're good to talk so don't think that we're asking you to think of something. Could I perhaps ask you Douglas Thompson I notice you've said that electronic monitoring shouldn't extend beyond the sheriff court to include the JP courts, why is that? In general terms the justice of the peace court tends not to be dealing with quite such high tariff offences. Domestic abuse I think is always prosecuted in the sheriff court for example it's relatively rare for the matters prosecuted in the justice of the peace court to be the sort of matters these days that would attract a custodial sentence and electronic monitoring is generally an alternative to that. It may be that practice varies from court to court but in the court where I practice it's extremely rare for any offence prosecuted in the JP courts to be of a level where one would be likely to feel that the only appropriate penalty is one that requires the restriction of persons liberty. I suppose I was thinking you say imposing in connection with that CP or a community pay back order which both sheriff and JP courts can do so why would there be a difference would it be the level of offence that the CPO attracted? Certainly a CPO as a direct alternative to custody I suppose is a level one CPO which is an alternative to a fine where somebody can't pay a fine. A community pay back order where your regarding the direct alternative to custodial sentence is imposed where the court considers that the matter is worthy of a sentence of imprisonment. Given the restriction on short sentences at the present time that generally means the court is thinking of a sentence measured in terms of months but as an alternative to that the court will commonly impose a package of measures as part of a community pay back order which may include both restriction of liberty or order and supervision or unrestricted liberty and unpaid work. That is not in my experience something that regularly the sort of offences that attract that level of penalty or potential level of penalty are not matters that generally come into the justice of the peace court. Is it not a standalone measure in the JP court that you are saying? I do not think that the society's view is that we would say that it should never be considered but we are simply questioning whether there is a real benefit to allowing that to be given as a potential penalty for the judicial dispute. To just cut me as furious but perhaps you'd like to come back with more of a rationale if you've had more time to think about it or after the evidence session that's done. Well certainly I mean the certainly I'm not aware of there being a particular pressure from the magistrates association for example to have this power it maybe there is but it's not something which the society's aware. Yeah I was just wondering if it would help the offender not of you know complete their sentence I mean that's part of the rationale surely of introducing the electronic monitoring. It may do in some situations I'm just thinking from my own practice in the justice of the peace court how often the courts that I've seen would have felt that was a weapon in their armory that they would have found useful. Liam McArthur. Yeah I think if we could maybe park your earlier comment Mr Thompson about whether or not in the context of a bill around management of offenders it would be competent. I was wanting to explore whether or not the the panel felt that it would be beneficial to have electronic monitoring as a bail condition if that were the case do they feel that it needs to be explicitly then stated on the on the face of the bill and I suppose added to that whether or not it would solely be in the context where remand was the alternative as opposed to applying to individuals who would have been bailed in any event as I suppose is a further reassurance. I definitely think that there is a real I think that the two areas where electronic monitoring could really really assist would be remand prisoners and also the area I don't know too much about but people who are early release from people who are already serving a custodial sentence and the area where I have personal questions about how it would work is in conjunction with the cpo and I don't that's another issue but I don't not quite sure how in practice an extension of electronic monitoring would help someone complete a cpo but as far as remand is concerned then as 15% of the prison population are remand prisoners that would be a relatively easy way in my opinion to reduce the number of people who are in custody who don't really necessarily need to be there but as you say I would have to be very careful that the crown didn't automatically ask for someone to be electronically monitored in a situation where they wouldn't normally and perhaps if someone if a sheriff is very much considering that a remand is at the forefront of his mind there being a fallback to a curfew with electronic monitoring because at the moment the curfews are monitored by the police randomly attending at house banging on the door in the middle of the night which that can have disruption to children family and it's also a waste of I'm sure the police have got a lot better things to do so if somebody were at the position where a curfew were appropriate and that could be electronically monitored I see that as a real potential for if this bill was widened in scope but you wouldn't see the need to express that explicitly in the in the bill I think it would have to be because the bill doesn't cover remand the bill covers electronic monitoring in conjunction with sentence and in conjunction with people being released from prison on post post conviction so it would have to be a specific part of the bill that addressed that which at the moment but I think perhaps the government are maybe missing an opportunity here I agree totally it has to be written into the bill it's missing and unless you write in you can't implement it because it will just be continued to be policed by the police service rather than handed over to for example G4S and would you see the need to to express it on the face of the bill with the caveats in relation to it being solely for those who otherwise would be being considered for remand yes right I see nothings of head I've always already expressed our view and that we would be on this and I defer to the legal expertise on the panel but it seems to me that it would just create a legal obligation by which we will reduce our prison population by tackling the people who have not been convicted and who are there this is this marks a really exciting moment to do something productive and positive and use electronic monitoring for that purpose and having posited the the challenge of putting a condition like that in a bill that's about the management of offenders mr Thompson how do we get around that it would appear to require an entirely fresh clause a either either a fresh bill or a fresh clause in this bill I suspect given that the bill is currently dealing with management of offenders it may be that the appropriate way forward is for an amendment to the criminal procedure Scotland act by way of perhaps of a a short one or two clause separate bill because I think given the way the bill is framed and given that it's entitled management of offenders Scotland bill and starts off I mean the first clause one paragraph one starts off when disposing of a case so the assumption is that the case had been disposed of post conviction so I think to to take remand in would require a fair bit of a drafting skill and it may be perhaps a more practical to do it by way of a separate short bill. Dr Graham you were involved in a lot of the preamble work to this. Is the management of offenders titled the bill perhaps an accident or a deliberate attempt to avoid including those under under bail conditions? In some ways the Scottish government is best positioned to say whether it was accidental or intentional. Was it something that you and colleagues were were addressing as part of the the work you were doing looking at the use of electronic monitoring? Yes so in electronic monitoring and in the research that we've done everyone was quite careful to use the term monitored person so we're not running around saying offender in conducting interviews in doing observations lots of people said monitored person and more broadly in community justice and you've already heard evidence to this effect people with convictions where a conviction has been imposed and so it's the term offender is contentious in Scotland because of a Scottish government position or commitment to not use that term already and it would need to be adjusted where we're considering what Douglas has just spoken about because you can't be using that language more broadly with people that have not been convicted. I think we're going to come on to terminology in a minute so I'll read it then. Just is there ever a situation where someone is up a number of charges and maybe two have been proven guilty and you're continuing then with other charges would they be released and billed then? Would that cover the situation where you know bill could then be covered for the end electronic monitoring and we both in the scope of the bill which is something we will have to to look at as we go forward. I'll ask Douglas first. Where there's an outstanding trial in the same matter somebody has for example pled guilty to two charges the Crown and say we still want to proceed on other charges. The court can't pass sentence in that situation until the trial has concluded. But if they've been found guilty could it then come within the scope of the bill and that although sentence hasn't been passed then they are deemed if you like in a verdict on worse. The central point the bill starts from the proposition that the court is disposing of the case. The court will not be disposing of the case until guilt of all matters upon which the Crown seeks a conviction has been determined. So I don't think that that will get around the problem. Sorry, Liam. I was going to say the same. I don't think it's something that would practically occur and if someone pleads guilty to two charges and the Crown don't accept that and want to proceed to trial on other charges then there's still an untried person whether that be a prisoner or they're still untried. So the court wouldn't be looking at sentencing. So I don't think that in the scope of the bill it wouldn't work. Okay, thank you. Jenny. Good morning to the panel. Liam McEwlin, I want to go back to something you said at the start with regard to GPS