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3 Key Points

3.1 The List Of Offences Included In The Pilot Scheme

The ten offences eligible for a FPN are given below.

Table 1

*No FPNs were issues for this offence (see page 17).

3.2 The number of FPNs issued by offence.

The number of FPNs issued during the pilot year by Tayside Police is shown below in Table 2.

Table 2

The top three ranking offences combined account for more than 89% of the offences, whereas the lowest three relate to 0.3%. The FPNs were sent to the appropriate courts; 643 to Angus, 758 to Perth and Kinross and 1925 to Dundee.

3.3 The number of FPNs paid within the statutory period.

Of the 3327 FPNs, 2099 (63%) were paid within the statutory period of 28 days. This is a significant ³ improvement over the England and Wales payment rates where 51% of 6,043 penalty notices for disorder ( PNDs) issued by the end of the project were paid within the statutory period of 21 days.

3.4 The number of fines going to fine registration.

Of the 1228 FPNs not paid within the statutory period, 89 were cancelled (due to a fatal flaw in the ticket or a challenge), 38 went to potential prosecution and 1101 (33% of FPNs issued) went to fine registration. The total number of fines paid six months after the end of the pilot period is not known because figures for Perth and Kinross Court were unavailable.

3.5 Number of fines paid

It is impossible to calculate how many of the 3327 FPN fines will be paid eventually partly because some of the FPN cases are still within the court system six months after the end of the pilot period. In addition, as stated above, figures for Perth and Kinross Court are not available.

However, an estimate can be made from the figures provided by Dundee District Court. Of the 1925 sent to this court, 1247 (64.8%) were paid before going to fine registration, 96 (5%) were still within the statutory period and 6 (0.3%) were cancelled, leaving 576 (29.9%) that went to fine registration. Of these, 262 have been paid by October 1 ^st and hence a total of 1509 (78.4%) of the fines sent to Dundee District Court have been paid six months after the end of the pilot period. This represents a conservative estimate of the final figure as some fines may be paid at a future date.

In England and Wales, fines were registered for 46% of Penalty Notices of Disorder ( PNDs) and at least 39% of this group finally paid, making an overall payment rate of nearly 70%. The Dundee proportion is significantly ⁴ higher than 70%. Evidence from interviews suggests that the figure at other courts may not be as high due to administrative problems.

At the start of the project, the Scottish Executive provided IT funding. However, resolving difficulties with incompatible IT systems led to a delay in the processing of fine registrations at Dundee District Court.

"The statistics produced have been greatly affected by a delay in a necessary information technology upgrade to the system at Dundee District Court… This upgrade was necessary to allow electronic processing of the registered fine process since the Northgate system did not initially allow the fines to be communicated by electronic means to District Courts. This is in direct opposition to principles established by the ISCJIS project (Integration of Scottish Criminal Justice Information Systems), whose work is being carried on by the National Criminal Justice Board. This has implications for national roll-out to the extent the use of the Northgate system will result in District Courts being either unable to process registered fines electronically or able to do so only after expensive upgrades to existing links. Indeed, registered fines are being processed manually at Perth and Angus District Courts thus reducing any benefits to them in terms of time engaged in processing the tickets. This is a matter of grave concern to District Courts and should be considered as material factor in evaluation of the project."
District Court Association ( DCA)

It appears that the delay was resolved shortly before the end of the evaluation period and that much work has been done to settle cases that were left in abeyance. This includes cases where matters of identifying offenders were an issue.

"one of the crucial elements of the project is that the offender who accepts the FPN or appears in court in answer to non-payment is the person who committed the offence. Delays between the date of issue of the ticket and the processing of the ticket at fine registration stage (a period of 9 months or more) has meant key operational issues such as suitable ways of verifying the identity of offenders have not come to light timeously resulting in impotence of this court in fine recovery measures."
District Court Association ( DCA)

The manual processing at Angus District Court and Perth and Kinross District Court meant that similar delays were experienced there.

3.6 Summary of FPN Processing through Courts

The number of FPN cases and their progress through each Court is shown below.

Table 3

The total number of FPNs for this Table is 3326, provided by the courts as opposed to 3327 when examining the data provided by Tayside Police Force. The difference is due to an outstanding FPN that had not been passed on the court system. This has been ignored for the purposes of this evaluation.

