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Parliamentary report for the 16th to the 20th of June 2008

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

In the penultimate week in Parliament before the summer recess, MSPs got the chance to debate the Government’s new strategy for youth justice, and the Justice Committee continued hearing evidence as part of its inquiry into community policing. 

Justice Committee

Community Policing Inquiry

The Committee held a relatively short meeting this week. Their sole business was to hear from a panel of witnesses who represented community wardens, as part of their Community Policing Inquiry. Community wardens were created four years ago, with the aim of providing a visible presence on the streets, primarily in order to ‘reassure’ the public, as opposed to ‘policing’ the public. Their main function is to observe and report incidents to their local authority colleagues or to the police, but some wardens also have some powers of enforcement, such as the ability to issue fixed penalty notices for behaviour such as littering, excessive noise or graffiti. Community wardens are employed by local authorities, and their roles vary somewhat from area to area as each local authority tailors their role to fit the needs of their locality.

The witnesses were asked about how they operate with the police, and they said that in the four years they have been operating, wardens in each local authority area have developed stronger relationship with police forces, although in some cases it has taken some time for trust to develop between the two agencies, and that police services now commend wardens for the level of intelligence that they collect. They said that the information they gather is also of great use to local authorities, who are now able to act on issues such as streetlights that do not work, and missing drain covers for example, much more quickly than they may have been able to in the past.

MSPs asked if they would prefer to have greater powers of enforcement, given that their main tasks are to provide reassurance and a visible presence to the public. The witnesses said that it would be preferable to have a range of powers available to them which they could then use depending on need. However, they said that the most important factor in their work is the relationship they are able to build with their community, and they are therefore often reluctant to even use the range of powers already available to them, and they prefer instead to opt for other approaches such as negotiation. They said that people will often report instances to wardens that they would not report to the police, and it was therefore very important to keep the distinction between their role, and that of an enforcement agency, separate. However, they did also recognise that if they did not have any powers of enforcement at all, it would be difficult to maintain credibility in the eyes of the public, but they said that they would aim to secure order through providing a visible deterrence, and through strategies such as holding informal drop-ins, and providing information about their work.

The witnesses provided a number of examples of successful co-operation with police forces. In one area, wardens work together with fire and rescue services, police and environmental health and waste management in order to prevent fires in tenement buildings. In another area, wardens worked together with police in ‘Operation Dry Up’, in order to tackle underage drinking. The results of the information gathered then resulted in either police action, with cases either going to court and/or to the local authority licensing committee.

Another witness said that what the wardens are trying to encourage ‘community empowerment’, so that they begin to rely less on formal agencies to provide security, and begin to develop their own capacity to provide this. They said that wardens will try to facilitate a project or programme that the community has expressed a desire for, and then try and encourage the community to take it over and run it themselves.

That concluded this relatively short meeting, and the Committee will hear their last week of evidence as part of this inquiry, next week.

You can read the transcripts from this meeting in the Official Report, or you can watch it on Holyrood.TV. You can also read all the written evidence taken so far on the Community Policing Inquiry Homepage.

The Chamber

Youth Justice Debate

On Thursday, Fergus Ewing, Minister for Community Safety, presented the new Scottish Government Youth justice strategy “Preventing Offending by Young People: A Framework for Action” to MSPs.

The strategy has been developed between central government and other agencies including the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration, the Crown Office, the Inspectorates, the Association of Directors of Social Work and Audit Scotland.

Announcing the new framework, Mr Ewing said its purpose was to outline what could be done to ‘prevent, divert, manage and change’ offending by children and young people, and he said the new focus would be on ‘prevention, early intervention, managing high risk, victims and community confidence’. He began his speech by questioning the youth justice strategy developed by the previous administration, highlighting in particular the failure of the anti-social behaviour agenda to address problematic behaviour by young people. He said that there was a clear consensus from the range of third sector agencies working on the ground that a better alternative for young people would be to provide them with more ‘choices and chances’ and ‘positive opportunities’. He gave the example of the ‘cashback to communities’ scheme which uses money from seized criminal assets to fund a range of activities for young people. Ewing said that although prevention is better, and far less costly, than cure, when it comes to the long-term fight against crime, there is still nonetheless a need to manage the risk posed by the small but significant number of young people who present a high risk to others.

Speaking for Labour, Pauline McNeil said that when Labour was in Government, they too recognised that the cycle of poor achievement, low expectation and social exclusion contributed to youth offending, but she said that the difference was that these factors were never allowed to excuse bad or criminal behaviour. She said that the Government’s framework lacked any sort of ‘reality check’; it made no mention of the fact that in many communities there are many young people who commit serious crime, and that they need to be treated robustly if their offending is to be challenged. She said that the approach set out in the document ‘looked very soft’, and she defending the work undertaken by the previous administration in addressing the problem of ‘persistent young offenders’. She said the role of the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Act 2004 should not be overlooked, saying that this legislation empowered communities and introduced joined-up thinking between agencies in the fight against antisocial behaviour. She also questioned the Government’s position on people under the age of 18 in prison, given that the framework states that the Government will honour the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by not imprisoning children, which the UNCRC define as being up to the age of 18. She said that although she could support the Government’s general direction, there was a need for a ‘harder edge’.