provision. You said it would be quite beneficial in terms of encouraging people not to visit certain areas whilst they were on an electronic target. In the last week's evidence session we heard from social work Scotland and community justice Scotland who were also pretty positive about the use of GPS. Dr Bannigan, in your submission you say that when people are deprived of access to large areas of public space like city centres it sends a clear statement that they do not deserve equal membership of Scottish society and in last week's submission we also heard from Scottish Women's Aid who were generally quite positive about the use of GPS but they also pointed to an American study which had been conducted with regard to victims of domestic abuse who had felt quite anxious with the use of GPS because they could see the person who had perhaps attacked them and they could see their whereabouts and that had caused them stress. So I just want to ask the panel, do you think that the use of GPS lends itself more so to certain crimes than others? Certainly for something like we, so how do we start on another policy idea of exclusion zones and talk about something like domestic violence and that way GPS can be used in a sensible right minded way. Are central, and just to deal with the issue about certain crimes, well if you have someone with you've a criminal justice social worker who's making an assessment then it allows for the various circumstances of each case to be deliberated over and implemented into the use of the exclusion zone rather than just doing it on a crime by crime basis. But certainly for something like domestic violence it has clear benefits for the sense of security that someone can achieve. But our concern is about some of the enthusiasm around the idea of exclusion zones in the run up to the bill which sort of suggested that whole city centres can be crept in areas like safe zones in which we exclude offenders. And my concern there is that the idea of being a citizen in Scotland then is denigrated because you are not allowed into mainstream public space and you must stay in your zones and you must stay in your community. Certain area streets avoiding certain houses, someone's workplace again sensible and right minded. But the idea of citizenship belonging and reintegration require that I think we need to be very careful about setting a very specific spatial metres, kilometres, distance about the max size or number of areas that can become an exclusion zone. We have to protect the citizenship and the reintegration aims of penal policy. So in terms of the type of GPS monitoring that you mentioned that's technically called bilateral monitoring so not only is the monitored person often an offender but in other countries it's also used with electronically monitored restraining orders. So again we get into different parts of the criminal justice process in different language there. It has been used in the US. It's quite commonly used in Spain and in Portugal and there is the opportunity for if a victim gives their inform to consent to carry a device or to potentially for example have an app that notifies them. I know that in London the Metropolitan Police are considering the use of this with seeking to prevent stalking. So victims can have a device in some cases they could even consent to wearing one. I don't know how common that is or they can carry one or have a way that there's a notification that they get information. The responses of victims of crime who've taken part in this have been mixed because they're a diverse group. There is modest evidence to suggest that it has been moderately positive because they have been adequately briefed that electronic monitoring cannot stop someone in their tracks. It can't actually stop a crime. It can give advanced notification to victims and or authorities and monitoring companies. So where that exists there's been some cautiously optimistic victim feedback that it is helpful to know that particularly where there's a moderate risk of harm. There have been some that could have quite legitimate concerns. For example if the exclusion zone is around their house it could be quite reasonable that a victim would think well I need to stay home because they'll know if they're coming near there or around their workplace or a child's school. How do we cope with more dynamic movements? So that's where the option of a victim carrying a device or having a way of knowing their location also comes in. So there can be concerns about its impact on them but I would emphasise their informed consent in participating in their ability to withdraw at any point if they needed to or wanted to because we shouldn't be imposing things on victims that have a particularly detrimental effect on them but in Spain and Portugal and in the US the studies have been moderately optimistic that it can lead to some victim satisfaction that that information is helpful in alerting them and authorities for it to carry on. With the point about GPS exclusion zones potentially being applied to entire Scottish cities that was a news headline that caught our attention as well and the principle of proportionality would be really important but also if there was a reason for a sentence to impose an exclusion zone around an entire city in Scotland that would raise the question as to why such a large ranging exclusion zone has been imposed that's not being tailored and what could be done what supports could be put in place as well as surveillance or perhaps controls to make sure that we're not displacing the issues that they're actually seeking to address so if someone is not allowed in that entire city and they go elsewhere if there's such a concern about that we need to think also about displacement and are they taking behaviours and propensities with them that could happen elsewhere so I would caution against restricting people away from entire cities rather exclusion zones are usually used around where there has been a strong propensity to offend or very tailored uses that need to keep someone away from that for a period of time. I think when I talk about the potential use for electronic monitoring keeping people away from a place I'm referring to a house where they have been asked to leave because there's been domestic violence they've had to provide an alternative address and it would give the complainers some because at the moment it's just a bail condition and people can breach it but if it was electronically monitored it might deter the person on bail and it might also give a little bit of comfort to the complainer. As far as exclusion zones are concerned the court in Edinburgh quite off well not rarely get grant people bail with special conditions that they do not enter the city centre exclusion zone there's an actual exclusion zone and they get a map and it's drawn and read and they're not allowed to go into that area and some sheriffs don't like it but it does get imposed and it's usually for people who are maybe shoplifting or going out in the middle of the night to city centre bars and causing trouble but as Dr Brandon says it moves the people away if they're going to offend I'm quite happy sure they can find somewhere to offend elsewhere and also bail conditions in respect of not to enter Edinburgh I've seen bail conditions that the person does not enter Scotland usually when they come from somewhere out with Scotland and it these conditions can be imposed for months and months and months and I would be concerned about those those bail conditions in themselves or GBS but I would certainly be concerned about that being extended to electronic monitoring. Jenny thank you. Thank you for that there's obviously limitations in terms of the use of this technology we heard last week with regard to the use of GPS in rural areas particularly in terms of reception and being able to to use it effectively but one of the other limitations Dr Brandon that you highlight in your submission is the use of GDPR legislation and how does that interact with data protection and GPS monitoring and you say that with GDPR reframing future organisational behaviour around privacy what are the precise data protection implications of expanded electronic monitoring including GPS and I'd really be interested to hear the rest of the panel's views with regard to how those two areas interact. Well we just wanted to raise the question because there's no organisation right now that isn't sort of in a frightful state of GDPR anxiety right now and everywhere I go for meetings I hear other meetings of people saying have you had your adviser in yet and what are we going to do and that made me think really like this is some of the most personal intimate data about a person and also with the transdermal alcohol monitoring so we just wanted I don't want to sort of naturally cast an air of suspicion over it but I think those thinking in those new parameters of data protection who has the data how long will they have it and who else will have access to it will there be data sharing across criminal justice system is that right and appropriate I'm not suggesting we necessarily have all of the answers to that right now but that really should be at the forefront of our thinking if we want to expand this technology is trying to keep it in line with the basic rights about data protection and thinking about the vulnerable people and the detail of data we're going to be gathering from people with this if we do extend it. I would also note the information commissioners office written evidence submission to the committee and in the past during some of the consultation activities the information commissioners office has made statements to the effect of being very mindful of the privacy principles and privacy legislation and also the keeping an eye on the potential uses of GPS electronic monitoring that have occurred in other jurisdictions because in for example in England and Wales there have been examples where electronic monitoring is used on a voluntary basis by people who are not who have perhaps prolific offence histories but are not currently subject to a sanction and that was police force led uses of electronic monitoring and it was not regulated in the sense of we're not the research has been able to show perhaps some uses of how that information was used but police forces also have law enforcement criminal investigation activities and there's been suggestions that in some places in other countries GPS electronic monitoring data could be of keen interest and features in the European ethical standards as