Whether it’s in policing, prisons or courts, it’s time each political party has a rethink

Given the transition to the single police force has been tumultuous, ministers could have been forgiven for feeling relieved when this month’s Scottish Crime and Justice Survey revealed confidence in the single force had dipped only three per cent compared to the former set-up.

Regional breakdowns may have been more difficult to swallow, however, since the proportion of Scots who said that the police were doing a ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ job in their local area fell nine per cent in both Aberdeen and Dumfries and Galloway, and eight per cent in Lothian and the Scottish Borders.

However, the SNP will undoubtedly feel that they have a strong hand going into May’s parliamentary election. Recorded crime is at a 41-year low – a run surely on borrowed time given consistent increases in domestic abuse incidents and sexual crimes recorded by police – while violent crime has plunged during the party’s time in government.

Equally, the figure for adult victims of crime was one in seven in 2014-15 compared to one in five seven years earlier. These numbers are reassuring, though estimates in this month’s survey suggesting less than two in five crimes are reported to police demonstrate the true picture is, of course, more nuanced.

Despite being rolled out ad nauseam at every turn over the last five years, there is no straight line between a recorded crime low and the SNP’s longstanding commitment to keeping police officer numbers above 17,234, a policy that has its roots in a policing landscape of nine years ago.

Towards the end of this parliamentary term senior police figures have questioned the policy’s long-term sustainability. Meanwhile, the Scottish Police Authority has committed to drawing up a longer-term strategic plan within the next few months that will inform a conversation about officer numbers.

If, as expected, the policy is phased out from next April (John Swinney’s budget contains a commitment to retain it for the duration of 2016-17, which could prove problematic given some local authorities intend to cut funding for local officers, leaving a shortfall that will have to be plugged), then the work undertaken by the SPA is likely to be relied upon to shape a new narrative that frees government, and ultimately Police Scotland, of the binding target.

Even Kenny MacAskill, the former justice secretary who spearheaded the 1,000 extra officers’ pledge, tells Holyrood the matter “has to now go back to being a decision for the SPA and Police Scotland to make in discussion with political representatives”.

Unsurprisingly, his successor Michael Matheson failed to mention the matter making a third manifesto appearance when addressing this month’s SNP conference. Instead, the party’s key election pledge is to protect the police budget in real terms over the course of the next parliament.

This election year promises significant change not just in terms of policy, though. Scotland’s top prosecutor Frank Mulholland QC last week revealed his intention to step down as Lord Advocate after May’s election, the announcement coming soon after three senior officers, including the second-highest ranking officer in the country, announced plans to leave Police Scotland later this year. Phil Gormley’s appointment as chief constable following Sir Stephen House’s high-profile departure has given the force a honeymoon period of sorts.

Those at local government level – who were among the most critical of the force in its first three years, amid controversies over armed policing and stop and search – have warmed to him, suggest Holyrood sources. Meanwhile, the former deputy director general of the National Crime Agency escaped unscathed from his three parliamentary committee appearances in the six weeks before dissolution.

Nonetheless, Police Scotland could gain headlines again for all the wrong reasons. Findings of an investigation by the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner into the fatal M9 crash, which saw John Yuill and Lamara Bell found by officers some three days after an initial caller to Police Scotland reported their car was off the road, are as yet unpublished, while an HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland report on the force’s controversial counter corruption unit will come out in May. Similarly, delivery of their flagship national IT system, i6, which will replace more than 100 legacy systems, has stumbled into serious difficulties.

For those in community justice, the reform journey is just beginning. Though first mooted four years ago, next April will see Scotland’s eight community justice authorities (CJAs) wound up and replaced by new arrangements at local authority level, combined with a national body. If the SNP returns to St Andrew’s House after 5 May – as all polls seem to suggest – the process will be no easier given that relations between central and local government are strained.

Council leaders’ hopes that ministers would pitch in much-needed funding to help restore ageing public CCTV systems have been dashed after the government reiterated that responsibility for investment and maintenance must fall on local authorities working with Police Scotland.

Likewise, a delay in the funding allocation for criminal justice social work services – sign-off was only expected this week, two months behind schedule – has triggered a blame game between the Scottish Government and umbrella body COSLA in recent weeks. “It’s just a mess,” one CJA source said. It may be remedied by the time a new administration is formed, though it is perhaps a worrying sign of what could lie in store.

