Justice Committee

Inquiry into Community Policing

Last Tuesday the Committee took its final session of evidence in the community policing inquiry. Their first witness was the Chief Inspector of Constabulary for England and Wales, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, who recently published ‘The Review of Policing’, part of which reviewed the recent introduction of 30,000 dedicated officers and community support officers for community policing teams throughout England and Wales.

He begun by saying that his definition of ‘successful’ community policing is when there are designated teams of officers in neighbourhoods that are known to those who live there, and which work in partnership with the community to address the priorities which they have had a role in defining. He said that community policing should not be seen as an ‘adjunct’ to policing, but should instead be considered as an integral part of it bringing together local, force, regional and national policing.

He said that ‘policing’ is too important and has too great an impact on people’s lives, to be left to the police alone. He argued that neighbourhood policing should therefore be an integral part of neighbourhood management and governance, working together with agencies. He said that one of the most effective ways of ensuring partnership working between agencies in England and Wales was through the introduction of crime and disorder reduction partnerships.

He also said that introducing neighbourhood policing required a ‘cultural shift’. He was asked about the abstraction of officers from the community they are assigned to, an issue that has come up many times during this inquiry, and he said that he recommended a two year minimum tenure for those involved in neighbourhood policing, to ensure consistency, and he argued that neighbourhood policing ought to be so valued, that there should be no reason why constables could not have a fulfilling occupation by remaining in neighbourhood policing for their entire career. 

He was asked about how to effectively ‘engage with communities’, and he agreed with a Committee member who said that there was often a danger that those who are heard are simply those who shout the loudest. He said that, although occasions such as public meetings are important for allowing people to express their voice, particularly if they represent a minority view, there should also always be other ways of gauging what the wider public think, such as through the use of regular surveys.

The Committee then heard from Strathclyde Chief Constable Stephen House, and Chief Superintendent Anne McGuire, Head of Community Policing Implementation. Chief Superintendent McGuire said there are currently nearly 600 community officers in Strathclyde, rising to 1,000 by Christmas. This has been made possible by changes in funding priorities on a local authority level, and the Government’s commitment to increase police recruitment. She also said there has also been a new emphasis on community policing with the appointment of the new Chief Constable, and there was evidence that the public wanted more officers on the beat that they could recognise and identify with. She said that their model was based on three key principles. The first was visibility, whereby all officers are either on foot or on bicycles, and they aimed for as little abstraction as possible. Secondly, there had to be community engagement, which involved listening to the public’s concerns, making them the priorities to be addressed, and then providing feedback to the community. And thirdly was the principle of problem solving which involved working together with partner agencies and also together with the community.

The witnesses spoke about how they determine what priorities are, and they said they do this by a combination of public meetings and an examination of their own crime statistics. They also said that it was important that community police officers are more than simply a reassuring presence, they also need to operate a ‘hard edged’ approach, whereby officers are ‘in the face’ of people who do not want to see more police, as well as providing a visual presence to those who do. The Chief Constable said that there was a distinction between this sort of policing and other diversionary work, often carried out with young people, that community officers in other parts of Scotland often carry out.

He said that, although a number of his officers have won awards for the diversionary schemes they have established, these sorts of activities need to be shared to a much greater extent with other agencies, both local authority and the voluntary sector. The witnesses also said that community police officers work closely together with neighbourhood wardens, however, because each local authority adopts a different approach to wardens giving them different training and powers, it was difficult to incorporate their role into the model in an explicit way.

The final panel before the Committee this morning consisted of the Justice Secretary and Alastair Merrill, Deputy Director, Police Powers, Performance and Resources, Scottish Government. Mr McAskill spoke about the Government’s ‘community policing engagement model’, which has been developed alongside stakeholders from the police and local authority, which have recently been endorsed and approved as an agreed model of community policing to use across Scotland. The Justice Secretary said that the model does not promote a single template of community policing, rather, each force must be able to develop their own approach which is tailored to their specific area, although there should also be parameters within which community policing should operate.

It was up to the Government to create a ‘description and not a precise definition’ of community policing, and that but he said that local flexibility needed to operate within national principles and parameters. He said that particular aspects of community policing, such as models of community engagement, are operational matters that should be determined by each police force.  He was pressed by members of the Committee on a variety of issues, including the minimum tenure an officer should serve in each locality, and whether community officers should be red-circled to avoid abstraction, but he repeatedly said that such matters were for each individual force to decide on themselves.

He was more willing to talk on the issue of the need for partnership working, saying that the police cannot do everything do provide safety, but it is up to them to judge what they can and cannot do, and to work with partner agencies when necessary. He said that the Government’s model will allow chief constables to set standards against which public expectations can be set, but he said that because the policing requirement in each area will vary so significantly, it would not be wise for central government to dictate what these standards should be. 