a as a caution that privacy needs to be upheld and we need to question quite robustly the potential use of the electronic monitoring GPS data not only for monitoring but for oh a crime has been committed should we open a map and see who was there because yeah there's some fairly strong considerations there that the information commissioners office has has warned against and I believe that their term was to warn against fishing exercises in the sense of at the moment the Scottish government owns electronic monitoring data and so they would be the the data controller and so requests need to go to them and this is not this is not to cast out on whether police should have some access or reasonable access to the information but my understanding is that at the moment they would need to know the sort of who what a broad parameter of what they're looking for rather than in other jurisdictions where it might have been open up a map and see who was about not to mention that some people would say well I can prove that I wasn't there and you can check but there are some privacy concerns about how the privacy legislation would fit if it was used for purposes other than monitoring so I think we've we've encouraged the Scottish government to continue to be the owner of the data or the data controller so that access to it is subject to vetting or to checks and to a decision making process I suspect slightly different considerations might apply where someone is accused of and disputes breaching a restriction of liberty or their assessment or similar and that matter goes before the court because the the question of who retains the data and for what period of time will be different because there may in the future be circumstances in which the precise circumstances of that breach will become controversial so it's not as straightforward when the data is going is being used in connection with the alleged breach I'm not saying have the answer but it's something that has to be considered yeah and genical Ruth mentioned the rural aspect I wondered Liz if you wanted to to contact to comment on that given you your practices system. Well we don't actually keep any records ourselves about who is subject to a restriction of liberty order monitoring electronically and but I did contact Mg4s I spoke to the research and development officer and she has produced some statistics for the period from April 2017 until April 2018 on a month-to-month basis for the whole of Dumfries and Galloway so if you take Dumfries and Galloway is a perhaps a typical rural area I don't think I have copies for everybody but there's maybe enough for one between two. We'll distribute them so don't worry about that afterwards. But it's not a really high uptake and I think there needs to be a bit of education with regard to the sheriffs to encourage them that this is an option. There needs to be more education of social workers that when they're doing a report for sentence they consider electronic monitoring as an option as well probably also more education of defence solicitors I think that we should be asking for that at the point of adjournment for sentence because you often find in our area if the sheriff doesn't specifically say criminal justice social work reports and a restriction of liberty order assessment the report will come back and it will be silent on the element of restriction of liberty. For the month of April 2018 we only had four persons being electronically monitored in the whole of Dumfries and Galloway. On that rural aspect was Liam and John. Yeah I just wondered whether the assumption that a reticence about using it in the remote or rural areas is always a reflection of the technology reach or whether it's in part a reflection of where there is found to be a breach. The potential response times may take longer and therefore the risk assessment of its operation is a different calculation than it might be in more urban areas. That may be correct and the officer from G4S spoke to him and advised that they don't actually have any permanent staff based in Dumfries and Galloway. For fitting all the equipment they send someone from Glasgow or Edinburgh. From Glasgow it takes about an hour and a half to get to Dumfries and from Edinburgh sometimes depending on traffic it would be up to about two and a half hours. So the same applies for any alleged breach. They did however indicate that they've had no difficulties installing equipment anywhere even in the most rural areas. Currently it works in radio waves I think. If there isn't a telephone system they just contact BT and they will connect a telephone system. So the advice that they've had no difficulties installing the equipment and monitoring it it's just that they don't have a lot. I think the Government officials were saying that the contract would be up for renewal and due course and the difficulty in establishing the likely costs and usage is partly a reflection of that. From what you've established in Dumfries and Galloway would it be your expectation that any new contract needs to not simply operate from a Glasgow or Edinburgh base for the very reasons you've identified in terms of distance to get to places like Dumfries and Galloway as the member for Orkney? I'd suggest that the time difference is even greater. Well I suppose when the contract is being put out for tender it would have to be explained that they're expected to be an uptake in those type of orders and they will require to have a permanent base in the more rural areas for the purpose of or at least someone stationed there for the majority of the time for installation and monitoring purposes. Dr Hannah, you could lead on that once, John. Thank you, convener. I don't know whether to be extremely concerned a bit concerned at the ease with which you acquired information from G4S because I would have thought you know that information shouldn't really be available over the phone and this isn't to cast any doubt in your room. It's the published statistics. They don't have names obviously but they're published as statistics on an annual basis and these ones will go into the new report for the next year. There's a statistical bulletin currently the most up-to-date published one runs from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2016 and that's readily available on their website. You can look it up and print it off and it has a section with orders received during that period on a geographical area. Again, I've got a copy of that. I've only got one copy. Each other would be very great for to receive. It could be handed into the glass. It says that the highest uptake is from Glasgow, understandably. They have 467 for the year from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2016. The next highest is interestingly Kilmarnock with 244. Dumfries comes in at 32 but the details are separately with 11, so if you total the two it's 43 for the whole of Dumfries and Galloway for the year. I don't know what we'll pick up in those statistics and that's reassuring that they are available like that. I just wonder if the panel had concerns about a private company retaining data. There's a lot of public, understandable public concern about data and the potential use that could be put to a hear what Dr Graham said about the Scottish Government, but it does seem entirely out of the culture to have the legal profession, all the statutory bodies, and I would have thought criminal justice social work would have led in this rather than a commercial concern. At the moment they're only holding data in relation to someone who's just generally restricted to their house and I guess it becomes... Sorry, I was meaning more with the GPS and the additional information that would come with that. Yes, and with that coming in it really depends what statistics they're holding. They could be holding very pretty if it goes on to use of alcohol use and drug use. A private company holding that sort of details about a person I think would be very, very concerning and there'd have to be some robust measures in place to ensure that that was dealt with properly. It touches on broader discussions that are worth having about whether we want the privatised model that's currently in place in Scotland has been in place in England and Wales or whether to look at other approaches and that's a much bigger question than the bill that is before us and electronic monitoring has been done with moderate success and proportionality in places like the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and elsewhere and those are public service led. So my understanding with the only involvement of the private sector might be to sell or procure the product itself but after that it is public service led almost in its fullness and probation service led, so our equivalent of criminal justice social work. So there are some really good questions to be asked in this regard. Okay, thank you very much. Can I perhaps ask about compliance and enforcement? I think there's a general feeling if electronic monitoring is to be successful then breaches have to be handled effectively. Could I have your view on that if the bill is clear enough to what the consequences of breach would be and clearly there's a balance to be had between resistance and supporting resistance and for the offender and a robust response which can help reassure the victim. Who'd like to take that one? Dr Ann, it looks like you. I think there is a balance to be struck between what can be achieved in the bill and then leaving some of the decision making to sentences as to how much we confine or tell them how to decision make and have some parameters around that. There's also differences between what constitutes a breach and what constitutes things that are considered violations and come to the notice of the authorising agencies but may not mean a breach of the order and so currently with restriction of liberty orders with home detention curfus those are the two most commonly electronically monitored orders in Scotland at the moment we've got moderately high completion rates order completion rates so that means we're not seeing drastic amounts of breach recall revocation that does not mean that there hasn't been violations along the way i.e. being late to being home and getting phone calls about that and those different or a strap tamper alert where they have possibly touched or sought to remove the device in a way that the device can then tell the monitoring organisation so it's about calibrating your expectations around what would happen in the event of breach at the moment electronic