Criminal justice social work statistics in Scotland: 2018-2019

Table 2 Social work orders: 2012-13 to 2018-19

1. Figures for community payback orders for the years 2013-14 to 2017-18 and for drug treatment & testing orders for 2016-17 and 2017-18 have been revised from those previously published due to updated information being received from some local authorities. These revisions are particularly substantive for CPO terminations in 2017-18 and CPOs in force at March 2018 due mainly to some councils reporting that orders had not been getting closed off on their IT systems.

2. Information on community service, probation and supervised attendance orders was not collected from local authorities from 2015-16 for orders commenced and from 2016-17 for orders terminated, due to the small numbers involved. These numbers are estimated to be in the region of around 200, 150, 50 and 30 for orders commenced in 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18 & 2018-19, respectively, and 200, 70 and 50 for orders terminated in 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19.

3. As a result of revisions made to the 2012-13 & 2013-14 figures for community payback orders since their original publication, the reason for termination is not known for a small number of orders. The figures for the proportion of completions/discharges have therefore been calculated as a proportion of the orders where this reason was known.

4. Fiscal work orders were introduced nationally on 1 April 2015, having been piloted in a small number of local authority areas since June 2008.

5. Successful completion rates are calculated by taking the number of orders successfully completed or subject to an early discharge and dividing this by total orders terminated less those which finished because they were transferred out (and as per note 4 above, for 2012-13 and 2013-14, less those where the reason for termination was not known).

6. As a result of the introduction of fiscal work orders in 2015-16 and the non-collection of commencements figures for community service, probation and supervised attendance orders from 2015-16, comparisons for total social work orders commenced over the period covered by this table should be interpreted with caution.

7. As a result of the introduction of fiscal work orders in 2015-16 and the non-collection of terminations figures for community service, probation and supervised attendance orders from 2016-17, comparisons for total social work orders completed/terminated over the period covered by this table should be interpreted with caution.