Footnotes
1. Persistency is defined as 3 separate incidents of offending which have resulted in criminal charges within a six-month period. Charges arising from these incidents need not have resulted in a referral by the Reporter to the Children's Panel nor a prosecution.
2. Persistency is defined as 3 separate incidents of offending which have resulted in criminal charges within a six-month period. Charges arising from these incidents need not have resulted in a referral by the Reporter to the Children's Panel nor a prosecution.
3. As a result of turnover 6 Sheriffs in total sat in the Youth Court during this period.
4. The ability to review orders was, however, suspended between 26 July 2005 and 8 February 2006 as a result of an appeal court ruling on the use of probation reviews in another Sheriff Court.
5. The Youth Court Social Workers in North Lanarkshire provide a dedicated service while area team workers also undertake youth justice and adult criminal justice cases as part of their broader remit.
6. Reported in full in Popham et al. (2005)
7. The unique reference number assigned to an individual by the Scottish Criminal Records Office.
8. On the first date sampled a total of 27 cases relating to 30 individuals were brought before the court. The second date yielded a total of 54 cases relating to 57 individuals. The third date saw 59 cases relating to 61 accused brought before the court.
9. Although some questionnaires were completed (9 initial, 12 6-month and 8 12-month) the low numbers precluded any detailed quantitative analysis. Instead we have drawn upon some of the qualitative data from these questionnaires at appropriate points in the report.
10. In Hamilton, interviews were subsequently conducted with social workers to obtain information about young people's progress in individual cases. This was not, however, feasible in Airdrie in light of available resources.
11. Reconvictions but where the offence date involved pre-dates the sentence date of the reference record.
12. Additional dedicated resources, in the form of overtime payments for police officers, were available to enable this to occur.
13. The Lord Advocate's Guidelines require that certain cases are jointly reported to the Reporter and the Procurator Fiscal. The categories of offences which are to be reported to procurators fiscal with a view to possible prosecution are:
Category 1: very serious offences e.g. treason, murder, rape, assault and robbery using firearms
Category 2: offences alleged to have been committed by children aged 15 years or over which in the event of conviction oblige or permit a court to order disqualification from driving
Category 3: offences alleged to have been committed by children over the age of 16 and under 18 years who are subject to a supervision requirement of a children's hearing.
However any case may be reported to the Procurators Fiscal if the police are of the opinion that for special reasons, which must be stated, prosecution might be considered. The Procurator Fiscal has discretion to pass suitable cases to the Reporter. Only the Lord Advocate can authorise criminal proceedings against a child under 16 (The Children's Hearings System in Scotland 2003 Training Resource Manual 2nd edition, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/education/chtm-13.asp#3).
14. This is the maximum number of cases. The number of cases varies during the discussions of different parts of the Youth Court process due to missing data.
15. Although the Procurators Fiscal in Airdrie did not formally apply the persistency criterion, they nonetheless indicated for the researchers whether or not individual cases met this criterion.
16. (Airdrie Sheriff Youth Court, 2004)
17. The type of court in which the case would be prosecuted was not recorded.
18. Please see footnote Thirteen for an overview of the Lord Advocate's Guidelines.
19. The maximum number of referrals was 9 in Hamilton and 8 in Airdrie (one young person each).
20. This was the sample upon which the reconviction analysis reported in Chapter 5 was based. The information provided by the Justice Statistics Unit of the Scottish Executive included details of previous adult convictions.
21. The data for Airdrie and Hamilton are not directly comparable since the Hamilton data, being older historically, is likely to be more complete.
22. As shall be seen from the data provided by SCRA, young people in Airdrie were more likely than those in Hamilton to have had one or more previous referrals to the Reporter on offence grounds.
23. A further 17 cases included in the data gave a suggested RAD number along with a note that the dates of birth on the SCRA system and the Youth Court co-ordinator's database did not match. As the veracity of these entries was unconfirmed, these were not included in the analyses presented.
24. Given the relatively recent roll-out of RAD this may underestimate the number referred to the Reporter at some point in their lives.
25. This category includes violent crimes that would be dealt with on petition.
26. It should be noted that these were young people made subject to supervision through the Youth Courts and were not, therefore, representative of all young people dealt with by these courts.
27. This included all young people in that authority for whom an initial SER had been requested by the court (June 2003 - December 2004).
28. In 6 cases the young person was said to have achieved some qualification but further details were not provided.
29. This was all SER requests made to the Airdrie social work office between July and December 2005.
30. Some young people had more than one problem identified, whereas some had none. Percentages do not therefore add to 100.
31. In cases involving 15 year olds hearings are held in closed court.
32. The court was busy because it only sat on one day per week and dealt with a large volume of cases.
33. Following the assault of a young person outside the courtroom a second police officer was brought in to help maintain order in the court.
34. 44 referrals were ongoing. The remaining percentages are based on 567 referrals ( i.e. excluding these cases).