monitoring can be imposed as a restricted movement requirement if someone is in breach of a CPO or looking to be they're certainly non-compliant of a CPO and looking to move it towards an option within the community payback order I'd suggest that that's where complementing it with supervision or supervising officer and the ability to inform breach decision making is very very useful because arbitrary decisions about technology considering the human circumstances around it I wouldn't want to see order completion rates significantly falling and breach and revocation rates rising because that could lead to certainly more people before the courts if not more people being potentially returned to prison depending on the modality in which it's used so the conversation needs needs to be had but there is variation with decision makers across the country some will act in a certain way and others will leave the notifications for a while and just be knowledgeable of them but not say that this is a breach of the order so there's a balance to be struck in the in what the bill can achieve and then how decision makers for example sentences actually implement it because they are not not always favorable to too much incursion on their decision making and their professional discretion so I'd defer to those who spend more time in the courts but breach decision making is still just that a decision on an individualised basis I suppose I'm turning it around other way do you think it's important that it is dealt with effectively would electronic monitoring not work so well if it was seen that the breaches went and dealt with it effectively Douglas you wanted to Yes I'm looking at clause 14 in particular noting that it's presumed in the bill that evidence will be given by way of a document containing certain information and that the document is in effect self-proving although it can be challenged obviously by the offender but the document itself would be the evidence of the breach now in a past life when I was a member of the parole board for Scotland a when a electronic monitoring of offenders came in as part of the release conditions we became aware very quickly that the quality of information being given to the panel considering breaches of electronic monitoring was not of a uniformly high standard and the concern here is that when we're concerned in the bill with evidence to be given in the form of a statement a statement is only as good as the information input into that statement and there are potential concerns particularly where somebody is saying I did not commit that breach or there is an explanation for this which is not seen in the on the face of the document itself there would have to be some form of hearing built into the system and that's going to go back to the courts and certainly my recollection was that the quality of information did improve after a period of time but it does take a bit of work for people to learn how to produce information which is after all important in the sense that the breach of an order will commonly result in somebody going into prison Liam I think it's also important of actually how quickly the breach is dealt with because at the moment a restriction of liberty order it's it's as Dr Graham said it's it's it's only imposed to stand alone although you can impose it with a cpo but they don't necessarily marry together very well but it's G4S are monitoring any infringements of the order and generally I think if someone's five minutes late home they might get a phone call from G4S saying where have you been but and if there's a lot of small infringements then G4S will take the decision to send a report back to the sheriff clerk's office to have the order returned to the court or if the person just disappears or takes equipment off that will be done more quickly but it still has to go through the sheriff clerk's office it still has to be processed and a very recent experience of a client of mine who has multiple issues he was made at the subject of a restriction of liberty order at a temporary accommodation to quote the temporary accommodation he broke every rule in the accommodation and he had to be asked to leave and he told a support worker I'm no longer there but she's nothing to do with the court system so the equipment has I think has lay for weeks in this address where he had gone to stay somewhere else and if it could be more effectively dealt with that equipment could have simply been moved and that was about three months ago and it's only now come to court so that sort of thing isn't really going to be very effective and I think some sort of judgment on a breach as well that's not just G4S making that decision but perhaps someone who is more aware of the the person's particular circumstances would be helpful well Maurice Thompson you following on from your points earlier on about the electronic monitoring is part of the solution how do you feel the bill provides in the case of sufficient directions in terms of how electronic monitoring should be used in practice particularly in tandem with other measures and bearing in mind your comments earlier on it's really very much an issue for sentences and I think I in our submissions we draw attention to the fact that a lot of that will be a matter of more for the judicial institute for Scotland than for the bill itself the bill by its very nature is creating something that will operate across the whole country and will operate in sentencing in all fora that is in which it is competent to do that the question of how that operates in practice is a matter for individual sentences dealing with individual cases and that's why we have created the judicial institute and that's why there is a degree of training for sentences in this field because we're looking to increase the use of electronic monitoring now courts have to be aware that there is a genuine and useful purpose for this and that the idea behind it is that it will protect the public more and it will reduce the risk of reoffending it's not really for the law society to direct sentences on when and how they should use that but we're aware that the judicial institute will be engaging in the future once the bill becomes an act the judicial institute will engage and they will issue guidance to sentences but as it stands at the moment I mean do you feel that such matters we discussed just now should we set out more clearly in the bill and in orant also in the statutory guidance along with it I think the terms of the bill the relative the clause one in particular which starts off the monitoring process is clear enough to be understood by anybody sentencing and it's simply a matter of how it should be used in practice but I don't see there's anything in the terms of the bill that would be a difficulty to the law society right well yeah that's fine but also but to to the sheriff's and understanding how it's implemented implementation truly a matter for the the individual sentencer I don't think there's anything within the terms of the bill that would create difficulties for a sentencer right okay thank you I want to turn to part two of the bill around disclosure of convictions I'm a number of questions around that first of all from a practical perspective and note in your evidence Leanne and Douglas that you point to the the nature of this will make it easier for everyone to understand lay persons and those involved in the system perhaps you'd like to elaborate on that first and Douglas I notice you're nodding your head well the 1974 act that's to be replaced or amended by this isn't the easiest piece of legislation to navigate your way around and we're saying that the bill as presently drafted is a considerable improvement we have some observations about the the way the bill deals with road traffic matters but as a as a general point in the round it's going to create a greater degree of clarity albeit that we did feel and do feel that perhaps a glossary of terms could be added in in a schedule to the ultimate act so that people are aware I mean we've drawn attention in our paper to the fact that a great many people don't understand the difference between admonition and absolute discharge of what the implications of them are they are while no penalty is opposed in either case they have different consequences and perhaps making clear in road traffic matters what the different positions regarding endorse and disqualification terminology is not always understood by those who would be looking at to this and trying to work out how the bill would affect them in in the future so really it's important that the public understand what the new measures are and because they're dealing with a wide range of sentences we've covered already this morning a considerable amount of different forms of sentencing orders the public need to know exactly where they fit into that where it goes into the bill now it's it is a slightly easier exercise but it's still not an easy exercise to go through the new bill and see how it all works in practice thank you for that constructive suggestion the unusynure evidence about clients finding the current legislation difficult to understand you think this will be an improvement as drafted in the bill at the moment I think it's a huge improvement because I actually understood it and I don't understand the 1974 legislation so clients often although it's not really part of our day-to-day job often say when will my conviction become spent and then you can't just give them an easy answer you have to look it up and I do think it would clarity is very very much welcomed the only thing my only concern looking at it again yesterday is in relation to admonition and absolute discharge not as far as the terminology is concerned but is as far as the proposal that there be no disclosure period for an absolute discharge and an admonition is concerned because routinely people are admonished for what the public would think would be quite serious offences assaults involving injury usually after perhaps a period of good behaviour or if there's particular circumstances that the sheriffs became aware of and that that's I'm sure that they're all for very good reasons but if you look at that against the the fact that in a road traffic case if you're driving if you're speeding or driving without insurance you will you would never get admonished you would always get a financial penalty and it may be that some employers might be less concerned about someone who is once driven without insurance than someone who has perhaps assaulted someone in a bar or been involved