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Extra resources for community justice
23/06/2009
An additional £5.5 million to help deliver swifter and more effective community justice across Scotland has been announced by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill today.
The extra resources will allow local authorities to employ more staff to support community service projects - and help clear the current backlog of cases in some areas which is seeing offenders wait for weeks to start their community service orders.
Mr MacAskill said:
"Community justice is a vital part of any justice system. But to be properly effective, it needs to be swift. Our recent audit of community services showed a very mixed picture.
"The previous target of 21 days from sentencing to starting the community service was simply not being achieved in enough cases. We have agreed a new target of seven days with stakeholders so there is much to do before we consistently deliver the swift community payback we all want to see.
"But I fully accept that there are pressures on hard-working local authority staff to deliver improvements - I know that they require help to clear the backlog and make real progress towards the targets.
"That is why I am announcing extra resources to enable local authorities to employ additional staff and we are in advanced discussions on the possibility of further funding.
"Community services need to be challenging. We need to get people on them and through them more quickly and successfully.
"But we also need to give the courts tough options, short of prison, for those who fail to comply with their orders. That's why we are introducing electronic tagging as a punishment for breach of a Community Payback Sentence.
"The bottom line is that three out of four of those sentenced to six months or less in prison will be reconvicted within two years compared with just 42% on community service.
"We need to break the cycle of re-offending and if we get offenders on community service more quickly we go a long way to delivering a safer, stronger Scotland.
Today's funding is on top of £2 million distributed to Community Justice Authorities for 2009-10 to ensure community penalties are served immediately and delivered with greater speed. Community Service has therefore already received a 15 per cent increase in funding between 2008-09 and 2009-10 and today's announcement will see a further £1.5m increase this financial year rising to an additional £4 million in 2010-11.
The Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill includes provisions to introduce a new community payback order (CPO) which will replace the existing community penalties of probation, community service, supervised attendance orders and community reparation orders. If Parliament approves the new Order, this investment will enable us to bring it into force in 2010-11.
Community Payback Orders will be imposed at the Sheriff's discretion for reasons that are particular to individual circumstances. But, if the Sheriff believes that an offences merits a short custodial sentence that option will remain. The Scottish Government is not abolishing custodial sentences of six months or less, instead a 'presumption' is being proposed within the Bill.
The new sentence will provide for unpaid work or other activity requirement which must be served within six months. Alternatively courts can impose different requirements not involving physical payback but addressing needs such as drug treatments and other offender programmes.
Further details of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Bill can be found here: Criminal Justice & Licensing (Scotland) Bill