Criminal justice social work statistics in Scotland: 2013-14

5.3 Legacy orders

(Tables 1, 21 and 22)

5.3.1 There were over 1,100 community service / probation / supervised attendance orders commenced during 2013-14 for offences committed before February 2011, accounting for about 6 per cent of all social work orders (Table 1).

5.3.2 Most legacy orders in 2013-14 (68 per cent or 780) were supervised attendance orders. This reflects the fact that the majority of these orders are issued as a secondary penalty for fine default, and so it is more likely that the original offence occurred before February 2011. Community service and probation orders accounted for 20 and 12 per cent of legacy orders respectively.

5.3.3 A total of 3,200 legacy orders were terminated in 2013-14 (Tables 1 and 21). The majority (67 per cent) of these orders were completed or discharged. As discussed in §5.2.5, comparing completion rates for legacy orders before and after the introduction of the community payback order is problematic as recent cases will tend to be the more complex ones which have taken longer to process through the courts, or historic cases.

5.3.4 There were 750 breach applications made to the courts in 2013‑14 in respect of legacy orders (Table 22). Readers should note that this only includes breach applications made during the year and are on a different basis from those reported for community payback and drug treatment and testing orders, which reflect all breach applications during the lifetime of the order.