in offensive dishonesty but received an admonition so I think there's certainly the fact of a road traffic conviction if there was some clarity that if the disclosure certificate showed that they were fined at a certain amount of money but made it clear it was a road traffic matter and I'm not necessarily convinced that an admonition should automatically be put in the same categories and absolute discharge and absolute discharge is exceptional and I would totally agree with the proposal that there would be no disclosure paid for that but an admonition I'm not so sure about. Thank you for that and I'll come back to terminology in the 1974 act shortly. First before that I want to talk about attitudes to previous convictions and one of the the bill seeks to reduce the length of time most convictions will take before being treated as spent and it will extend the length of custodial sentences covered by the provisions and the question we're asking ourselves as we evaluate this legislation of course is do the proposals achieve an appropriate balance in these respects and Dr Louise Branigan I know in your submission you've made some comments around the that the amendments will still allow for disclosure of spent convictions and that this bill will allow the continued demand for lifelong disclosure and you had some some concerns about that perhaps you'd like to. So we also welcome the reduction in disclosure periods because why wouldn't that why wouldn't we welcome that but our concerns are that there are still so it increases from I think 36 months to 48 months the period of which you will have lifelong disclosure and working with people who have are serving long-term and life sentences they can conduct themselves as model prisoners take up all the education and opportunities but inevitably they know and will say this that when they get released on paroles that the stigma that they experience of being a prisoner the stigma the shame they'll offend of having committed a serious crime will be stuck to them forever and right now we have a prison system SPS under Colin McConnell that is more interested than ever in developing assistance-led rehabilitative transformative penal policies and we have people in prison for longer than ever before in Scotland and we still don't seem to trust those measures we still require people to be held at arms length to be deny the reintegrative processes that SPS policies promise them that they can have civic repair re-engagement becoming part of society so the 48 month or over lifelong disclosure just seems unnecessarily punitive particularly when we know the evidence particularly come from the SECJR recently again emphasizing that when a period of seven to ten years someone's rate or chance of re-offending is equal to someone who's never offended so the evidence supports allowing someone to have a spent conviction it supports the idea of social justice it supports the idea of reintegration and if someone is always having to disclose application to a university application to any new job you already have a gap on your CV and I just think we are shoring up the stigma we are blocking people from re-entring society as full citizens in the way in which we say they can after they've served their time so you would argue that the bill doesn't quite do enough in terms of changing attitudes to the employment of people with convictions no because it permits it permits people to be stigmatised against as far as I'm aware it doesn't do anything to address the sort of the band the box that allows employers are still allowed to ask for someone if they have a criminal conviction often if you go to apply for a university course so I'll ask if you have a criminal conviction I was just at a prison education conference recently speaking and listening to a young man who applied to do an architecture course having done brilliantly and everything else when he applied to this elite university and got in and they found out he had a criminal conviction from when he was 18 they they rescinded his place we should be penalising employers and universities from acting as extensions of the justice system for keeping people out of society it may be not penalising because I'm for penal parsimony but certainly creating a set of framework legislation about what is and isn't acceptable so it's not just about reducing the period of which someone has to disclose their conviction but also reducing an employer's reach into someone's background so some work in terms of changing recruitment practices. I note that Dr Anna Graham you've also touched on this in your evidence and say that you're of the view that the proposed reforms are to be welcomed but they are limited in scope I don't know if you want to add anything to what Dr Branigan said. Indeed so this particular part of our submission was primarily authored by Dr Beth Weaver from the university of Strathclyde my co-author and fellow researcher in the SCJR and she's recently conducted a moderately detailed review about the issues surrounding disclosure employment and assistance from crime and considering time to redemption studies and I think she's come up with and I agree with the a number of suggestions that could be advanced and that other countries have advanced to try and encourage that balance between the information needing to be known for potential public protection reasons and for employers wanting to know for particular occupations compared to the fact that what was it 38% of men in Scotland and 9% of women have at least one criminal conviction and we're not talking about necessarily particularly small groups here so we we support what's we're broadly supportive of what's in part two of the bill but would encourage that perhaps and this is tricky because elements of this more broadly are reserved or not devolved and not everything can be achieved through legislation either but a piecemeal approach to consideration of disclosure and its collateral consequences isn't as helpful as a more sustained overarching who should disclose what and when and so Beth has a number of suggestions if you'd like me to explain those now I don't know if they're the subject of another person's question I think we'll leave things just now but perhaps you could submit them just quickly as well particularly in the Dr Browning and you mentioned an 18-year-old but do you think as drafted the current balance in the bill will help assist children to move on from previous if any behaviour but from both the right? It certainly it certainly does in that respect but I also think we should protect adults if you're 20 years away from even having committed a homicide at what point and you've the 20 years and you've served 10 years in prison perhaps actually the chances are much longer the question in the bill says do we allow people to move on and I would wonder when are we willing to let go when are we willing to forgive when are we willing even just to tolerate so yes it helps young people but we should not bright adults off either thank you and just as I said keen to ask about terminology in the 1974 act as well so at present the drafting of this legislation is to amend and build on parts of the 1974 act but concerns were raised with us in our last evidence session last week around the use of terminology within that act particularly around offender and ex offender do you think that the 1974 act should be desirable and or practical to replace the rehabilitation of offenders act 1974 or as the bill set out sufficient be interested in that? I think it would be desirable but whether it would be practical or not it's certainly a very difficult piece of legislation to understand and perhaps I'll use terminology that in 1974 was more acceptable than now. Any other thoughts on that point around that terminology and in the 74 act? I think the points have been well made to you in previous evidence sessions around the overall resistance to the word offender particularly with a bill that deals with disclosure which will relate to people that are entering the labour market accessing education and we have to consider at what point do we stop calling them an offender if that's not an accurate point now. I'd just like to stay with Ben Macpherson's line talking about the disclosure period. Dr Brangan you said why wouldn't we welcome that in relation to the reduction of disclosure periods and just sitting listening presumably the answer is if you were an employer who was concerned about your employee or perhaps public safety so I think it poses a more base question about what is the purpose of a disclosure period what interests and whose are we trying to protect here I wonder if any of you have any comments on that Dr Graham what is the purpose of disclosure what is the purpose of a disclosure period indeed okay well overall there are multiple purposes around disclosure and having a period where it has to be disclosed and that buffer I think the government have referred to it as a buffer period of time after the sentence has finished so some of the reasons are minimising the risk of liability and loss as you mentioned concerns around in public protection where the nature of employment involves working with particular groups it could have to do with assessments of moral character in terms of honesty or trustworthiness and compliance with statutory occupational requirements those are some of the reasons for their there being regulations surrounding disclosure periods but there's also provisions to guide or limit practices of disclosure to reduce unnecessary barriers to people with convictions accessing employment so yeah disclosure periods are there for multiple purposes and it depends on from whose perspective which purpose would be most important the person with convictions the employer the government and others I imagine you get some quite nuanced responses there so if that's the purpose behind having a disclosure period are you able to point to any research which says that the length of time proposed as the disclosure period sufficiently relates to the crime and the propensity to to minimise public protection or to ensure rehabilitation so Beth has done a review of time for redemption studies and those look empirically at the amount of time that it might take for a person with convictions to basically resemble the same as be considered as opposing the same amount of risk as people with no convictions it's done on conviction and not offending because it's entirely possible there's a fending that doesn't get caught and also that there's cautions against the risk