Statistical Bulletin: Crime and Justice Series: Criminal Justice Social Work Statistics, 2010-11

ANNEX

Notes and Definitions

Background

10.1 Criminal justice social work services in Scotland are provided by local authorities throughout the country. All of the data in this bulletin is derived from Local Authority Social Work management information systems, with the exception of the data on Community Payback Orders, which was obtained from the Scottish Court Service.

10.2 The National Outcomes and Standards for Social Work Services in the Criminal Justice System framework was published in August 2010. In 2007, the Scottish Government commissioned a revision of the National Outcomes and Standards, which was undertaken in parallel with the review and reform of community sentences. A multi agency Advisory Group provided oversight for the redevelopment of National Outcomes and Standards during 2007 to 2010. This included an extensive consultation exercise undertaken on behalf of the Advisory Group. National Outcomes and Standards are intended to provide a clear framework of professional accountability, supported by strong governance and leadership, towards the outcomes of community safety, justice and social inclusion.

Community Justice Authorities ( CJAs)

10.3 The Management of Offenders etc. (Scotland) Act 2005 established provisions for eight local CJAs. These authorities have been established to provide a co-ordinated approach to planning and monitoring the delivery of offender services by planning, managing performance and reporting on performance of local authorities or groups of local authorities and key partner agencies including the Scottish Prison Service ( SPS). Their aim is to target services to reduce reoffending and to ensure close co-operation between community and prison services to aid the rehabilitation of offenders. Each CJA consists of a Chief Officer, elected members of local authorities ( LAs) and support staff to carry out the functions of the CJA. Tables in the form of datasets, at CJA and LA level, have been published on the Scottish Government website as part of this publication ( http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/Datasets). New data is added to these CJA/ LA tables annually. The tables are, in addition, updated on a continuous basis throughout the year, to reflect any revisions made to already published data. As a result, some of the figures in these tables may differ from those in the published bulletin(s) for the year(s) in question.

There are 8 CJAs and they contain the following Local Authority areas:

Community Justice Authorities	Local Authorities
Fife and Forth Valley	Fife, Clackmannanshire, Falkirk, Stirling
Glasgow	Glasgow City
Lanarkshire	North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire
Lothian and Borders	City of Edinburgh, East Lothian, Midlothian, West Lothian, Scottish Borders
North Strathclyde	Argyll & Bute, East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Inverclyde, Renfrewshire, West Dunbartonshire
Northern	Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Eilean Siar, Highland, Moray, Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands
South West Scotland	East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire, Dumfries & Galloway
Tayside	Angus, Dundee City, Perth & Kinross

Social Enquiry Reports

10.4 The main purpose of a Social Enquiry Report ( SER) is to provide information about the offender and their background circumstances, prior to sentencing, which helps the court decide how to deal with the case. Reports can be requested by the court for any case but must be requested before imposing a custodial sentence for the first time, or if the offender is under 21 years of age. A court must obtain a SER before making a community service or probation order or a community payback order (with the exception of a community payback order with only a level 1 (100 hours or less) unpaid work or other activity requirement).

10.5 In some cases, supplementary reports may be submitted to the court. These are shorter reports which provide supplementary information (in addition to that previously provided in a SER).

10.6 As described in section 3 of this bulletin, a new style report called the "Criminal Justice Social Work Report" ( CJSW report) was introduced to replace the SER in February 2011 (earlier in some areas). In future bulletins therefore, SERs will be referred to as CJSW reports.

Community Service

10.7 A person 16 years of age or over and convicted of a crime or an offence can be given a Community Service Order ( CSO) to carry out unpaid work in the community. CSOs can only be made by courts as an alternative to a custodial sentence. The court must also be satisfied that four conditions are met:

• the offender must agree to the CSO;
• community service must be available in the area where the offender lives;
• the offender is suitable for community service;
• suitable work is available.

10.8 Community Service Orders are for a minimum of 80 hours up to a maximum of 240 hours under summary procedure and 300 hours under solemn procedure. They must be completed within 12 months.

