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SCRO was established by means of a statutory instrument on 1 April 1960. SCRO is a common police service in terms of section 36 of the Police (Scotland) Act 1967, which means that it is funded and managed in a co-operative way by the 8 Scottish forces, the 8 police authorities and the Scottish Executive. It is a central, computerised repository of criminal records, fingerprints and images which is accessible on-line by all Scottish police forces. SCRO provides a 24 hour, 7 days a week operational service to the Scottish police forces and the wider criminal justice system. The primary functions of SCRO are to provide and monitor for the 8 Scottish police forces a fingerprint verification and identification facility and a computerised criminal record system. Within the wider criminal justice community SCRO provides a service central to all the partners involved in the Integration of the Scottish Criminal Justice Information System (ISCJIS).
The primary inspection of SCRO as a whole was scheduled to take place in December 2000. Following a request by the SCRO Executive Committee the inspection of the Fingerprint Bureau was brought forward and conducted on 22 and 23 May 2000. In the fingerprint Bureau primary inspection HMIC recommended that the SCRO management oversight structure be reformed as part of re positioning SCRO within a new Common Police Services arrangement. The Deputy first Minister and Minister for Justice has announced that there will be a review of Common Police Services. Although the detail and timing of the review is not known HMIC anticipates the review will address inter alia the roles of HMIC and the Scottish Executive in the governance of SCRO.
The confidence and morale of SCRO staff was adversely affected by the criticism of the HMIC Fingerprint Bureau Inspection. In particular, the view of HMIC that the organisation was not "fully efficient and effective" was difficult to accept. In part this was due to the belief that many of the issues identified by HMIC were outside the direct control of SCRO staff and a result of insufficient resources.
While recognising the validity of these views and the commitment of individual members of staff and management the HMIC report identified a number of important areas where improvement was needed. A number of these improvements impacted SCRO as a whole and was not limited to the Fingerprint Bureau.
This inspection has shown that significant progress has been made and that provided the momentum for securing the necessary improvements is maintained then the outlook is positive. The areas where HMIC makes comment with a view to securing improvement include the following:
HMIC notes in particular the progress on the fingerprint inspection and recognises the limiting factors that remain in position until the review of, and change to, Common Police Services. Taking into account the performance of SCRO as a whole HMIC considers that in terms of Section 33(3) of the Police (Scotland) Act 1967 SCRO is efficient and effective.
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