3.7 Time Savings for the Police

The importance of timesaving was considerable. The information included on an FPN is much less than even an abbreviated Standard Prosecution Report ( SPR) and the process is noticeably shorter than the estimated 45 minutes to complete a standard report. This amounts to 1300 man-hours over the year, assuming that 2000 FPNs, as described in the following section, would otherwise have been dealt with by means of an SPR.

3.8 Time Saving for Procurator Fiscal.

Table 4a shows the number of SPRs sent to the Procurator Fiscal for the financial year ( FY) 2004/5 (the year immediately before the introduction of FPN) and 2005/6 (the pilot year) broken down by Tayside Police Division. Table 4b shows the figures restricted to those offences eligible for a FPN.

Table 4a

Table 4b

There has been a reduction in the number of SPRs sent to the Procurator Fiscal of 13% (3646 SPRs). For FPN Offences codes, the equivalent figure is 28% (2011 SPRs). This reduction is nearly twice the originally estimated effect of about 1200.

Although the reduction in SPRs for FPN eligible offences is over 2000, according to the Area Procurator Fiscal, along with the introduction of FPNs, other factors have played a role over the past year.

The reduction in FPN-related offences sent to Procurators Fiscal is considerably greater than the overall reduction which suggests that this is not merely the result of the general downward trend. It is not possible to determine exactly what the impact of FPNs alone would have been, without other factors. We can hypothesise that, without the introduction of FPNs, these offences would have followed the same 13% reduction as all offences. In this case, an additional 15% (1070 SPRs) can be regarded as being saved from Procurators Fiscal's time due to the introduction of FPNs.

3.9 The outcomes for FPN-related offences.

The Area Procurator Fiscal for Tayside reported that the reduction in the number of cases brought before the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service ( COPFS), had not been at the expense of case complexity. Those cases that are seen are not substantially different from before, in that they are no more complex and are treated in the same way as other cases. The Area Procurator Fiscal also stated that the length of time required to deal with an individual case has not noticeably increased as a result of the pilot.

There has also been no apparent impact on the quality of police reports. The Focus Groups and the Procurator Fiscal concurred that, in the relatively few cases in which a court hearing had been requested, the delay in officers completing the relevant paperwork did not appear to adversely affect the proceedings.

There was a considerable reduction in the number of FPN-related offences reported to the Procurator Fiscal as compared to the previous financial year (Table 5).

Tayside Area: Charge outcomes for FPN-able offences

Table 5

There has been a 29% reduction in charges for FPN-related offences as compared with the 04-05 data, and also 60% of the cases reported to the Procurator Fiscal ended up in court as opposed to 46% in 04-05. Likewise, the proportion of "No Proceedings" ( NP) has decreased from 25% to 15%. A large proportion (47%) of this reduction relates to the "Further Action Disproportionate" instruction.

The reduction in the proportion of "No Proceedings" suggests that the Police perception of the seriousness of an offence is largely consistent with the COPFS. A considerable number of offences that might previously have ended up being marked as "No Pro", are now presumably dealt with by police officers using FPNs.

3.10 Number of offenders requesting a hearing instead of payment.

There have been 38 requests for court hearings. The very small proportion (1%) of requests suggests that the vast majority of people receiving FPNs prefer to accept the penalty notice and pay it. However, it is possible that some people fail to realise the need to challenge the ticket within the required time period. There may also be cases where false identities have been given and an individual may be unaware that a ticket has been issued in their name. The District Courts have recommended extra training on the verification of identity of offenders. They were previously writing out to offenders, stating they had a further 28 days to pay it at the £60 rate and receiving responses denying any involvement, e.g. "I'm not that person." The Project Board then reminded officers and supervisors to check the identity prior to submission of an FPN, preferably with two forms of identification. The courts reported that they have had an improvement over the last six weeks of the evaluation period.

3.11 Disposals Resulting from Requests for Court Hearings.

Table 6 below lists the categories of disposals and the associated totals.

Table 6

The disposals from these 38 requests for court hearings resulted in 5 fines, 11 "No Proceedings" and 12 warning letters. The relatively small number of people who receive fines under these circumstances suggests that where recipients of tickets decide to challenge it, there is frequently justification for doing so. The capacity to challenge a ticket is a necessary constraint on the system and should not be regarded as simply a 'delaying' tactic used by people who are unwilling to pay the fine.