of a non convicted person not having a baseline level of zero in terms of probability of offending so the the research has shown that in general an average of seven to ten years without a new arrest or conviction a person's criminal record essentially loses its predictive value and that is overarching in studies that have been done across a national cohort as well as studies that have been done with just a city and so that means that after seven to ten years even irrespective of crime type there are a few subtleties that for example people who have been convicted of violent crimes it might take slightly longer for their criminal record to lose its predictive value but overall after seven to ten years the the risk of reconviction is essentially not particularly different between convicted and non convicted people. Do you want to say something Mr Thompson? No okay so you're comfortable then that the proposed disclosure periods are sufficiently plotted against what the evidence said would be appropriate is that what I can take from this? By and large but supporting Dr Branian's submissions it could go further and we could consider why disclosure periods at which point something can then have the chance of becoming a spent conviction why that isn't being extended beyond into those who serve long-term sentences because in terms of European research and European practices it's not necessarily widespread that this applies it's more unique to to the UK and elsewhere they're not routinely doing employer checks of criminal records and background checks necessarily as a norm. That's interesting could you just elaborate on that forgive me convener I think what you just said was that what we are doing in regards to disclosure as a principle is unusual in relation to the European angle is that correct? Aspects of the European angle Europe is a big place so one of the options that's moderately common in a number of countries and I can list them is the option of expungement of criminal records so that means not revealing spent convictions and through the European Convention of Human Rights and the European I believe challenges in the European Court of Human Rights there have been questions raised about the bill as it currently stands relates to basic disclosure but there have been questions raised why in standard and enhanced and in other forms of disclosure checking that information can still come up about spent and unspent convictions so expungement of criminal records not revealing spent convictions is quite true for Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and a longer list and so yeah that's moderately common practice and if you wish for more detailed information on I could ask Beth to correspond. Difficult on this so if there's is there any I have one more line to explore which is just simply that Leanne McQuillan earlier on made a distinction between different crimes and I wonder is this something of a blunt instrument disclosure just saying a disclosure period for all crimes that attract a certain sentence might last for this long and what I have in my mind is that let's say an assault might never reoccur because it might be a one off the individual matures something like that they're not going to to do it but a sophisticated financial fraud might there might be a greater propensity to to recommit that and if I'm the employer I might want to know about the sophisticated financial fraud much more than I do about the assault is that a fair distinction to make indeed so are you saying that there are some types of disclosure disclosure information about crime type that would be more relevant to particular types of occupations or are you saying employers in general perhaps I guess I'm suggesting that by having a kind of blanket disclosure policy after X time you do not need to disclose actually if there is a distinction between crimes the type of people who are committing them and the state of their ability to do so I as the employer might have a greater interest in knowing about it regardless of the length of time that's passed indeed but if we bring up the question of their ability to do so and reoffending there might be some very complex and difficult conversations to be had because relevance to the occupational role of disclosure and propensity to reoffend or be reconvicted are separate considerations based on crime type for example shoplifting might have moderate or high reconviction and other types of crimes such as sexual violence might have moderate or low risk of reconviction so I wouldn't go I'd urge caution about moving towards it being about risk of our reconviction because there might be some very difficult public conversations to be had there thank you go on it thank you convener and yeah I wonder if I could just return briefly to something we touched on with Dr Graham and that's the higher level disclosure checks and quite like to know your the panel's views generally as briefly as you can please just on whether you think that this is good that they're not included in the bill or and at some point should this be revisited and and perhaps reformed who'd like to any of you so Howard League Scotland we would absolutely recommend that the higher level disclosures need to be addressed we could amend we if we think about the disclosure periods that we're addressing today that's welcome but we look at it broadly and see that's a two-tier system that a natural fact for certain charges for certain positions which is constantly expanding as a list doesn't matter and also that you have a spend conviction that is revealed it doesn't matter that you have an arrest that you weren't no no conviction arose from that can be revealed or a caution so actually that is very serious and I think if we're thinking about a system based on reintegration and about encouraging people into employment people into education and to create a healthier Scotland than actually demanding that people always disclose their conviction no matter the length of period or no matter the length of period between whatever the transgression was even if it wasn't conviction that will have to be addressed at some point and it's slightly undermined some of the better ambition of part two of the bill. Okay anyone else yep with that good George I would just like to ask following on from what we've been discussing there is the fact that we is internet access to past convictions now we all know we live in an age where local newspapers will camp outside the sheriff court and will report on these stories as is their right but if you compare it to the early 90s where something would have happened you'd have to have gone to the library to find out previous information now you can just go into an internet search engine as an employer and possibly just check the person and see if anything's there now how do we deal with that moving forward is the question I would ask and also is it a problem is it all part of the changing attitudes do we legislate against it or do we actually just try and educate people to change their attitude towards past offences it's one of the considerations is can we even legislate against it the google effect is moderately well documented and you've got evidence submissions I believe from recruit with conviction from unlock the charity which is predominantly in England and Wales and I think a number of the things that you've highlighted are worthwhile doing in concert with one another in terms of broader awareness raising with employers about anti-discrimination measures and the meaning not only the buffer periods but the meaning of the information that might be yielded from that in terms of what it might be relevant to them or perhaps not relevant to them to try and tackle some of this the systemic stigma when we actually need people with convictions to be able to access the labour market to work to have a routine to have a legitimate and legal income that might contribute to the tax base and not be having the other options and so I would very much so support the calls that have talked about broader awareness raising work with employers that may potentially have to be done at the UK wide level as well as locally to get the awareness raising to the benefits and also some frank conversations around what might pose a risk and what might not because I wouldn't say that all employers are broadly sitting out to be prejudiced against people with convictions but some other jurisdictions have moved with more guidance and implementation in the US and in Australia to say actually unless it is unless the conviction is highly relevant to the occupational role to the crime type to the time since it was convicted that considering all of this forever could potentially be discriminatory and a barrier to people's employment and social integration because if we don't support their desistence from crime their social integration and their access to legitimate sources of income that poses an issue for public protection and then we've got an even bigger public conversation to be had. I'm just thinking I have colleagues who research cyber crime and forever telling me about the dark net as a social movement and that we can legislate the google effect but I think it'd be incredibly difficult to try and also wrangle what's going on in these sort of separate areas beyond legislation and yes social media is a bit like bandit country but I think the point about raising awareness and thinking about it more broadly is probably it's certainly a it's a longer game it can't just be tackled with legislation it's something we have to have a robust conversation about but I again I agree with Dr Graham that I'm not sure it's something that we can necessarily legislate for but. Is there something on that because I'm hearing from people? Douglas said earlier about explaining terminology and perhaps publishing some guidance for employers along with if the act comes into force about exactly what is a summary conviction, what is an admonition because some people have no experience of criminal justice and might assume that someone has a conviction that they're a criminal and perhaps just making it clear about what these disposals mean and like an admonition that if it's one conviction so that it's one conviction and exactly what the powers in a summary court are it's not necessarily as bad as it looks in first blush. Okay I was just to add convener the fact that if someone does google an employer google someone is in front of them the problem is the information they're getting we could educate them we could make things better but