Speaking for the Conservatives, Bill Aitken also reminded the Chamber that the vast majority of young people are well behaved and a credit to themselves and their parents. He also said that it was a depressing fact that the vast majority of children who appear before the children’s panel around the age of 16 have experienced neglect or abuse in their earlier lives. He said that although the children’s hearings system is much vaunted in Scotland, it is now over 40 years old, and there was therefore a need to look at the way it operates. He also said that hearings are especially ill-equipped to deal with offenders who are aged 15 and 16 , and finally, that because drug abuse features in so much offending, including youth offending, there was a need to extend the use of DTTOs to the children’s panel.

Mike Pringle spoke for the Liberal Democrats, and he also spoke in favour of early intervention as an effective way of addressing children’s offending. He said that that staff in schools have often said to him that they are able to identify children who will get into trouble later in life within their first week of primary 1. He therefore argued for a ‘culture of early intervention’ with professionals in nurseries and schools working to identify those who are at risk of offending. He said it was important to listen to young people, both in order to be able to give them a voice, but also to give policy makers the opportunity to listen to them in order to make better policy. He urged the Government to reconsider their decision not to extend the Scottish Crime Survey to include 16-year olds, as the Home Office have recently done with the British Crime Survey. Referring to the Government’s recently published consultation on alcohol, he also said that it would be better to use some of the tools already in the toolbox, rather than introduce radical new measures such as increasing the legal age of buying alcohol. He said for example that a greater umber of those who are caught selling alcohol to underage children should be prosecuted once they are caught. Finally, he also said that the use of the ultrasonic ‘Mosquito’ dispersal device should be condemned, and he urged the Government to back calls for a ban of that device.

The debate that followed was particularly lively, with many Labour members keen to defend the policies of their Administration in relation to youth justice and anti-social behaviour. There were also many calls not to demonise young people, and to adopt a holistic approach to helping children who offend.

Summing up at the end of the speeches, the Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, said that if the Government have achieved nothing else it has at least changed the tone of the debate on youth justice and child offending. He argued that the absence of the “hang ‘em high” or “whip ‘em” rhetoric from some of the usual suspects was a good thing for Scotland.

He said that although poverty could never be an excuse for offending, it was impossible to ignore the correlation between deprivation and poor life chances, with crime, and that tackling the ‘three Ds’ of drink, drugs, and deprivation, was a good place to start. He said that the Government were in fact happy to support a great deal of the legislation which came from the previous Administration, and that although he did believe there was a role for ASBOs, he did believe that the money spent on these orders would make a bigger impact if it were spent on diversionary policies for young people.

He also said that that the future of the children’s hearings system is secure, but that it nonetheless needs to be reviewed, and that, although it has passed the test of time, it is struggling to cope with its current volume of cases. He said there was a need to ensure that the system focuses on the cases that need to be dealt with, and other cases could perhaps be addressed in different ways.

He also said that although his party supports youth courts, there are other ways of addressing juvenile offending which are just as worthy. He said that there isn’t always a need for the formal structure of a court, and that for example by embedding a procurator fiscal in with the police, the same service can be delivered. He concluded by saying that the Government has proposed the strategy and changed the tenor of the debate, and that he makes no apology for saying that although there is a small minority of young people who are out of control, he believed that Scottish children are ‘good kids’.

You can read the full debate in the Official Report, or you can watch it on Holyrood.TV

See also

CJScotland 20.06.08 Parliament debates new Youth Justice Framework

General Questions

There was a question for the Justice Secretary later in the afternoon from Patricia Ferguson (Lab) about the numbers of police in the Strathclyde region.  She said that an extra 100 officers in the region will be funded by the community planning partnerships in Glasgow, and not by the Government, and she urged the Minister to ensure that the extra officers are in the communities at the times of day during which they are needed. Kenny MacAskill replied that Strathclyde police force will increase its number of officers by 800 by 2011, and that the extra police have been funded by Glasgow City Council because of the financial concordat between central and local government. Finally, he said that decisions on shift patterns are operational matters which should be left up to chief constables in each police force to decide. 

You can read this question in the Official Report, or you can watch it on Holyrood.TV

Written questions

There were a number questions this week about test purchasing schemes aimed at catching those who sell alcohol to underage youngsters, a question about compensation for victims of historic abuse. There was a question about if carrying swords is permitted by the Custodial Sentences and Weapons (Scotland) Act 2007. There was a question about prosecutions for driving under the influence of drink or drugs, and about how much money the Government is spending on tackling drugs. There was a question in which the Government reconfirmed their opposition to ID cards and a question about what is being done to encourage a more socially diverse judiciary. There was a question about possible restructuring of district courts, and there were a number of justice questions, including the number of prosecutions for driving without insurance, and the number of attempted child abductions reported throughout Scotland. There was a question about education for prisoners, and a curious question which confirmed the unsurprising fact that there have been no instances of people caught attempting to break into Scottish prisons during the past five years. Finally, there were a number of questions about wildlife crime.

Posted by KM on Wed 25th Jun 2008 at 3:11 pm
Children and justice Young People • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend