Meeting of the Parliament 03 December 2015
On the budget, I cannot speak for the justice secretary, but I know that across government we are looking carefully at the monitoring of sex offenders. I will talk later about some of the things that we are doing to help with that monitoring, but the justice secretary mentioned what is happening with surveillance and the report of the expert advisory group. Moreover, the Scottish Sentencing Council is looking at sentencing tariffs.
As everyone has recognised, this is a difficult area, but we want to reduce the risks as far as possible. We all have experience in our constituencies of the rehousing of sex offenders who have been released into the community, and the problem is fraught. However, we have to reintegrate such offenders into the community, as we do with other offenders who are released from prison.
In common with other offenders, registered sex offenders generally return to their own communities, unless there are exceptional circumstances that might mean increased risk to the community. That might cover the point that Christine Grahame raised. I make it clear that there are flexibilities in the system to allow local authorities to work with and come to an agreement with other areas, but they still have to take responsibility for knowing where sex offenders are and for following the monitoring and surveillance procedures.
The thematic inspection found that, in the two-year period from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2014, 86 per cent of sex offenders who were released returned to the same type of housing and 73 per cent returned to the same or a neighbouring community. When a sex offender is placed outside their own local authority area, the aim is to increase the community’s safety, not to protect the offender’s anonymity. At all times, the approach is about protecting the community.
The Scottish Government will continue to take steps to ensure that Scotland has in place a strong legislative framework with robust monitoring arrangements and agencies working together. The justice secretary is certainly looking at that, and we are looking across government at how we can all work together on the many different ways to make our communities safer.
I know that this has been an extremely difficult debate, but it has given members the opportunity to raise genuine concerns that are shared across the chamber by members of every party, including me. We have listened to what has been said about this distressing subject. I hope that we are illustrating that we take the issue seriously. I hope that Margaret Ann Cummings, her supporters and members of the public will recognise what we are doing, the strength of the arrangements for managing the risk that offenders pose and our commitment to ensuring that we work as effectively as we can across the country, in line with some of the other things that we are doing on sentencing, surveillance and other aspects of the justice system, including civil action against sexual harm.
All of that should give some reassurance that we are doing everything that we can. However, we are open to all ideas and suggestions. If we can improve things, we certainly will.
13:10 Meeting suspended.