The Scottish Government

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CHAPTER THREE: OFFENDING CAREERS

Records were obtained from SCRO for all 41 of the discretionary life sentence prisoners. Thirty seven (90%) of the discretionary lifers (36 males and 1 female) had acquired a total of 901 previous convictions before receiving their life sentence; just 4 (3 males and 1 female) had no previous convictions.

Table 9 shows the age of the discretionary life sentence prisoners at the time of their first conviction recorded on their SCRO record. As can be seen, almost three quarters of the discretionary lifers (N=30) were aged less than 18 at the time of their first conviction; 20 were aged less than 16, including 8 who were convicted for the first time prior to the introduction of the Children's Hearing system in 1968 and who were, therefore, convicted in a juvenile court. The proportion of discretionary life sentence prisoners who were aged less than 18 at the time of their first conviction is greater than the proportion of mandatory life sentence prisoners who had started offending by this age (53% c.f. pg. 44).

TABLE 9: Age of Discretionary Life Sentence Prisoners at Time of First Conviction

A comparison of the data presented in this Table with the data presented in Table 4 which shows that more than half of the discretionary life sentence prisoners were aged 30 or over when they received their life sentence, demonstrates that many of the discretionary lifers had lengthy offending careers prior to being sentenced to life imprisonment.

Previous convictions

Table 10 shows the number of previous convictions acquired by the discretionary life sentence prisoners; this ranged from just 1 to 174 with the average number being 24 per offender.

TABLE 10: Number of Previous Convictions Acquired by Discretionary Life Sentence Prisoners

The nature of the convictions acquired by discretionary life sentence prisoners prior to receiving their life sentence were analysed according to the 7 main categories used in The Scottish Office Statistical Bulletins 'Recorded Crime in Scotland'. These are 'non-sexual crimes of violence'; 'crimes of indecency'; 'crimes of dishonesty'; 'fire-raising, vandalism etc.'; 'other crimes'; 'miscellaneous offences' and 'motor vehicle offences'. (Details of the crimes and offences included in each category are provided at Annex B.) SCRO records contain details of convictions for all crimes and offences in the first 5 categories and for petty assault and breach of the peace which are categorised as miscellaneous offences. Generally speaking, however, they tend not to include convictions for the relatively less serious offences in the last two categories and, thus, should not be taken as an entirely comprehensive record of all convictions.

It is also the case that while records of appearances before a Children's Panel are deleted from the system once the person reaches the age of 16, information on cases in which the young person received a supervision order or court disposal remains on record. Thus, while some appearances before the Children's Panel on offence grounds will be included in the data, the record does not constitute a comprehensive summary of all appearances.

Table 11 shows the categories of crimes and offences for which the discretionary life sentence prisoners had previous convictions. As can be seen, 62% of those discretionary lifers with previous convictions had been convicted of non-sexual crimes of violence. The total number of previous convictions for this category of crimes was 49, giving an average of just over 2 per offender. The incidence of previous convictions for crimes of indecency was similar, with 19 of the discretionary lifers having a total of 44 previous convictions between them. More than three quarters (78%) had previous convictions for crimes of dishonesty. The total number of convictions for this category of crime was 574, giving an average of 20 convictions per discretionary life sentence prisoner.

TABLE 11: Nature of Previous Convictions Acquired by Discretionary Life Sentence Prisoners

* The total number of discretionary life sentence prisoners appears to be greater than 37 as many had previous convictions for more than one category of crime.

Tables 12 to 14 explore discretionary life sentence prisoners' previous convictions for 4 of the 6 categories of crimes and offences in more detail.

TABLE 12: Previous Convictions for Non-sexual Crimes of Violence

Table 12 shows that just over half of those with previous convictions for non-sexual crimes of violence (N=12) had previous convictions for serious assault, while one quarter (N=6) had previous convictions for offences which resulted in, or may have come close to resulting in death. The crimes committed most frequently by this group of discretionary life sentence prisoners, however, were robbery and assault with intent to rob for which 11 discretionary lifers had a total of 17 previous convictions.

Table 13 shows that almost as many discretionary life sentence prisoners had previous convictions for crimes of indecency as had previous convictions for non-sexual crimes of violence. This is in sharp contrast to the case with mandatory life sentence prisoners where three times more offenders had previous convictions for non-sexual crimes of violence than had previous convictions for crimes of indecency (c.f. pgs. 47-48).

Almost three quarters (N=14) of the discretionary life sentence prisoners with previous convictions for indecency had convictions for rape or assault with intent to rape and these offenders had committed a total of 21 offences between them. The most commonly occurring crime was assault with intent to rape for which 9 discretionary lifers had a total of 16 previous convictions.

TABLE 13: Previous Convictions for Crimes of Indecency

A total of 30 discretionary life sentence prisoners had previous convictions for the first 2 categories of crimes and had between them acquired a total of 92 previous convictions for these crimes. The very serious nature of these previous convictions and their prevalence may have contributed to the sentencer's decision to impose a discretionary life sentence.

TABLE 14: Previous Convictions for Crimes of Dishonesty

Table 14 shows that crimes of housebreaking and other theft (e.g. theft of bicycles, use of stolen credit cards etc.) were the most prevalent previous convictions in the category of crimes of dishonesty. More than two thirds (69%) of the discretionary life sentence prisoners with previous convictions in this category had previous convictions for housebreaking - these 20 offenders had an average of 17.4 previous convictions each. Again, this is in sharp contrast to the case of mandatory life sentence prisoners where the average number of previous convictions for all crimes of dishonesty was 8.2 (c.f. pg. 47) compared to an average of 19.8 for discretionary lifers. The extent of the difference serves to emphasise the prolific nature of the discretionary life sentence prisoners' offending careers.

Table 15 shows the number of previous convictions which the discretionary life sentence prisoners had for each of the 3 categories of crimes. Unlike the mandatory life sentence prisoners (c.f. pg. 49), fewer than half of the discretionary lifers with previous convictions for non-sexual crimes of violence (39%) and crimes of indecency (37%) had just one previous conviction; the proportion with just one previous conviction for crimes of dishonesty was almost identical at 17% of discretionary life sentence prisoners and 18% of mandatory lifers.

TABLE 15: Number of Previous Convictions for Category 1, 2 and 3 Crimes

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