You can read more about the Community Policing Engagement Model in the Letter from the Cabinet Secretary for Justice (355KB posted 23.06.2008)

See also the community policing inquiry homepage

You can also read the full transcripts of this meeting in the You can read the transcripts in the Official Report, or you can watch it on Holyrood.TV for up to one month.

That concluded evidence taken as part of this inquiry during this session.

The Chamber

Debate on Alcohol Policy

The Government published its consultation document on alcohol misuse a couple of weeks ago, which proposed a number of radical measures aimed at curbing problem drinking, including:

• Raising the minimum age for off-sales alcohol purchases to 21
• Setting a minimum price at which a unit of alcohol can be sold
• Ending ‘three for the price of two’ type promotions
• A ‘social responsibility fee’ for some alcohol retailers to help pay for the consequences of alcohol misuse
• Introducing alcohol-only checkouts in large off-sales premises

The reactions to the proposals have been varied, with the alcohol industry in particularly being vocally opposed. Last Wednesday, the Government’s proposals faced Parliamentary scrutiny for the first time with a debate on the strategy held in the Chamber. In line with their attempts to pitch this issue within a broader context than criminal justice issue, the debate was lead by the Minister for Public Health, Shona Robison.

She began by outlining the reasons that the Government’s radical approaches were needed, quoting figures on the costs of alcohol misuse to the nation’s health, to the economy, and also the social costs, including family breakdown and children’s education. She said that anyone who is drinking too much runs the risk of suffering from alcohol related harm, not only binge drinkers, and she said that 50% of men and 30% of women are regularly drinking more than the specified amount for sensible drinking.

She argued that the Government is not anti alcohol, it is anti alcohol misuse, and she said that she wanted to stimulate discussion and debate across Scotland about how best to address the problem. She said that the problem could not be addressed through one measure alone, it required a multifaceted approach, involving a range of interventions ‘designed to support a fundamental shift in culture’. She made no apologies for the bold proposals, saying that although many of the proposals are controversial, the Government is prepared to listen to all the views of those who will respond and keep an open mind at this stage

She said that the evidence suggests that levels of alcohol consumption are closely linked to the retail price of alcohol, and that alcohol is now over 60% cheaper than it was in 1980, and she argued that the proposals to impose a limited price per unit of alcohol, and to end three for two discounts, ought to address the issue of cheap sales of alcohol.

Pauline McNeill (Labour), said that her party was keen to ‘toughen up further’ to tackle alcohol misuse, and to work constructively with the Government on proposals if they believed they were workable and based in evidence. However, she argued that the Government had not engaged in any pre-consultation discussions with Opposition parties or to attempt any sort of consensus as they had done with their drugs policy. She accused the Government of taking a ‘crusade’ against alcohol, rather than creating a suitable ‘tone’ for debate, and she said parts of their proposals were extreme, not evidence based, and could be viewed as somewhat of a gimmick.

She argued that rather than create new laws, it would be better to concentrate on enforcing the laws that were already in place, and she said that Government backtracking from a strong enforcement agenda on antisocial behaviour was becoming a recurring theme. She spoke specifically about legislation which prosecutes off-licences which sell alcohol to those who are under 18, which, she argued, is not properly implemented now, and she said her party would like to modify the Licensing Act 2005 so that the licences of those who repeatedly sell alcohol to underage people can be removed. She also said that evidence about young people and alcohol show that there is a bigger problem amongst 15 year olds rather than the 18-21 age group, and she said that a bad law will be ignored if people think it is unfair, and they will feel justified in getting around it.

Mary Scanlon (Conservative)said that there are many mixed messages in the public domain about safe amounts of alcohol consumption, which ought to be simplified. She also argued that it is wrong to assume that just because someone bought three bottles of wine for the price of two, they will consume all three in the time it would have taken them to drink only two. She welcomed proposals to increase support for families which are affected by alcohol misuse, and also plans to create designated places of safety for people who are drunk. She called on schools and teachers to play their part in promoting young people’s self-esteem, which she argued played a role in binge drinking amongst young people, and she agreed with Pauline McNeil (Lab) that the biggest problem lay not with those aged 18-21, but with those aged 12-15.

Ross Finnie (Liberal Democrats) welcomed large sections of the report, including those relating to the additional investment for people with alcohol addiction, and including schools in attempts to bring about a ‘cultural shift’. He said that the pricing of cheap alcohol has a large role to play in problematic alcohol consumption, and therefore plans to address this issue were welcome. However, plans to increase the minimum price of alcohol required more scrutiny, although they contained some merit. He said that supermarket’s claims to have corporate social responsibility have so far not stretched to acknowledging the damaging impact of alcohol in society, but he also said that the Government needed to do more work to bring supermarkets onside.

