Fine defaulters won't face jail

Non-payers of fines up to £500 will instead be given community sentences

News, 20 December 2006

Those defaulting on fines of less than £500 will receive community sentences instead of going to prison from summer 2007.

Under the new approach announced by the Scottish Executive today, offenders will have to spend up to 100 hours undertaking activity such as unpaid work or financial management training.

More than 3,000 individuals are currently admitted to jail every year for failure to pay their fines, including hundreds of women.

The move follows a broadly positive evaluation of pilot projects set up in Glasgow District Stipendiary Magistrates Court and Ayr Sheriff Court. The projects saw the removal of the courts' powers to impose custodial sentences on those defaulting on fines of up to £500. Instead, offenders had to complete a supervised attendance order.

The evaluation found that during the time of the pilot, no offenders were sentenced to custody solely as a result of defaulting on a fine and the number of offenders in Scotland imprisoned for this reason fell from 4,168 in 2003-04 to 3,231 in 2005-06.

The number of women imprisoned by Glasgow District Court for offences including fine default during the course of the pilot dropped by about 60% - from 170 to 67.

The main negative impact of the pilot was the high number of breaches in Glasgow, although the Executive said the level of breaches stabilised and fell over the last few months of the pilot, as new measures were introduced to address this.

Benefit to women

Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson believes the roll-out of the pilot will be of particular benefit to women.

She said: "Very short prison sentences of a few days achieve little. Smart options such as Supervised Attendance Orders, which have been used by courts across Scotland since 1998, provide the opportunity for a more constructive approach.

"I believe there could be particular benefits for women who get into difficulties - people with family responsibilities who may have got themselves into financial trouble through addiction or skills problems. I now want to see the positive aspects of the pilot courts replicated more widely across the country."

Apex Scotland was involved with the initiatives in Glasgow and Ayrshire to pilot supervised attendance orders.

Its chief executive Bernadette Monaghan said: "The SAO is not explicitly aimed at progressing people into employment. However, in addition to completing it, 82 people in the Glasgow pilot also moved on to employment, education or training, with 41 securing full-time jobs."

However, a number of sheriffs criticised the policy. One called it "a gross interference in sentencing", and another said the measures proposed were hardly a deterrent.

The evaluation of the implementation of the mandatory SAO pilot schemes is available at: www.scotland.gov.uk/publications .