The Scottish Government

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CHAPTER THREE RECONVICTIONS IN CUSTODY

Just 2 of the discretionary life sentence prisoners received reconvictions while in custody. One was convicted of attempting to defeat the ends of justice and the other of prison breaking.

Reconvictions on licence

Of the 6 discretionary life sentence prisoners who had been released, one received a reconviction while in the community on life licence. He was convicted of breach of the peace and recalled to prison.

Circumstances of offence

Information on the circumstances of the offences committed by the mandatory life sentence prisoners was obtained from the Homicide Index maintained by The Scottish Office Civil and Criminal Justice Statistics Unit (c.f. pgs. 54-57). Information on the cases of most of the discretionary life sentence prisoners was not contained in the Index as they were not convicted of homicide offences. However, information similar to that contained in the Index was collected from the Parole files of the discretionary life sentence prisoners. In one case the discretionary lifer's file was no longer held by Parole and Miscarriages Review Division and in a further 4 cases the offenders had received their life sentences for offences which did not involve specific individual victims - 2 were cases of fire-raising and 2 were armed robberies. Thus, information on the circumstances of the offence and the characteristics of the victims was collected for 36 of the 41 cases.

These 36 discretionary lifers had received their life sentences for offences involving a total of 104 victims. Table 16 shows the number of victims involved in the offences for which the discretionary lifers received their life sentences. The majority of cases (58%) involved just one victim, although this proportion is, perhaps unsurprisingly, much lower than the proportion of mandatory life sentence prisoners' cases which involved just one victim (c.f. pg. 54).

TABLE 16: Number of Victims per Discretionary Life Sentence Prisoner

Fewer than one third (30%) of the discretionary life sentence prisoners' victims were male - this is the reverse of the gender balance of the victims of murder, of whom 66% were male (c.f. pg. 54). The age of the victim was noted in the discretionary lifer's record for 70 of the 104 victims. Ages ranged from 3 years to 78 years, with 53% of the victims whose age was known being under 16 years (it is possible, however, that the age of the victim may have been more likely to be recorded on the offenders' file in cases involving children).

Table 17 shows the relationship of the discretionary life sentence prisoners to their victims. More than half of the discretionary lifers (56%) offended against strangers, while one third offended against people with whom they were acquainted. Again, this is a reversal of the profile of the relationship between mandatory life sentence prisoners and their victims (c.f. pg. 55). Six of the discretionary life sentence prisoners were convicted of offences perpetrated against multiple victims with whom the nature of their relationships was varied.

TABLE 17: Relationship of Discretionary Lifer to Victim(s)

Given that the number of victims was noticeably greater than the number of discretionary life sentence prisoners, Table 17 also shows the relationship of the victims to the discretionary lifers. As can be seen, almost three quarters of the victims (74%) were strangers to the person who offended against them.

Information is contained in the Homicide Index on the method by which the mandatory life sentence prisoners killed their victims. Similar information was collected from the files of the discretionary life sentence prisoners on the method by which they harmed their victims. Such information existed for 20 of the 36 cases and is shown in Table 18. As can be seen, the most frequent method of inflicting injury was with the use of a sharp instrument, which was also the most frequent method by which mandatory life sentence prisoners killed their victims. Thirteen of the discretionary life sentence prisoners (36% of those convicted of offences which involved specific victims) used a sharp instrument in the course of offences committed against 27 victims.

TABLE 18: Method by Which Discretionary Life Sentence Prisoners Harmed Their Victims

*The total number of discretionary life sentence prisoners exceeds 20 because 2 lifers had been convicted of offences in which they used multiple methods to harm their victims.

The motive which led the discretionary life sentence prisoners to commit their crimes is shown in Table 19. Not surprisingly, given the nature of the offences for which the discretionary life sentence prisoners received their life sentences, in more than half (61%) of the cases the motive for the offence was sexual.

TABLE 19: Motive for Offence

Over half of the discretionary life sentence prisoners (55%) whose offences were motivated by sexual reasons offended against strangers; 10 discretionary lifers committed sexually motivated offences against people to whom they were either related or were acquainted. The proportion of mandatory life sentence prisoners whose offence was motivated by sexual reasons and who killed people who were known to them was 64% (c.f. pg. 56).

Twenty of the 36 discretionary life sentence prisoners committed one or more of their offences in a house or dwelling place and a further 12 committed offences in some other indoor place such as a pub, shop, hostel or common stair. Sixteen discretionary lifers had committed one or more offences in a street or some other outdoor place.

The 4 discretionary life sentence prisoners who had committed crimes which did not involve specific individual victims were sentenced to life imprisonment for either armed robbery or fire-raising. Two discretionary lifers were convicted of 3 armed robberies, all of which were committed against banks; and 2 discretionary lifers were convicted of 8 charges of fire-raising which were carried out against houses, shops, schools and a prison cell.

Just over half (N=21) of the 40 discretionary life sentence prisoners for whom information on the circumstances of the offence was available were unemployed at the time they committed their offences; 11 were in employment; and 1 was not available for employment as he was still at school. In the remaining 7 cases no information on occupational status was available.

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