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Annex - Other Recommendations from the Coulsfield Report
The following recommendations can be implemented without legislation, and are already being taken forward3by the police and COPFS.
R16. ACPOS and the Scottish Police Services Authority should review how the principles related to disclosure are presented to probationers, and should consider the need for a Scotland-wide initiative to promulgate the principles and practice in this report to all serving officers. There would also be value in having, for a limited time, a central unit to prepare plans for effective training and to monitor results; and a system of inspection or supervision to assist individual forces and the SPSA in ensuring that the effect of training is not dissipated.
R18. In any investigation of a serious crime which could lead to a solemn criminal trial, the norm should be for all statements taken from civilian witnesses to be written or typed out in full and signed by the witness, at or close to the time when the statement is taken.
R19. When the police are required to reveal a civilian witness statement to the procurator fiscal but no signed version of the statement is available, the information that is revealed should, as far as possible, consist of the exact words used by the witness.
R20. In summary cases, the practice of getting full statements signed by witnesses will often be beneficial; the police should therefore adopt this practice whenever it is practicable to do so and a proportionate use of their time and the witness's time.
R22. The organisation of retention and recording must be secure. Police forces should therefore carry out a full review of their systems and practices, in the light of this report, in order to secure clear and reliable systems, backed by effective IT.
R23. Police guidance notes on the management of and retention of material should be reviewed to ensure that they conform to requirements. They should also form part of the police training package to ensure that frontline officers are fully aware of their duties and responsibilities of recording, retention and storage of material. A section outlining the responsibilities of officers in charge of investigations should also be included in the code of practice detailing their duties in respect of the reviewing, recording and retaining of material obtained or generated during investigations.
R24. In large scale investigations, Senior Investigation Officers should consider the appointment of a dedicated officer to deal exclusively with the reviewing of the information obtained or generated, the preparation of schedules and subsequent revelation to the procurator fiscal. This officer should be suitably trained in revelation and disclosure requirements and the responsibilities of such an officer should be set out in the code of practice.
R25. The disclosure facility on HOLMES2 will require to be reviewed by the HOLMES community in Scotland and adapted to comply with Scottish disclosure requirements. Similarly there will be significant training implications for dedicated officers and HOLMES staff.
R34. The Crown's internal guidelines on redaction should be checked in light of this report, to ensure that they clearly and accurately set out guidance on redaction and including (i) when information should be classified as irrelevant and sensitive and (ii) the proper practice to follow where information is relevant and sensitive. The guidelines should if possible be made public, so that all parties can share a common understanding of how redaction is carried out.
R36. Current practice regarding Crown precognitions should be strengthened in one respect, in order to satisfy the obligation to disclose material evidence that would tend to exculpate the accused that has been elicited during the precognition of a witness. While not disclosing the actual precognition, it would be appropriate for the Crown to tell the defence what the material evidence is, rather than merely advising the defence that they should precognosce the witness. Such intimation of material evidence should, insofar as possible, be made in writing.
R37. Efforts should continue, to address the problem of ensuring that there is equipment available on which the visual-image recordings can be played.
R38. It may commonly be necessary to effect disclosure of visually-recorded material not by passing a copy of the tape to the defence, but by arranging for them to view it under controlled conditions.
R39. There is no requirement for the prosecution to disclose an entire tape, but only the relevant part of it. However, where an extract is provided the defence should be told the duration of the entire tape; in the usual way, they should be entitled to apply to the Crown and if necessary the court for additional footage, provided they can justify such a request.
R43. The issue of disclosing the findings of Children's Hearings which are relevant to the defence of an accused may require further consideration, in the light of the principles and policies of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995. In the meantime, the Crown should not simply apply Holland and make disclosure automatically. It will be necessary to give careful consideration to the extent to which a decision of a Children's Hearing should be disclosed and, if there is any doubt, to refer the issue to the court under the PII procedures.
R44. Victim statements should not be disclosed as part of routine advance disclosure of witness statements; but where the victim statement does contain material that would tend to exculpate the accused, the COPFS must provide the defence with written details of that material. This need not take the form of providing the defence with a copy of the statement.
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