Justice Secretary calls for greater use of electronic tags for suspects

The Justice Secretary, Michael Matheson, has said suspected criminals could be electronically tagged instead of being held on remand, The Sunday Post reports.

About 1,000 of Scotland’s 8,000 prisoners are on remand but up to half of those individuals are not handed custodial sentences, according to analysis by the Scottish government.

Scottish Legal News revealed in November last year that the 140 day rule – the period within which a trial must begin – was being routinely ignored, with prisoners stuck in remand wings for up to 10 months. And, at the beginning of this year, the Lord President, Lord Carloway, called into question the survival of the rule – describing it as a “narrow window” and asking whether it “is sustainable or in accord with modern principles of fairness or justice”.

Mr Matheson has said that if the SNP are returned to power the government would make moves towards greater use of community-based sentences and smaller prisons and would attempt to end the cycle of re-offending through education.

He said: “Only something like 40 per cent of those who get remanded in custody end up getting a custodial sentence.

“It appears to me that this is a group where, for some individuals, electronic monitoring would be a lot more effective than actually putting someone in prison for a short period of time when they won’t even get a custodial sentence at the end of it.

“This goes back to something which goes much deeper, and that is a review of how we use custody and how that needs to change and reform, because from what I can see it hasn’t really changed in the last 200 or so years.”

The Justice Secretary added that a plan to track sex offenders with GPS technology would happen “sooner rather than later” but that he wanted to ensure the software was fit for purpose first.

In January this year, the Scottish Consortium on Crime and Criminal Justice (SCCCJ) called for greater use of electronic tagging to ease the strain on remand wings.

It said at the time: “Many of those remanded will either be found ‘not guilty’ or will receive a non-custodial sentence. This raises the question of why they were remanded in custody in the first place.

“Overcrowding is an issue in the accommodation of remand prisoners, and overcrowding poses a number of problems. Remanding an individual in custody is one of the most expensive ways of monitoring them prior to trial.

“In terms of efforts to reduce the use of remand, electronically monitored bail should be revisited. It seems strange we resort to custodial remand when EM is available as a means of control that is less stigmatising, allows the maintenance of relationships, employment, training, and is far less expensive.”