the problem is that a lot of the information you're talking about there will not actually be in the newspaper report because it'll be a sensationalised version of it in many cases not at all and the problem is trying to get people on to that side you know it's more of an education of maybe the local press in some cases that they understand what's happening in the local courts as well and I was just wondering how do we get to that place where we're having that kind of matured discussion trying to get the press to not report sensationalist stories I think would be extremely difficult yeah I think I can't think of anything immediately but maybe for the next bill what we'll be having around table for George it's been well no no I was just I was just to add the fact that all I was trying to say was the fact that you know we're taught by education there but it's more than just a society in general it's not just the one kind of group of employers that we use there or anything like that and that's the difficulty you know just to add that point okay thank you mary thank you really just had some questions and it was around the parole board and I know that a few of you had talked about that in your written submissions to the committee but I was just wondering if somebody wanted to outline first of all exactly how it operates at the moment and what those changes will mean because there were a few things that interested me in the submissions and one element in particular was in relation to I think it was the law society where you stated it was back in the relation to the recall of prisoners released on home detention curfew and how the limitation of that is going to change it is going to change and I know you talk about you don't have the figures I don't know if anybody else on the panel is aware of how that operates at the moment so I don't know who wants to take that on at first I was a member of the parole board in 2001 and 2007 and I was there for a member when the original management of offenders Scotland act came into force and when the re-release panel of the board first became involved in determining cases where persons had been brought back into custody for breach of home detention curfews and as I hinted at earlier the very early teathing sages of that was a particularly difficult time for the board because the quality of information was not good and the time period for information to become available was sometimes far greater than it should have been we were dealing and we will still be dealing in respect of home detention curfew cases with people who are subject to that for a maximum period of I think it's 162 days something around that figure it's around five months now if during that period there's an alleged breach of that and their licenses revoked immediately then if the matter is to be challenged they have an entitlement to have that determined by a quasi judicial body as soon as possible and I think things have improved a great deal since I came off the board in 2007 but it can mean somebody sitting in custody for some weeks when there's a very coherent very simple case can be put forward in respect of the circumstances of their alleged non-compliance. Okay in terms of the general workings of the parole board though and some of the other changes that are proposed I mean able to tell us a bit more detail about that as well and I know in terms of the appointments and are the changes that you see are other changes that you see proposed here are they welcomed? Some of them do seem to be good ideas and one issue which has proved controversial and is perhaps worthy of comment is that there is a difference in terms of the test for re-release of a determinate sentence prisoner, a life prisoner and an extended sentence prisoner. Now that's based upon decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and based upon English appellate case law and it is perhaps a little anomalous that when somebody is serving a life sentence the question is whether that is necessary for the protection of the public, when somebody is serving an extended sentence the test is whether it's necessary for the protection of the public from risk of serious harm. Now it's a little anomalous that the two tests are slightly different and I don't think that it would be created or likely to create injustice if there were a uniform test for when a person is fit to be released from custody, when the public would be felt to be adequately protected. I think that the serious harm test while there is a while it has a logic behind it, in practical terms I suspect that the board continues as it did when I was a member to apply everyday common sense to the situation. If you have a concern that somebody is not yet at a position where they can safely be re-released back into society then the terminology is not really the key and it's not necessarily helpful. I don't know if you want to comment because I noticed that there was quite a lot in your submission relating to the Puddle boards as well and if you want to respond to any of that. I suppose that just the few comments that we made about the Puddle board was that there was just one small section in there saying that revocations to prison are prisoners' ability to investigate or to appeal. That was going to be reduced from five years to six months and that seemed to me incredibly dramatic. I don't know if it's been brought up anywhere else and the justification is retention of paperwork but that would just totally contravene the statute of limitations surely in someone's rights to appeal or appeal something. Do you have any information on that though because I'm aware in the Law Society submission they talked about needing more of the figures around that. Do you know how many people that would affect at the moment or the length of time? No, I don't. I'm actually trying to get a date on this about temporary releases and recalls but even if it's just for a handful of people it does seem quite serious to think you enter the prison, you go through a certain amount of bureaucracy and settling in and that first six months can pass incredibly quickly and all of a sudden you are still amped up about what you feel is an unjust recall and your right to appeal that is now gone. That element of the change to parole I just thought that was quite serious and needed to be highlighted and justified much more strongly above the retention of paperwork by SPS. I'd just like to begin by following up on some things that Douglas Thomson was just saying there about the test. Indeed the parole board submission went to some length, I think it was expressing a degree of dissatisfaction with the bill. Would you agree with their point of view that we could do with greater clarity and then moreover obviously the role of the parole board has had a degree of increased scrutiny given the warboys case in England. Do you think that having greater clarity around those questions is not just useful for the parole board themselves but serves a transparency role? I'm just wondering if there are any other reflections given the details of the warboys case that you or any other panelist might have. At the outset I would observe that it's unlikely that the Scottish board would have reached the same decision as the members of the English board did because our systems, because of the existence of the risk management authority and the way that the McLean committee approached the deal with orders for life-long restriction were considerably more robust and could have been much more ECHR compliant than the English IPPs that became so discredited. The Scottish board has been dealing with a much more robust risk management system than the English board and has therefore had a much better quality of information. I have seen some old-style English parole dossiers, which were very much in a tick box format where you came to pages and pages and all it was was a series of boxes and it was whichever box had a black dot on it. Scottish dossiers have always been based upon written information, including impressions of the prisoner's psychological risk assessments and so on. Moving from the situation of warboys, I think that it's important that the board does become more transparent and I think that the board could open its hearings to the public. The board could make its decisions, albeit in a redacted format, available to the public because there will be information contained in a parole board decision minute. It was formally the prisoner who received a letter and now the board issues a minute. Those minutes can be fairly easily redacted to avoid any reference to particular individuals or particular matters regarding the crime that are not for public consumption. However, if the board's decisions can be made known to the public in that way, the public can have a greater degree of understanding of how the board works, which may, in some way, increase confidence in the operation of the board. I think that that's quite an interesting suggestion in terms of the publication of minutes. Is that something or are there any other thoughts around transparency that any other members of the panel might have, particularly...? No? We don't have to. The other critical question regarding the parole board is its independence. Again, this is something that the parole board submission went to some length expressing some concern, the sentiment being that, while there are provisions around status and independence, they could be more substantial and put on an equivalent footing to other aspects of the court system. Again, I was just wondering whether, in particular, Mr Thomson, whether or not you had views, but again, if there are any other views from the panel, I would be interested in them. The parole board tribunal system is a very odd part of the Scottish legal system. It's called a tribunal, but it doesn't form part of the Scottish courts and tribunal service, and there is no automatic appellate process from the decision of the parole board. It sits in a rather ad hoc position. It was created in 1967 in a very different world, and it was created to fill a gap that was perceived following some decisions or some cases that took place in England at the time, and Scotland effectively tagged along with England at the time. We've moved on considerably since then. The board in Scotland has had a greater degree of autonomy than the board in England. The appointment process for members in Scotland was improved considerably in the 2001 act. Members had security of tenure in Scotland, and the Scottish board has never been part of the