3.12 Proportion of FPNs issued to offenders who would otherwise have been warned rather than prosecuted.

Table 7 shows the strength of agreement or disagreement of officers responding to the e-survey with regard to two statements relating to whether receivers of a FPN would previously had been warned or arrested, ( the complete summary of responses is in Appendix C).

Table 7

Note that, for both statements, most of the officers disagreed or strongly disagreed. Only a few officers provided estimates of percentages (which ranged from 15-50%) of offenders that they would have warned or arrested prior to the introduction of FPNs. Fifty-two percent of the officers strongly disagreed or disagreed with both statements. This suggests that, these officers were giving FPNs for offences that would previously have merited a warning, or arrest, with approximately equal likelihood, indicating that some net-widening has occurred. The approximate symmetry of the responses to the two statements is compatible with the observation that relevant SPRs have reduced by approximately 2000 "in response to" the issuing of 3327 FPNs, suggesting that approximately 1300 tickets were issued to people who would otherwise have been warned. It should be stated that other factors may have played a role in the reduction of SPRs but considerable further research would be required to disentangle the influence of these factors.

3.13 Potential Inclusions And Deletions From List Of Offences

3.13.1 Deletions

The offence of "Being drunk in a public place in charge of a child" Section 50(2) of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, was strongly recommended by almost all interviewees for deletion from the list of FPN offences. This offence was felt to be inappropriate for the issuing of an FPN, and requires the intervention of an officer for the protection of the child and possibly the involvement of social services.

Only three FPNs were issued in regard to the offence of "Malicious mischief". Many police officers that took part in focus groups considered this offence to be too serious to be included on the list and responses from officers indicated that they did not think it was appropriate.

"Malicious mischief maybe not. They may be into more serious offending; they may have put a lot more thought into what they're going to do. Whereas vandalism may have an accidental/impulsive element to it … Malicious mischief, I regard as quite a serious offence, quite a significant degree of financial destruction to a property. Comparing a 'Malicious Mischief' to vandalism, vandalism is low level. "
Police officer

3.13.2 Inclusions

From the Interim Report ⁵, a list of offences that have generated a considerable number of "No Proceedings" due to disproportionality was obtained (Table 8).

Table 8

Of the offences that are currently not included under FPN legislation, the misuse of drugs is most frequently marked for no proceedings due to disproportionality.

Due to their frequency and the likely outcome, police officers and Mr Howdle, the Tayside Area Procurator Fiscal, suggested that consideration should be given to adding the following offences to the schedule.

• Littering
• Possession of personal amounts of controlled drugs
• Minor assault
• Minor theft

Some of these offences are consistent with those identified in Table 8, but this area requires further consultation and research. The addition of minor assault, for example, may cause real concern to the public if their perception is that assault is not being treated sufficiently seriously.

The addition of littering would require consultation with the local Council in order to ensure that a consistent system of fines is used. Currently, Dundee City Council waste enforcement officers (for example) issue FPNs with a £50 fine payable within 14 days.

Several officers suggested issuing tickets to under 16s. This has been discussed within the Project Board and with Stakeholders and there are no plans for extending the scheme to non-adults at this time. In some regards an extension to under 16s may be appropriate in that offenders in this age group are likely to be first offenders.

From the Interim Report "There was also some discussion around grading fines, e.g., urinating in a close is £40 but in the middle of the High Street, £80, but in the main the view seemed to be that it was better to keep it simple and the approach taken so far had led to the apparently high payment rate."

Further discussion in the focus groups and interviews generally reached the same conclusion. There were considerable benefits to having a single level of fine, particularly in terms of the ease of use for officers, members of the public and other agencies.

Other comments from a variety of sources obtained during the evaluation.

" There is a need to rationalise the matrix of fines. Council can charge £50 for litter, we give £40 for urinating in the street - need level 1 to 4 say, £40, £80, £100 and £150. All FPNs and Fiscal Fines should fit in one of these categories."

"The Range of fines is okay. No complex assessment required by officer."

"Wider range of offences would require wider range of fines."

"£40 is about right. Relatively painful, but not unpayable."

" There's scope for it being a range of fines - Breach of the Peace covers a range of conduct. Extends discretion of police officer, don't think they'd be happy with that, in practice wouldn't work. £40 is okay."

"The introduction of the £40 FPN, encouraged a reconsideration of Fiscal Fine penalty scales, so we've increased the threshold to match the £40. But this is being reconsidered in the light of the Summary Justice review."

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