Probation

10.9 Probation Orders provide one of the opportunities for criminal justice social work services to focus on offending behaviour. Prior consent of the offender is required, and the order should be informed by an Action Plan in which the offender agrees to address their offending behaviour and its underlying causes. Probation Orders can be used very flexibly by the courts and additional conditions can be attached regarding the offender undertaking unpaid work, their place of residence, curfew (including electronic monitoring), financial recompense to the victim or attendance at a specialist programme such as alcohol or drug treatment. The minimum length of a Probation Order is 6 months and the maximum is 3 years.

Supervised Attendance

10.10 Supervised Attendance Orders require an offender who has failed to pay a fine to undertake a programme of designated activities for a specified number of hours. The programme can involve:

• activities of an educational nature;
• activities designed to stimulate interest and encourage the constructive use of time;
• activities involving unpaid work in the community.

10.11 Supervised Attendance Orders run for between 10 and 100 hours (subject to a limit of 50 hours where the outstanding amount is up to £200) as ordered by the court.

Community Payback Orders

10.12 Community Payback Orders ( CPOs) were introduced by the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 and came into effect from 1 February 2011. A CPO can only be imposed in respect of offence(s) committed on or after 1 February 2011. The CPO replaces provisions for CSOs, POs and SAOs and the former Community Reparation order. Other existing court orders including drug treatment and testing orders and restriction of liberty orders remain unchanged.

10.13 As the number of CPOs imposed in 2010-11 was very low, local authorities were not asked to provide details of the numbers commenced in their areas. Instead, data has been collected from the Scottish Court Service which is published on the criminal justice social work datasets page on the Scottish Government website. In 2011-12, local authorities will be asked to submit details of CPOs as part of the aggregate CJS return. The figures from Scottish Court Service are on a slightly different basis from those which will be collected from local authorities. The two sets of figures will not therefore be directly comparable.

10.14 Although the volume of CPOs imposed is expected to increase throughout most of 2011-12, there are still expected to be a large number of CSOs, POs and SAOs imposed in that year. Therefore, in 2011-12, the same data will still be collected from councils for these three predecessor orders.

Drug Treatment and Testing

10.15 The Drug Treatment and Testing Order ( DTTO) is a high tariff disposal for drug misusing offenders who might otherwise receive a custodial sentence. The Order contains features unique to a community disposal, including a requirement for regular reviews by the court and a requirement that the offender consent to frequent random drug tests throughout the lifetime of the Order.

10.16 DTTOs were rolled out across Scotland in phases. Between 1999 and 2002 the Order was rolled out to Glasgow, Fife and Aberdeen. In 2002-03 the Order became available in Edinburgh, Renfrewshire/Inverclyde and Tayside. At present the Order is now available to the High Court, all Sheriff courts in Scotland and the Glasgow Stipendiary Magistrates Court.

Restriction of Liberty

10.17 Restriction of Liberty Orders have been available to High, Sheriff and Stipendiary Courts in Scotland since May 2002. A Restriction of Liberty Order can be imposed for periods of up to one year, and involves restricting an individual to a specified place for up to 12 hours per day and/or from a specified place for up to 24 hours.

10.18 The number of Restriction of Liberty Orders imposed can be sourced from the Criminal Proceedings in Scotland Statistical Bulletin The contract for monitoring compliance with Restriction of Liberty Orders is currently held by Serco Limited. Breach data can be requested from the Scottish Government if required.

Throughcare, Voluntary Assistance, Throughcare Addiction Service and Home Circumstance

10.19 Throughcare is the provision of a range of social work and associated services to prisoners and their families from the point of sentence or remand, during the period of imprisonment and following release into the community. Prisoners serving more than 4 years are released with a statutory obligation that they be supervised. Prisoners serving less than 4 years but who are short-term sex offenders (Section 15 of the Management of Offenders Etc. (Scot) Act 2005) or who are subject to an extended sentence or supervised release order are also supervised on release. Throughcare services have a primary objective of public protection, though they are also concerned with assisting prisoners to prepare for release and helping them to resettle into their community within the law.

