Seòmar agus comataidhean

Yes. Last week, during the statement, I read out the different categories of professionals who consider cases. As you will know better than any of us, Mr MacGregor, a whole list of experts examine risk management, and the LS/CMI is one tool in which to do that.

Katy Clark queried whether we have asked for a breakdown of the offences. We have not. We could do that—and I will look into that—but the simple fact is that the individual social workers and other professionals involved know exactly what the offences are. They are the ones who apply professional judgment. The fact that they do that, with other experts to help them, is the most valuable part of the system.

I have made the point a number of times—although it seems to be lost sometimes—that it is important to realise that the LS/CMI is one part of the system and that other tools are used in addition to it when it comes to sexual and high-risk offending.

Last week, I gave the example of the issue that we have with the alcohol assessment, whereby the lower score that might be justified by somebody moving away from alcohol addiction might not have been captured.

The professional override—I say this as a layperson and I am sure that Cat Dalrymple will correct me if I am wrong—has now been applied again to 285 cases. The experts involved have looked at those 285 live cases and said that there are no public protection issues arising from them. As others have urged us to do, we now need to go back and look at previous cases. If 285 out of 285 cases have come back with no issues, that is a pretty good indicator of things. However, we accept that we must look at previous cases is in the interests of public reassurance.

I was aware of some of that but not as aware as you are of the detail. The system provides further reassurance. As you say, it is not the case that something is taken from one computer system and drives the whole process. Professional judgment should not be rushed past. It is an important part of the system, if not the most important part. As you say, that does not involve just one professional. The decision is checked again by others to ensure that there is nothing that should be questioned. It is a robust system.

Obviously, we regret the two issues that we have had with the IT system. We must and will learn from that. There will be an on-going process with the providers to ensure that we try to cover that in future and make the risk assessment system as robust as we can. It is and has been robust. The two issues with the IT system have given us concerns, which we have addressed, and I have said that I will come back to Parliament. However, we want to have the most robust system possible.

One feature of the Scottish justice system is that it has more people on remand and in prison than is the case in many other systems. Given that, we could be accused of being risk averse. However, we must have in place a proper system. We should be accountable for anything that has not worked as it should and for ensuring that we get things remedied as quickly as possible. That is what we are trying to do.

I briefly touched on the point about funding last week. We have made it clear that we are willing to respond to any request for financial support that derives from a need for more people and resources to look at the matter.

There are a number of levels to rebuilding people’s confidence. One relates to the IT system itself. We will engage with IT people and others to ensure that the system is as it should be. Beyond that, as a number of members have suggested, we need to go back to closed cases and ensure that the system operated as it should have done despite the IT issues. Those two things should help to provide confidence.

We are also taking the opportunity to see whether we can make further improvements to the system. We should do that at any point but this seems the right point at which to do that.

We have had a number of discussions on that. It is probably true to say that different parties across Government and, perhaps, across society have received less than they might have hoped for, but that is the nature of the budget and the cuts that have been made to it. We have now had about 10 years of austerity, which, of course, has led to pressures building up that we have tried to respond to.

We worked closely with the courts service on the budget. I should point out that the Crown Office negotiates its budget separately with the finance secretary, so it is for that organisation to answer any such questions, but I am confident that the budget, despite our constrained means, will be more than sufficient for the service to do as it intends, not least in relation to the backlog.

I might ask Jeff Gibbons to come in on that but, as a layperson, I think that the gap could be bridged, although I am not saying that I have the answers now. Many of the qualms that legal representatives have raised have been about looking somebody in the eye and having that kind of presence. The Faculty of Advocates has said that things such as presence in the courtroom and being able to read somebody’s reactions and body language are extremely important. I will say this now without having the expertise, but there might well be digital solutions that will allow us to improve in that respect.

I hope that the gap could be bridged, given some of the benefits. We have heard about vulnerable witnesses, but there is also the issue of people having to travel a long way, as well as the issue that was raised yesterday about domestic abuse. There are potentially huge benefits, but we want to try to take the profession with us. You are absolutely right that, even between the Law Society and the bar associations, there are different points of view. It must be possible to reach agreement, but it will take some work to do that, and we will have to listen to people’s concerns.

I ask Jeff Gibbons whether he wants to come in.

First, I do not consider any offence to be acceptable. That is probably true of everyone in the justice system. However, it is true to say that, as I mentioned, across different jurisdictions a level of reconviction—between 50 and 60 per cent—is associated particularly with people on short sentences. Jennifer Stoddart might want to come in on that. That is one reason why, in recent years, we have made the change to a presumption against—not a bar on—short sentences. Such sentences are very often ineffective. One of the principles and values that underlies the justice vision that we have just published is that community sentencing is often much more effective. There are lower reconviction rates among those who are given such sentences. We do not find the statistics that you mentioned to be acceptable. We want to drive the numbers down.

You quite rightly asked what we would do differently, having learned the lessons, in order to reduce reoffending. The community justice system needs to be better prepared, but it was, of course, not without its own impacts from the pandemic, whether they related to staff or the places where people needed to work. If providing more availability in that regard could reduce reconviction rates, that would be one lesson that I would want to learn. We want to ensure that the community justice system is able to rise to that challenge, were we again to release prisoners early—I underline that we have no current plans to do so.

It might be worth hearing from Jennifer Stoddart, because she was there when the decision was made last time.

I believe that prisoners’ rights figure in the minds of not just governors but individual prison officers. You mentioned some of the assurances that we have on that. We have the inspector, who is able to challenge where she believes that prisoners’ rights have not been observed. As Jamie Greene has asked for, we have the assurance on transparency to ensure that, when such measures are introduced, that is logged and people know when it is done and why, as well as when the measures finish and the reasons for that.

The Prison Service has done different things to try to mitigate the impact of that. I am sure that Allister Purdie can set this out more effectively than I can—although Jamie MacQueen is the expert on the interplay between different rights—but, for example, in-cell telephony has been a big boon to prisoners. Of course, that is not without its issues, either. That shows that there has been a recognition that such extraordinary measures impact on prisoners’ rights, and we have tried to ensure that the impact has been mitigated. There are any number of checks on that. If we can increase the checks by responding to Jamie Greene’s point about transparency, we should do so.

Those are the reassurances that I would give. It might be worth hearing from Jamie MacQueen, who, like you, I am sure, is the expert on the interplay between the rights that are affected.

Your starting point was to ask whether we are listening to those concerns and taking them seriously, and we are. That speaks to the point about improvement that I made to Rona Mackay, which was that we should listen and see whether we can achieve agreement.

However, you are absolutely right that, even among defence solicitors, we see the extremes of view that you mentioned. We are not just getting different views from witnesses from different organisations; different points of view are being expressed within, say, the Law Society or the bar associations. We want to listen to see whether we can help with that. If those are the concerns of the people on the front line who are trying to be as effective as possible for their clients, we have to listen and see whether there is a way of overcoming them. If business is all virtual, it is hard to see how we could do that, but there might be exceptions.

The Government is therefore willing to listen to possible remedies, and we have a lot of good people in Government who might be able to help us to find solutions in tandem with our justice partners.

I might ask Allister Purdie to come in on this. It is certainly true, as I think that I said in the previous evidence session, that we applied additional guidance, beyond the Scottish Government guidance, through Public Health Scotland and others. There was a huge amount of provisions and guidance. That was done in recognition of the particular circumstance of prisons, which are, of necessity, confined spaces. I was not in Government when the pandemic began, but everybody was very fearful of what might happen to prisoners because of that.

Prisons will have their own necessity for taking action, and they might not always be completely aligned with the general population, which is able to take other measures. That is the general rationale for the extension.