MSPs spoke about the anomalies in the legislation, which would mean that someone could get married at 16, fight in conflicts with the armed forces at 18, buy alcohol in pubs and cigarettes in shops at 18, but not buy alcohol in off-licences until they were 21. MSPs also sought to protect, as they saw it, the right for responsible adults to be able to make decisions about purchasing alcohol sensibly, and the fact that many lower income people may benefit from promotional offers such as three-for-two drink deals. The pilot scheme in the town of Armadale, in which off-licences co-operated and raised the age limit of selling alcohol to 21, was also mentioned. Many did acknowledge that according to the police this scheme had reduced anti-social behaviour, it was also acknowledged that the scheme that operated was both small in scale and in duration. Several members were also very sceptical about plans to create a minimum price per unit of alcohol, and it was pointed out that both Buckfast and alcopops, two of the drinks most associated with underage drinking, would not be covered by such legislation.

Closing the debate, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice welcomed the tone of the contributions, and he repeated that the Government was eager to hear all views on the subject. He said that although some may favour tough enforcement, the Government favoured tough measures to address problems before they arise. He recognised that there were anomalies in the proposals with relation to age, but he argued that there are different age restrictions currently in place for a wide range of entitlements, such as conditions attached to driving licenses, and he said that there was no one age of civic responsibility. He concluded by saying that although education and culture must change, this has been said for generations and now it was time to take action because it was no longer acceptable to do nothing.

That concluded the debate, and the Government will return to this issue following the summer recess and a consideration of the responses it has received to the consultation. You can read the full transcripts of this debate in the Official Report, or you can watch it on Holyrood.TV.

General Questions

Summary Justice Reforms

Pauline McNeil (Lab) asked the Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, about reported concerns about the recently introduced summary justice reforms which have widened the types of cases which can be diverted from prosecution by the fiscal through the imposition of a fiscal fine. There have been stories in the press and previous questions in parliament about the inappropriate use of this sanction in certain cases, and in her question Ms. McNeil asked the Lord Advocate to confirm reports in which cases of domestic violence and serious assaults have been diverted from prosecution, which goes against the intention of legislation.

The Lord Advocate replied that the legislation only came into force in March this year, and is clearly therefore still in its infancy. She said that the guidelines issued to the procurator fiscal still allows them a degree of discretion, that this was crucial to the independence of the prosecution system in Scotland, and that the decisions of prosecutors should not be guided by politicians or the newspapers. However, she emphasised that the guidelines do state that cases of domestic violence and serious assault should not be dealt with by fiscal fines, and that if a fiscal takes inappropriate decisions or make errors in implementing guidance, she would ensure that action is taken.

In response to a supplementary question by Christian McKelvie (SNP), she also hinted that the various stories that have appeared in the press about the use of fiscal fines, may have been prompted by solicitors who have lost business as a result of the summary justice reforms. You can read this question in the Official Report, or you can watch it on Holyrood.TV.

First Minister’s Questions

Knife possession sentencing

Wendy Alexander used what turned out to be her last question as leader of the Opposition during First Minister’s questions, to ask Alex Salmond about the Government’s plans to tackle Scotland’s ‘blade culture’. Ms Alexander was suffering from a sore throat however, so her deputy, Joanne Lamont took over. The question was prompted by a petition submitted to the Parliament that day by the family of a man who was stabbed to death by someone who had several previous convictions for carrying a blade. The family behind the petition were in the Chamber for FMQs, and they have engaged with the media as part of their campaign to have mandatory sentences for knife crime.

Ms Jamieson also pressed the First Minister on whether he would create a sentencing council as the SNP had promised in their manifesto, and she said that if such a council were to be created, it should have a mechanism to allow the voices of the victims and their families to be considered. She accused the Government of inaction on this issue and pressed the First Minister to address it as soon as Parliament reconvenes after the summer recess.

In reply, Alex Salmond confirmed that the Government will publish a criminal justice bill in the next session of Parliament, and he said that mandatory sentencing for knife crime will be one of the measures that they consider as part of this Bill. He confirmed his commitment to creating a sentencing council, and he said that the much anticipated McLeish commission report will play a role in rationalising sentencing policy. You can read this question Official Report, or you can watch it on Holyrood.TV.
This provided a suitable conclusion to an extremely interesting session of Parliament, with a small hint of what to expect following the summer recess.

Written Questions

There were questions this week about the number of anti-social behaviour orders issued since 1999, and about the Serious Organised Crime Taskforce. There was a question about the Government’s response to a report about
keeping DNA samples, and there was a question in which the Justice Secretary was able to announce plans to extend the pilot domestic violence abuse court, and a further question giving the Secretary the opportunity to discuss human rights claims, and finally, a question about the number of community service orders that can be imposed before a sentence of imprisonment can be given.