10.20 Voluntary assistance is available to prisoners not subject to statutory throughcare supervision on release but who request such a service while in custody or within 12 months of release. From 2005-06, figures on voluntary assistance include the Throughcare Addiction Service ( TAS).

10.21 The Throughcare Addiction Service ( TAS) commenced on 1 August 2005 and forms part of the voluntary aftercare service, which is often referred to as "Phase 2" of the Enhanced Throughcare Strategy. TAS is delivered by local authority criminal justice social work - or by one of their contracted service providers - who will work with the offender in the 6 week period prior to release from custody through the 6 week period post-release. The TAS worker will offer a more intensive motivational service and attempt to help the offender address their addiction (and associated) difficulties and link them into appropriate services. TAS is not normally available to those prisoners who are serving sentences of less than 31 days unless they are within the following two priority groups: female offenders and young male offenders (aged under 21 years). Information on TAS was collected for the first time via the 2005-06 aggregate return.

Diversion from Prosecution

10.22 Social Work Diversion schemes aim to provide persons accused of minor offences with support and advice in relation to problems associated with their offending. In such cases, prosecution is deferred, subject to successful completion of the scheme.

10.23 Bail Information was collected from local authorities for the first time in 2003-04. Bail information records assistance to Procurators Fiscal and courts through verification of information in respect of cases where bail might otherwise have been opposed or refused.

Review of Criminal Justice Social Work Statistics

10.24 A working group was formed in early 2010 to discuss the data which should be collected in the future for criminal justice social work. The group has met nine times up to December 2011 and has agreed to collect data at a unit level basis for CPOs from 2012-13 onwards. The collection of unit, as opposed to aggregate, data will greatly increase the volume and diversity of data available for analysis. Consideration is also being given to collecting data on DTTOs and CJSW reports on a similar unit basis. Papers from the meetings, including agendas and minutes, can be found on the CJSW Review Sharepoint website.

Data quality

10.25 The data obtained from local authorities is considered of good quality as it is obtained from recording systems which the local authorities themselves use to keep information about orders/reports up to date and to produce statistics for their own internal purposes. Nevertheless, the aggregate data which is sent to the Scottish Government is subjected to several validation processes as follows before publication:

(i) Electronic checks are set up within the return to flag up to local authorities any errors such as, for example, where two tables should have the same total but do not,
(ii) Where any of the key totals for the year in question have changed substantially since the previous year, the Scottish Government flags this up with local authorities and asks them to confirm the figures are correct.
(iii) Once data returns from all 32 councils have been received, further work is done to assess any major changes to figures over the most recent three year period. Local authorities are sent a summary of the numbers they have provided for the last three years and are given time to comment on whether they are content with their figures or whether they wish to supply any revised figures.

Uses of the information

10.26 The data collected on criminal justice social work is collected for a wide range of purposes. The statistics help the government to form, monitor and evaluate policy, and to obtain an accurate picture of local authorities' workloads in terms of criminal justice social work activity. Keeping in regular contact with local authorities is also advantageous as this enables the government to ensure they are kept up to date on matters which affect both current and future data collections. Meetings of the Local Authority Social Work Statistics : Criminal Justice ( LASWS: CJ) group are held twice a year to discuss relevant data collection and other matters.

10.27 Some examples detailing how the data is or has been used are:

• To determine annual funding allocations for community justice authorities.
• Figures by local authority and community justice authority area are used to provide comparative data over time to help support workload planning exercises, performance monitoring and the allocation of staff resources.
• To inform the uptake, in terms of sentencing by courts, of specific preferred options in social enquiry reports.
• To inform debate on appropriate punishments for women offenders.
• Local authorities benchmarking the demand on their service with other authorities, to assess any differences in the way different councils operate.

