Seòmar agus comataidhean

Well, I am not going to lead the committee in a chorus of “Down at the Old Bull and Bush”, Mr Ewing.

Are there any other comments? Are we content to proceed on that basis?

Members indicated agreement.

Item 2 is consideration of continued petitions, the first of which is PE1876, on accurately recording the sex of people who are charged with or convicted of rape or attempted rape. The petition has been lodged by Lucy Hunter Blackburn, Lisa Mackenzie and Kath Murray, and I am pleased to welcome Lucy Hunter Blackburn and Lisa Mackenzie to the committee; good morning to you both.

The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to require Police Scotland, the Crown Office and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service to accurately record the sex of people who are charged with or convicted of rape or attempted rape. We last considered the petition at our meeting on 22 March, when we agreed to write to the Scottish crime recording board and Police Scotland, and to invite the petitioners to give evidence.

Before we move to the substance of today’s consideration of the petition, I should note that the committee has received responses from the Scottish crime recording board and Police Scotland, as well as a further written submission from the petitioners responding to those responses.

In its response, the Scottish crime recording board advised that its remit focuses solely on the police recorded crime national statistics, which measure crimes, not people, and it has never included the recording of demographic details of suspects or perpetrators. Police Scotland indicated that a review of its recording policy is progressing through its internal governance processes and, if approved by the professionalism, strategy and engagement management board, it will be subject to wider consultation with relevant stakeholders. Police Scotland also carried out a manual review of its recorded crime data for rape. It states that, although it is unable to confirm the biological sex of those who were recorded in the statistics,

“none of the females recorded for the crime of rape were involved in the physical act itself ... In all cases, their involvement was art and part (aiding or abetting in the perpetration of the crime)”.

In light of those responses and the evidence that has been gathered throughout the consideration of the petition, the committee has a number of questions that we would like to explore with the petitioners today. Is there anything that you would like to say in advance of us doing so?

That is in the last paragraph.

It says:

“As we have previously argued, while the PS statement remains technically correct (since Bryson declared a trans identity after being charged)”.

Are you familiar with where I am reading from now?

I thank the petitioner very much. As he will have heard, we will be taking forward the aims of the petition.

The first continued petition is PE1947, lodged by Alex O’Kane, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to address the disturbing culture of youth violence in Scotland.

The committee met an Edinburgh-based youth group, 6VT, just off the Grassmarket, and it also visited Milton in Glasgow to meet the petitioner and families with direct experience of the issues that are raised in the petition. I should say that some of the families had come from further afield than the immediate Milton community. Once again, I thank everyone who took the time to speak with us: the young people we met in Edinburgh and, in particular, the people we met in Milton, who, in some instances, were still recovering from really graphic and, in some respects, unbelievable levels of violence. We could sense the parents’ bewilderment and how distraught they continued to be at what they considered to be the inability to secure the on-going environment for their children and any sense of justice. I thank all those who took the time to come to meet me and the committee—Alexander Stewart was my colleague on the committee at the time.

This morning, we are joined by two University of Glasgow academics. I welcome Dr Fern Gillon, a research associate, and Dr Susan Batchelor, a senior lecturer in criminology.

Before I ask a general question, I will give a preamble based on the evidence that we heard. It was interesting that, in Edinburgh, the young people whom we met felt a sense of security from coming together in the 6VT facility to share their experiences. That also allowed them to gain strength, as a group, in being able to withstand the torment or violence that they had previously experienced. They were very keen to be there. Obviously, sitting giving evidence on anything was an unusual environment for them, so we tried to make it a discussion with prompts.

What we heard from the families that we met in Milton—coincidentally, there was a debate on the subject in the Parliament later that day, and it was difficult, although I did contribute on the back of what we had heard—was chilling. We heard about the way in which violence is organised by appointment. People are lured to a place where others are gathered to record on their phones videos of the violence that takes place, and those people post those videos in the perceived knowledge that no recrimination will follow and they can do so with impunity. It was deeply distressing.

Two of the people we met had been left in such an appalling state that those who found them were not sure that they would survive. They did, but not without experiencing enormous trauma. Siblings of those affected felt that they had failed in some way to protect them and that they had a duty to step in and seek restorative justice. Parents felt that they had failed and that, when they had gone looking for help, the system had then failed them. Although there was lots of sympathy from the authorities, the police and others, the parents did not have any confidence that, at the end of the day, any intervention by the authorities or the police would produce a return because, as they saw it, the system was stacked against action and more towards the perpetrator than the victim. It was a very chilling session.

We heard that evidence in isolation, and we do not want to believe that that is the picture across the whole country, but we do not know. What does the available evidence tell us about the level of involvement of young people as perpetrators of violent behaviour? What is the age demographic? Is it older teenagers who are involved in such behaviour, or is it, as we heard, younger teenagers—younger than I would have thought was possible? The violence that we heard about was perpetrated by girls on other girls, not by boys. Is that typical? Are more boys involved than girls, or is there a much wider problem? Obviously, we will come to the roots of all this, but I am interested in how the evidence that we heard sits in the context of the wider academic understanding of the issue.

So, you are content to support those.

The evidence was not just from Glasgow—we heard from a pupil from St Andrews in Fife. Therefore, it seems a bit easy to say—

It is interesting that you talk about the period since 2000. Smartphones and iPads are much more recent than that, really—the first iPad did not appear until 2010. As I said in my opening remarks, in the examples that we heard about, one of the disturbing characteristics was the violence by appointment. We heard about people filming violence deliberately and posting it on social media to allow the perpetrators to self-aggrandise and create reputations for themselves that were designed to intimidate others. That seems to me to be a new and slightly sinister development. What have you found in relation to that, if anything?

One of the examples that the committee heard was of a youngster who was in a shopping centre who realised that violence was impending. They sought support from the security staff and contacted their parents, and the security staff said, “There’s absolutely nothing we can do to protect your child until the violence actually occurs.” The security staff said that, if they intervened, they would be charged as a result of having intervened, potentially for restraining the individual who was going to perpetrate the violence before the violence had actually been perpetrated. The evidence suggested that the people who were committing the violence were perfectly aware of the fact that nothing could be done to protect that individual. Is there a greater degree of knowledge of the parameters of the system in current society, which people exploit in the knowledge that they can act again with impunity?