No imprisonment for fine defaults, says commission

Sentencing Commission promotes supervised attendance orders as alternative

News, 5 June 2006

The Sentencing Commission for Scotland has recommended that those defaulting on fines of less than £5,000 be spared prison.

The proposal is part of its report, "The Basis on which Fines are Determined", published today.

The main recommendations include:

that offenders who can demonstrate that their total disposable income is extremely low or the imposition of a fine would bring it to an extremely low level should not be fined and should receive, for example, a supervised attendance order or a community reparation order;
that offenders who default on a fine up to £5,000 should not be imprisoned for default but should have a supervised attendance order imposed;
that the penalty for breach of a supervised attendance order should be increased so that up to three months' imprisonment may be imposed.

The commission's chairman Lord Macfadyen said: "The fine is the most frequently used penalty in our criminal courts, though its use has declined in recent times as the number of sanctions for criminal behaviour has increased.

"We do not consider that there is at present a compelling case to change the existing system governing the imposition of fines in this country. While a number of jurisdictions in Europe operate a system of unit or day fines, we do not consider that a simple, reliable and cost-effective means of obtaining information on offenders' income currently exists in Scotland. The availability of such information is vital to the success of any such system.

"We do consider, however, that changes should be made to handling cases where an offender defaults on a fine and to cases where it is apparent that an offender has very little or no means to pay a financial penalty.

"In all such cases we consider that the offender should be made the subject of a supervised attendance order (SAO), and only if he or she breaches such an order should imprisonment be an option for the court."