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Wednesday, November 01, 2006
After two weeks recess, the Parliament is in business again with a full criminal justice portfolio to get through. This week saw most activity in Committees, with interesting evidence taken as part of scrutiny into the Custodial Weapons and Sentences Bill, and the Prostitution (Public Places) Bill.
Committees
The Justice 2 Committee met on Tuesday afternoon, and the first thing on their agenda was to discuss amendments at Stage 2 of the Legal Profession and Legal Aid Bill. This Bill has two main strands – firstly, to create a new independent Commission to deal with complaints against the legal profession. Secondly, the Bill makes reforms to the system of legal aid. It has provoked anger from legal bodies such as the Law Society who claim that the Commission would be under too much control from the Executive, thus eroding the precious separation of legislature from judiciary.
Good guides to Bills going through the Parliament are provided by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe). You can read the SPICe guides to the part of the Bill dealing with complaints against the legal profession here, and the guide to the legal aid part of the Bill can be read here. You can also read the whole Bill as it was first introduced to Parliament here.
The general principles of the Bill have been agreed to by the Parliament, and now the Committee is working its way through the amendments in Stage 2. The amendments open for discussion in this meeting were on Parts 2 and 3 of the Bill, and concerned matters such as restrictions on disclosure of information to other professional organisations, complaints on financial impropriety, and appeals from decisions of the Tribunal. The majority of amendments put forward were agreed to without division, which concludes the amendments regarding the part of the Bill dealing with the Commission. You can read full transcripts of this part of the meeting here. Amendments dealing with the legal aid aid parts of the Bill will be discussed next week.
Following this, the Committee took evidence as part of their scrutiny of the Custodial Sentences and Weapons Bill. Again, this Bill has two separate areas of concern. The first part makes changes to custodial sentences by providing for an end to the automatic and unconditional early release of offenders. Currently most offenders are released after half of their sentence, either unconditionally or on licence. This new legislation would introduce a system whereby offenders would be released after between 50% – 75% of their sentence, depending on the risk they were deemed to pose, with the remainder of their sentence taking place on licence in the community. This would involve a far higher degree of risk assessment and supervision on release, in addition to an increase in the length of time in custody. The general aim of the Bill is to give the public greater confidence by giving greater clarity in sentencing.
You can read the SPICe guide to the custody part of the Bill here. The second part of the Bill relates to the selling of knives and swords, and provides for the licensing of sellers and restrictions on their sale. Read the SPICe briefing on this part of the Bill here. This Bill is in its Stage 1 Committee phase, that is an examination of the general principles only. You can read the full Bill as it was introduced here.
The Committee heard evidence from officials from the Scottish Prison Service and the Justice Department. Their evidence set the context for the Bill, explaining the background and the main measures contained in it. They were questioned about the resource implications for the Parole Board, the Bill’s requirement that offenders spend the last part of their sentence in their community, how to assess offenders’ risk, how much the additional supervision and assessment would cost, the nature of post release treatment and supervision, and the possibility of building a new prison.
During questioning, they also revealed that the impact of the Bill would be to an addition of between 700 and 1000 to the prison population, resulting in a daily population of around an incredible 9000, and the highest imprisonment rate in the European Union.
Then officials spoke about the second part of the Bill relating to knives and weapons. They outlined the details of the Bill, and then they were questioned on issues such as how to define a domestic and a non-domestic knife, who would be exempt from the Bill, whether there were other non licensing options that would be more favourable.
The meeting’s papers included flowcharts showing custodial sentence processes here (pages 3-7).
You can read the full transcript from this part of the meeting here and can watch the whole of the meeting on Holyrood.tv for up to one month here.
On Tuesday, the Local Government and Transport Committee took their second session of evidence on the Stage 1 general principles of the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Bill. At this meeting they heard firstly from representatives of Scot Pep, a support group for women working in prostitution. Scot Pep’s written evidence to the Committee, can be read here (pages 13-16). Their main points were that they had major concerns about the Bill, primarily because it would not treat buyers and sellers of sex equally, as it will be difficult to apply an offence of loitering to anyone in a vehicle. They went on further to express concern about the new powers of arrest, which would mean that those arrested would probably be held in police cells over night until a court appearance in the morning. Given that 95% of street prostitutes are drug dependant and there are no facilities in police cells for prescriptions or for managing opiate withdrawal, they argued this would only increase the burden on an already very vulnerable group of women. They also highlighted the lack of age level for this legislation (in England and Wales 16 and 17-year-old prostitutes are considered to be victims of abuse rather than offenders).
Speakers from the Routes Out Intervention Team, a multi-agency team based in Glasgow, raised similar concerns about the unequal affects of the proposed legislation on buyer and seller of sex, and also argued that the Bill will do nothing to diminish the alarm caused to the communities in which prostitutes work. Other areas discussed included the wider needs of those engaged in prostitution, the concern about the fact that the Bill does not make an offence ‘complaint led’, as was suggested in the Expert Group report. This would mean an offence would only have occurred after a complaint had been made to the police from a member of the public.
The Committee also heard from residents’ groups. They also voiced concern that the legislation did little to prosecute either the buyers of sex, or the pimps who organised the women. However, they were in support of the non-complaints led approach.
You can read the transcripts of this part of the meeting here, or you watch it on Holyrood.tv here. You can also read the press reports in our weblog here
Chamber
The only justice related issue to be debated in the Chamber this week was a motion lead by the Green Party on young people and families. The majority of the debate concerned young people however, and much of the discussion revolved around the familiar themes of anti-social behaviour and problematic behaviour, with the rhetoric of ‘responsibility’ and ‘public safety’ to the fore. The motion did not put forward any specific policies, rather it was a platform offering an opportunity to debate this important issue. Topics discussed included funding and staffing for children’s social work services, the value of the voluntary sector in providing services, the issue of treating problematic behaviour of young people from a ‘justice’ model or from wider social policies. How to include children in the community and avoid social segregation, and the merits of early intervention were all discussed. You can read the full debate here. You can also read the press coverage in our main weblog here.
Questions
Following the debate, there were some general questions put to the Justice Minister about community wardens, read here, and to the First Minister regarding prisoners on home leave at Christmas, which you can read here.
There were also a number of written questions this week on a range of issues from banning of alcohol in public places, provision to deal with drug addiction, fines collected as a result of fixed penalty notices, budgets for police forces, drug free prisons and sex offenders You can access them all here.
Westminster
In Westminster, the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill is in the process of being scrutinised by the Standing Committee B, who are currently working their through amendments since it was introduced to Parliament in July this year. This Bill will allow for the creation of a new new offence of corporate homicide in Scotland, which can be applied to companies and other bodies such as Government departments and police forces. You can access the Bill’s homepage here. This follows the failure of Karon Gillon’s attempt to introduce a Culpable Homicide Bill in the Scottish Parliament, due to lack of Parliamentary time and support from ministers. You can read this this story in our main weblog here.
Posted by KM
on Wed 1st Nov 2006
at 3:35 pm
Legislation Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill Custodial Sentences and Weapons (Scotland) Act 2007 Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Bill
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