Sources of information

10.28 Form CJS, an aggregate return covering data on Social Enquiry Reports, Community Service Orders and Probation Orders, was introduced for the year ending 31 March 2000. The return is submitted annually by each local authority. Additional data items have been added to the return over time, including:

Supervised Attendance Orders - added from 2000-01
Throughcare (Statutory Post Release Supervision) - added from 2001-02
Diversion from Prosecution - added from 2001-02
Drug Treatment and Testing Orders - added from 2003-04
Bail information - added from 2003-04
Voluntary Assistance - added from 2004-05
Court Services - added from 2004-05
Throughcare Addiction Service - added from 2005-06

The content and format of the return continues to evolve, to reflect new demands for information and to clarify points of definition in relation to particular data items. Some caution should therefore be exercised when making comparisons over time.

10.29 The total population figures used as denominators in this bulletin are the relevant mid-year estimates for 16-70 year olds, as prepared by the National Records of Scotland ( NRS).

10.30 Improvements in data quality are continuing, particularly for figures on breach applications where methodological changes have resulted in better recording of breaches.

10.31 The statistics presented in this bulletin reflect information on social work activity in the financial year April 2010 to March 2011 as known to the Scottish Government at December 2011. They may therefore differ slightly from those published previously, and may be subject to revision in future bulletins in this series.

10.32 Where changes are made to earlier years' figures, this is flagged up at the time of the change but not in future publications. For example, if a change was made to the 2007-08 figures for probation orders at the time of publishing the 2009-10 data, this would be highlighted in the 2009-10 bulletin but would not be mentioned again in any future years' publications.

10.33 Figures in this bulletin on the number of new orders commenced are not collected on the same basis as those published in the Criminal Proceedings bulletin. This is due to recording differences and different geographical breakdowns.

10.34 The following symbols are used throughout the tables in this bulletin:

- Nil *

< 0.1

n/a Not available

10.35 The percentage figures given in tables and charts have been independently rounded, so they may not always sum to the relevant sub-totals or totals.

10.36 Figures are given precisely in the tables but, in the text, they are generally rounded in the following way:

• 1,000 to less than 100,000 - rounded to the nearest 100.
• 100 to less than 1,000 - rounded to the nearest 10.
• Less than 100 - unrounded

Percentage changes between different years which are given in the text are calculated using the unrounded figures.

UK Statistics Authority - Assessment of Criminal Justice Social Work Statistics

10.37 The statistics in this bulletin are all designated as "National Statistics", with the exception of Table 22 (Community Payback Orders Imposed During February and March 2011), which is provisional management information obtained from the Scottish Court Service. As the criminal justice social work statistics are already designated as "National Statistics" under the provisions of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, the UK Statistics Authority has a statutory responsibility to assess whether the Code of Practice for Official Statistics has been complied with in relation to these statistics. Where the Authority determines that the Code has been complied with, it will confirm that the statistics can remain designated as "National Statistics", but otherwise not.

10.38 In fulfilling its statutory remit, the Authority uses the assessment process to identify steps that could be taken to improve the service to users of the statistics, and reports accordingly. In this way, assessment supports the Authority's overall objective, which is to promote and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics that serve the public good. The criminal justice social work statistics and prisons statistics in Scotland have been assessed during 2011 by the UK Statistics Authority, under the banner of "Statistics on Offender Management". The assessment report was published on 28 July 2011 and is available from here (report no. 128): http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/assessment/assessment/assessment-reports/index.html
The report contains seven requirements which the Scottish Government needs to address and report back to the UK Statistics Authority by the end of December 2011 in order to maintain the "National Statistics" designation for these statistics.

Estimated cost of data collection for this publication

10.39 In the 2010-11 statistical return, local authorities were asked to provide estimates of how long it took them to complete their data returns. From the information provided, the cost to councils of supplying and validating the data for this bulletin was estimated at £30,000. Details of the calculation methodology are available on the Scottish Government Crime and Justice Statistics website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/costcalculationstat.