probation service that ran or funded the parole board in England or Wales. There has been a greater degree of independence, but because the board is not yet on a formal statutory footing, its position is not easy to understand. You can't find anywhere a piece of legislation that sets out what the parole board does. It has its rules that are by and from a statutory instrument, but with the exception of the 2001 act and the current bill, there's nothing that sets out what the parole board does. The tribunal system has effectively developed by increments and, as a result of court decisions, and I think that there would be some merit in placing the board—I think that the board would say this themselves—on a formal statutory footing and perhaps to consider whether the parole board tribunal system is put in a statutory footing and becomes part of SCTS and maybe has some form of appellate process. At the moment, if someone is agreed by the decision of the parole board, you have to go from the criminal system into the civil system by way of judicial review, and that creates certain difficulties as well. Is that a suggestion that any other panel members have views on? The only point that the Herodic Scotland wanted to raise about this in relation to our submission was that the parole board is increasingly less likely to give parole. That also explains our rising prison numbers, and that should be something in thinking about wanting to reconstitute it. How do we get people out of the prison system right now in Scotland as Europe—and not the council of Europe's—largest life sentence prison or population? Are prison sentences getting longer or longer? Part of that is because people simply can't get out of prison. I'm again trying to get statistics on this. Hundreds of prisoners are serving over tariff. That means they're serving longer than the punishment part of their sentence because they can't receive release. Thinking about the parole board, about its constitution, its aims and its agenda, is a way again to think about Scotland's diagonally high imprisonment rate. If the minutes were published and its rationale would help, I think, to delve into some of those issues, I'd have thought. One issue that does arise from that is that the large number of lifers is very much skewed by the number of recalled prisoners at the present time. The number of prisoners who have been recalled for non-compliance with their licence has increased dramatically in the past few years. I was at a Howard League lecture fairly recently, given by Dirk van Zyl-Smith, and he was observing—I think that I made some comments at that—about the number of prisoners who are in custody now, not because of the original sentence but because of their non-compliance with licence conditions. That perhaps brings us full circle back to electronic monitoring and whether there are systems that could be put in place that would better monitor the risk and better monitor the compliance with licence of those persons. That could, in reality, reduce the number of people who are currently going back into custody and very often spending two, three and four years in custody when they have not done anything particularly serious but have been non-compliant with supervision. That's a very helpful insight. Thank you. Full circle. VED brief supplementary from Liam McArthur and then our last question from Maurice. Thank you very much. I was just following up with Sir Thomson's earlier point about the way in which the parole board in Scotland takes decisions perhaps in comparison to its counterpart parts out of the border. You said that there was a more substantive assessment and the input, in a sense, gave a better reflection of future risk. In that sense, are there any concerns that you would have about the removal of the requirement to have a psychiatrist on the parole board? One would assume that the removal of a high court judge will at least have legal expertise well covered but psychiatric input would seem to be fairly essential. Would it not as part of that assessment? There will be a number of parole board tribunals. There are a number of life sentence prisoners and some determinate sentence prisoners who will be in hospital at the time they come up for consideration for parole. To that extent, there is a benefit. When I chaired tribunals in the state hospital, I chaired a few there over my time on the board, it was always helpful to have somebody there with a psychiatric background because there may be issues upon which they would be the best person to question the doctor in charge of the prisoner about the management because he was concerned in that situation with somebody who would be potentially going from hospital back to prison or going from hospital back into the community and there were issues arising because sometimes the prisoner would also be subject to the Mental Health Care and Treatment Scotland Act. So, while it is a minority of cases, there is merit in my view in there still being somebody who can give psychiatric input when the case has a psychiatric element. So you would in a sense prefer to see that provision dropped from the... I think that a psychiatric member, given that the members are part-time, I think that a psychiatric member is a good thing. NBFs, have any view on that? Maurice Cymru. Thank you. With reference to the functions of the parole board regarding prisoners themselves, does the panel have any concerns about the proposed changes affecting the functions of the parole board in this regard? I leave it open to any of you to come back on that. Can somebody else speak now? I take that as you have no concerns. Well, I wouldn't say we've got no concerns. I don't want to monopolise the last part of the session. Clearly, much of my work at present time does involve conducting tribunals as a representative now, so I have some day-to-day hands-on experience of how the board operates and I'm a little reluctant to put my personal views before the committee because I am here as a representative of the Law Society, because anything that I would be saying would be based upon my private practice as opposed to a general society view, so I'd prefer perhaps not to answer that question on behalf of the Law Society of Scotland. Right, okay. Does anybody want to add to that? A note of that. And that completes a lined question. I think that it's been a very long session, so I thank you for your forbans, but the information that we've got from that, the direction that we have gone in has been extremely helpful, so I thank you all for your attendance today. We'll have a suspension now and a comfort break, and we'll resume in about five to ten minutes. Agenda item 3 is feedback from the Justice Sub-Committee on Policing on its meeting on 10 May 2018. Following the verbal report, there will be an opportunity for brief comments or questions. I refer members to paper 3, which is a note by Clark, and invite John Finnie to provide that feedback. Convener, as you'll be aware, the Justice Sub-Committee on Policing met on 10 May, and we took evidence since Police Scotland's proposed use of digital triage systems. Now that's more commonly being referred to in the press as cyber-chaos, because people may be familiar with that term. We took evidence from two individuals. We took evidence from Detective Superintendent Nicola Burnett from Police Scotland and Mr Kenneth Hogg, who is the interim chief officer at the Scottish Police Authority. We were interested in the acquisition of the equipment, what assessments had been done in advance, and it turns out that on 2 May this year the Scottish Police Authority agreed Police Scotland's three-year implementation plan titled Serving a Changing Scotland, Creating Capacity to Improve. That particular plan included a proposal to manage cybercrime with kiosks to triage data from devices locally. In 2016, Police Scotland conducted trials of the celebrate digital device triage system, both in Edinburgh and Stirling, and the sub-committees requested information on the analysis undertaken and whether any issues were raised. We did hear that there was no human rights data protection, and community impasse assessments were undertaken prior to those trials. Police Scotland selected celebrate product and anticipates rolling out 41 kiosks across the force area later this year. It gave us an assurance that the assessments, equality, human rights and data protections will be undertaken. Officers trained an issues address before they roll out of the kiosks. They say that the anticipated date of the introduction is autumn 2018. There was a cumulative spend of about £1 million in relation to that, and the particular trials involved interaction with over 600 devices, SIM cards and the like. It is fair to say that there were a considerable number of questions that came out that members had. Those have been put in a letter that has gone off to Police Scotland, a simple lengthy letter seeking information there. We sought to be reassured. Let me own the statement. I certainly was not reassured with what I had. It created more questions. We also considered, convener, our forward work programme and agreed to schedule an evidence session on Police Scotland's firearms licensing process. We will be returning to Police Scotland's digital data and ICT strategy prior to the summer recess. I am very happy to take any questions. Thank you. Do members have any questions or comments to make Liam McArthur? Thank you. Just to echo John's sentiments on the conclusion of the evidence session, I think that, as he rightly says, there should be more questions raised than necessarily answered provided. That is not to say that I do not think that all of us accepted that there were benefits and fairly clear benefits outlined from user technology. However, I think that all of us were seized to the need to ensure that all of the safeguards that are appropriate are in place before there is any national role out of this. I think that that is certainly the case. They were not able to answer certain questions. I think that there was a real concern about procurement taking place before they really looked at how data is stored at present and any pitfalls. It was a good subject to look at and one that we will be pursuing. That being the case, we now move into private session. That concludes the public part of today's meeting. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 22 May, when we will be continuing our evidence taking on the management of offenders bill. I suspend briefly and there is nobody here. We move into private session.