Justice Social Work Statistics In Scotland: 2022-23

6 Bail supervision

(Classified in 2022-23 as statistics in development - Tables 1 & 5)

Detailed information on bail supervision services can be found in the National guidance on bail supervision. In response to data users’ requests, the Scottish Government increased the volume of information it requested from local authorities in 2022-23. As a result, more detailed information is collected on bail supervision cases commenced and data is also now collected on assessment reports for bail suitability submitted to courts.

In addition, extra bail information has been collected in relation to electronic monitoring. Orders for electronic monitoring were introduced under the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2019. They can be imposed alongside a number of different court orders and also to support the monitoring of a curfew condition included as a condition of a bail order. Therefore, in bail supervision cases, the order for electronic monitoring can run in parallel with the supervision element. Figures are no longer collected for bail information requests.

Local authorities were only advised during year 2022-23 of the change to the collection for that year. It would therefore be expected, as any collection of new information needs time to standardise, that the quality of the new statistics will not be as good as data which has been collected over a longer period of time. As a result, the statistics for bail supervision are classified as “official statistics in development” whereas the rest of the information in this publication and accompanying tables is classified as “accredited official statistics”. Apart from bail supervision cases, there is no trend data available for the years 2021-22 and before.

A total of 1,100 bail supervision cases commenced in 2022-23, almost double the number in 2021-22 and the highest in the last ten years. Apart from in 2020-21, when a number of courts were closed for long periods due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numbers have risen every year since 2018-19. In 2022-23, around 130 bail supervision cases (11 per cent) involved an electronic monitoring order.

There were 4,200 assessment reports for bail suitability submitted to the courts in 2022-23. While most local authorities were able to supply breakdowns by recommendation, some were not. As a result, this breakdown was only available for just under 60 per cent of these reports. Of the 2,400 reports where the recommendation could be provided, 54 per cent recommended supervision. This consisted of 33 per cent recommending supervision only and 22 per cent supervision and an electronic monitoring order. A further 17 per cent recommended bail with an electronic monitoring order only, with the remaining 29 per cent considered not suitable for bail.