35. Twenty-nine referrals were ongoing. In addition, 7 other cases had been transferred into the Youth Court for sentence, 8 had been transferred out of the court before guilt was established and 6 involved new petition cases. The remaining percentages are based on 493 referrals ( i.e. excluding these 50 cases).
36. Six of these young people had been made subject to electronic monitoring twice: 5 for separate referrals to the court and one at different points during the same referral.
37. The figures in this section all relate to calendar days rather than working days.
38. This information was not routinely being recorded by the Procurators Fiscal but was provided as additional information in a sample of cases to enable the relevant timescales to be calculated.
39. Due to the relatively small number of cases for which a charge date was available and the susceptibility of mean averages to be skewed by the presence of outliers, medians are used when discussing charge dates from the Airdrie data supplied by the Procurator Fiscal. Other data ( e.g.PF referral dates, dates from co-ordinator's database) proved less problematic and are, therefore, reported using means.
40. Because how subsequent referrals were dealt with is likely to have been influenced by whether or not they were already subject to an order from the Youth Court.
41. Twenty-two cited referrals were ongoing. In addition, 7 other cases had been transferred into the Youth Court for sentence, 5 had been transferred out of the court before guilt was established and 2 involved new petition cases. The remaining percentages are based on 283 cited referrals ( i.e. excluding these 36 cases).
42. As discussed in footnote 39, medians were used in reporting charge date-related time periods in the Youth Court. Therefore, although the means for the adult courts are included (they proved not to be susceptible to skewness due to outliers), where appropriate, medians are also reported for the purposes of comparison.
43. Twenty-two cases were ongoing for various reasons, such as outstanding warrants, failures to attend etc. The remaining percentages are based on 126 cited cases ( i.e. excluding these 22 cases).
44. These reports are required prior to the imposition of a custodial sentence or a community-based social work disposal such as probation.
45. Youth Level of Service/Case Management Instrument and Level of Service Inventory - Revised. The former was used with young people who were at school or who had left school within the previous 6 months: the latter was used with other young people.
46. The recruitment incentives provided by North Lanarkshire Council in the face of a national staff shortage are likely to have assisted with the recruitment of dedicated Youth Court staff.,
47. Discussion of the issue mainly took place in the Implementation Group which did not always have a social work representative in attendance and on which front line workers were not represented.
48. Although the practice of making recommendations was previously common, the latest version of the National Standards for SERs suggests that social workers should refrain from doing so. The Sheriffs in the Hamilton Youth Court were content for social workers to offer a recommendation where appropriate.
49. Includes 27 structured deferred sentences.
50. Although 500 referrals had resulted in a conviction, sentence had yet to be passed in 47 cases.
51. A further 10 referrals resulted in a CSO being imposed without an accompanying Probation Order.
52. Unfortunately, although the date of the breach hearing was recorded on the Youth Court database, the date of submission of the breach application was not. It was not, therefore, possible to identify how quickly breach applications were processed.
53. These do not correspond directly to the problems identified in Table 4.8 since the latter were not necessarily assessed as being linked to the young person's offending.
54. Temporary Youth Court social workers were in post by March 2005 and by December 2005 Coatbridge, Cumbernauld and Airdrie all had permanent dedicated Youth Court social workers.
55. The power of review extended to Probation Orders, deferred sentences and DTTOs.
56. This occurred after the end of the evaluation period in Hamilton.
57. Legislative provision for the conducting of probation review hearings was subsequently introduced through Section 12 of the Management of Offenders etc. (Scotland) Act 2005 with effect from 8 February 2006.
58. The figures were supplied by the Justice Statistics Unit towards the end of the evaluation. The sentencing data for 2005 and likely to be incomplete and the data for 2003-4 are still provisional.
59.These data are not complete however this is the first full year in which the Youth Court was operational.
60. see description in Chapter 2 of this report.
61. This was assumed to be after half of the sentence imposed had been served.
62. Fifty-five per cent of Youth Court cases were first offenders compared with 70% in Hamilton Sheriff Summary, 77% in Ayr and 69% in Falkirk. The mean number of previous convictions was 2.1, 0.8, 0.5 and 0.9 respectively.
63. It should be noted this data may be seasonally affected due to the timescale for the survey.
65. It should be noted that this sample is not representative of all the individuals who were subject to social work intervention.
66. 12 others did not attend any sessions and 8 failed to complete.
67. 'The Economic and Social Costs of Crime', Home Office Research Study 217, 2000 ( HORS 217).
68. This is based on the audited accounts and is lower than the funding allocation by the Scottish Executive (£1,488,350).
69. The costing covers a period prior to the suspension of review hearings. It is therefore assumed that probation orders were being regularly reviewed.
70. 12% of £1,363,125.
71. There was an average of 201 deferred sentences over a 12 month period. Precise information about the proportion that were structured deferred sentences is not available. Here we assume that they represented one third of all deferments for three months or more.
72. Assuming a 2.5% inflator.
73. Comparable data are not available for Hamilton non Youth Court cases.
74. The latest published Scottish Crime Survey (McVie et al, 2004) covers an earlier period than that covered by the Hamilton survey.