Criminals waiting months to start community payback order work placements
Criminals given community payback order (CPO) work placements are routinely waiting longer than the SNP’s own target of 7 days before starting their work placements.
Statistics have revealed that over 4,000 convicted criminals waited more than the maximum 7 days to start unpaid work – a third of the total work requirements imposed.
Additional figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives under Freedom of Information legislation show that hundreds of offenders wait months to start their work placements.
Indeed, 800 offenders had to wait over one month and almost 1,000 had to wait over two months to start work placements, with the longest wait clocking in at 475 days.
While the number of CPOs with unpaid work or other activity requirement decreased last year, it is still almost 2,000 higher than in 2012, and the number of criminals waiting longer than 7 days to start activity has also increased by 500.
This is just the latest drop in the percentage of criminals starting work orders on time in the last three years, as 74.8 per cent of offenders began within 7 days in 2013-14 versus only 67.2 percent who started within this time in 2016-17.
The Scottish Conservatives have previously raised concerns that the system cannot cope and that the delays themselves damage the rehabilitation prospects of those involved.
Scottish Conservative shadow justice secretary Liam Kerr said:
“These delays paint a picture of a system that is already over-capacity.
“While a third of criminals are not starting work orders within a week, we also know that a third of work orders are also failing to be completed.
“These systemic failures are harming criminals’ opportunities to be rehabilitated and shows that the current system is over-capacity.
“Despite all these failures the SNP is ploughing on with their plans to scrap prison sentences of less than a year.
“This will mean that thousands more criminals, including many convicted of domestic abuse, would receive CPOs and fines instead of a jail term.
“More convicted criminals are therefore entering a system that has no capacity.
“This SNP plan will simply compound the delays and lack of completions leading to a justice system that serves the criminal rather than the victim.”