Legislation overhauling the community justice system completed its passage through parliament last month, though local authorities continue to vent concerns over resources. Ministers’ attempts to hold the bill up as a bold new approach were somewhat undermined when MacAskill – the minister who first embarked on the reforms – branded them “a recipe for obfuscation if not disaster”.

“What I inherited in 2007 came in as a political fix from Cathy Jamieson because of the intransigence of local authorities,” says MacAskill, referring to the creation of CJAs a year earlier. “The situation that I faced and [in terms of the legislation that] has been delivered by the minister has again been the intransigence of local authorities saying, ‘this is ours, it’s our fiefdom’. That would be fine if we could rest upon them to deliver and that’s where I have doubts.”

MacAskill, who insists those working in CJAs have a done a “remarkably good job”, considers the soon to be introduced set-up an “improvement”, albeit “not as good as it can be”, leaving the now departed MSP in little doubt that there will be another structural shake-up at some stage.

In that spirit, his successor has already labelled plans to overhaul the requirement for corroboration in criminal cases “unfinished business”. Given the difficulties MacAskill encountered – the relevant legislation was shelved for a year before all mention of corroboration was taken out of the bill – it has done government little harm to wait until research into how juries reach decisions is undertaken.

That “will not be a quick process”, Matheson told the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee earlier this year, evidence of the Scottish Government’s now much more tentative approach, in stark contrast to its feet-first foray into the minefield of Scots law in 2012.

With Lord Carloway – the judge who first advocated the removal of corroboration – now Lord President, further changes are expected. Proposals to raise the age at which children can be held responsible for their crimes from eight years old to 12 have been put out to consultation, albeit four years after Scottish ministers told the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child that they would review whether the age of criminal responsibility, which is currently the lowest in Europe, should be increased.

Last month, a Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service review also raised the prospect of “radical digital reform” to allow children and vulnerable witnesses to give evidence outwith court and to accommodate a redesign of summary criminal procedures.

At the higher end, the High Court continually faces the “well-nigh impossible” task of fixing and starting trials within the existing time limits, Lord Carloway told the Scottish Universities Insight Institute earlier this month, with 16 weeks being the average period between preliminary hearing and trials getting under way rather than the four it ought to be.

Whilst an analysis of consultation responses was published on the day that parliament broke up, ministers failed to spell out their exact intentions on proposals to extend the presumption against short-term prison sentences. However, several figures across the justice sector, including the Chief Inspector of Prisons, are keen to see it rise to 12 months, a proposal the Scottish Liberal Democrats were first to declare would be included in their manifesto.

Even so, plans to increase the presumption are “likely to have little impact” in reducing a population that remains stubbornly high, director of the Centre for Law, Crime and Justice at Strathclyde University, Dr Cyrus Tata, has warned. In that vein, Lord Carloway’s recent speech suggested sheriffs “may require to be more imaginative in their approach to offenders” who are prone to reoffending and often end up in prison for short spells because community payback order requirements are not met.

“We need to rethink almost every aspect of what we know as ‘prison’: who should be sent there, what prisons should look like, how they can be used for the much smaller number who need to be incarcerated for public protection,” says solicitor advocate and member of the Scottish Sentencing Council, John Scott QC.

“Unfortunately, we seem to be stuck in the perpetuation of ideas from the 19th century when modern prisons started to develop. The government has made a start on some of this radical rethinking with what is being done in relation to women offenders. Their 2015 decision not to proceed with a major new prison for women at Inverclyde may come to be seen as the moment when things started to change.”

That could well be the case, though the process will be a lengthy one. Holyrood understands that the Scottish Prison Service and government civil servants are preparing to initiate a round of local engagement events during April and May to discuss the design of and approach that will be taken by the five community-based custodial units for women that Matheson announced last year. A decision as to final locations is some way off, informed sources stress, though some local authorities are understood to have already expressed an interest in having one on their patch.

“For too long, the debate on justice matters in Scotland has been based on the false dichotomy of whether you’re gonna be tough on crime or whether you’re gonna be soft on crime,” Matheson told SNP delegates a few weeks ago. “The reality is we need to start to get smart on tackling these issues, and having the second highest prison population in western Europe tells me that we simply haven’t been smart enough to date.”

Identifying the problem is the first step. The measure of the next government will be what they do to fix it.