���˿���

I will not take too long. I commend the committee for spending a lot of time on the issue. The story from Russell Findlay was interesting, and it reminded me of the session that the committee held in private and anonymously with people who had similar experiences. All committee members sat in on various groups and listened to some of the stories, so we have already heard such points from others—the similarities are striking. To this day, I still have strong thoughts about the couple of individuals who I met and the sorry state of affairs that they were in. They were grown men who were broken as a result of the system.

There are lots of warm words, as I would expect to read in such a response from Police Scotland, and I do not doubt for a second that there are senior staff in the organisation who want to do something about the issue and who take it seriously—nobody wishes ill on their employees. However, what has come through is that a lot of buzzwords are being used but there is nothing that addresses some of the underlying factors and recurring themes that the committee has heard about and that I would like to be addressed.

There are some specific and clear issues. I said that I was not going to be long, but here I go with lists, convener. The first, which is important, is the churn of higher ranking officers, which seems to lead to huge issues around change management in the organisation. We heard direct experience of the effect on officers when someone new comes in with a new direction of travel and says, “It’s my way or the highway.” That has an effect on junior ranking members of staff, who not only do not have the confidence to challenge it but are in an organisation in which that is actively frowned upon—it is a hierarchical organisation.

The second issue is the poorly organised human resources support and processes. That has emerged in some of the protocol failures that we have heard about around disciplinary matters.

The third issue is the management of long-term sickness. Some officers feel that they are just seen as problematic, especially if they do not have a physical injury. People with physical injuries are perhaps dealt with more positively by their peers or by management, because the injury can be seen and it is perhaps seen as a sign of bravery and service. However, being off for mental ill-health, which is an injury in its own right as a by-product of the job, is somehow seen as a weakness. That is affecting people and the mental health support is clearly inadequate.

I notice that there is to be a retendering for the employee assistance programme, which will kick in next April, so it is about a year away. However, that is just a phone number, with someone in an outsourced call centre at the end of the line. I think that they need to up their game on that. However, it really comes down to the point that I made in the first part of the meeting: the fact that they are working with reduced officer and resource levels clearly adds pressure.

We know that we are losing people with experience at the top end, so we have a lot of younger officers who feel that they are getting chucked out on the front line to deal with traumatic situations much more quickly, which was confirmed to me when I went to the SPF event across the road recently. Of course, the officers will have to deal with some horrendous things as part of the job, but they are doing that in their first couple of weeks—they have been in training and suddenly they are dealing with suicides and turning up to other horrendous situations.

It is about both the volume and the type of workload, which has massively changed, as we know. I do not think that anything has been done to address that problem, which goes back to the collaboration issue and the need to remove some of those tasks from front-line officers. You will not solve the problem until front-line officers are able to just do what they are supposed to be doing. The problem is that they are spending their whole day, every day, dealing with quite severe mental health situations that they are clearly taking home with them.

Until we have a much more fundamental and honest conversation about the workload, the volume and the type of work that they are asked to do, I do not really think that we will fix the problem—all that we are doing is tinkering around the edges of how we support police officers when they do have a problem. It is always better to prevent than cure, convener.

I feel that there were welcome words in the responses, but not enough detail.

I have a question that someone can come back to me on.

At the moment, the process seems to be that an inquiry into the unfortunate suicide of a serving officer—I am talking about the police in particular, as opposed to the other emergency services—can arise only if the Crown decides to hold an FAI. Is there another, perhaps legislative, top-down solution, that would mandate some other form of automatic inquiry into such a situation? I do not know what the situation is in England and Wales, which is a different legislative landscape. I am not saying for a second that we should mandate the Lord Advocate to do X Y or Z—although that is always a solution; laws can do that. However, there might be some other form of investigation that could take place or that would have to take place that could be followed by a full-on FAI, if that was what the Crown so decided. In the meantime, it seems to be all or nothing and in far too many cases it is nothing.

It is a difficult issue, because we do not have different institutions for different types of offences or different types of people. In that respect, it is very much a one-size-fits-all environment. This goes back to my previous question. If custody has to be the disposal that is used, could we make those places better, or could we use other places? Have you done any research into other national models, for example? Do you have any experiences that you want to share with us?

In the committee, we have talked a lot about the differences between those who are held on remand and those who are convicted. I appreciate that there is a legal difference between the two states but, clearly, they come with differing approaches as to what people have access to, what their rights are and what can or cannot be asked of them or offered to them. Does that need to change, too?

It does. Thank you very much.

Gerald Michie, you are in that environment day in, day out, and you will have a lot of experience of the types of people who come in to be under your care. You may have heard the feedback from our previous witness about what she thought the different cohorts of people were. From your experience, do you believe that a young offenders institution as an environment is the right place for the types of people who are being placed into custody there, or would you like to be able to do more in certain areas, but you are perhaps restricted by people’s legal status, for example?

How do you define “children”?

Which part of the establishment will they transfer from?

The problem is that, if the bill were passed tomorrow, we could not move those people to secure accommodation because there is no capacity. Capacity is being used up by people from authorities in other parts of the UK that are paying more. There would need to be a pretty substantial change to secure accommodation in order to accommodate that direction of travel.

I guess that I am trying to work out what the role of our young offenders institutions is, because there seems to be opposition at both ends of the argument. Some think that people who are old enough to be in adult prisons can be in YOIs but that people at the lower end of the age spectrum absolutely should not be in them at all. It is difficult to see what their place in the justice system is.

To present a scenario, is it appropriate for a 24-year-old adult male who has committed a serious sexual assault or rape to be held in a young offenders institution? Equally, is it appropriate for an 18-year-old who has committed the same offence, and is of sound mind, to be held in secure accommodation? Are you saying that it would be okay as long as they are separate from children—or from other younger children? I guess that there is a moral and philosophical question about how we treat people. Everyone is an individual, and where they are in the system is unique. I am trying to get my head round how we can use arbitrary rules to deal with quite complex individual cases.

Good morning. I thank Linda Allan for coming and for sharing her experience. It has been a horrific couple of years for you and your family, and it is brave of you to share that with the committee, because that is important. I am sorry to hear that the investigation is on-going.

I am trying to get my head round this issue. It is important that we take as wide a range of views as we can on the Government’s proposed legislation. There are three places that someone can be sent to, either on remand or when they have been sentenced to be held in custody: secure accommodation, young offenders institutions or adult prisons. I am trying to see which is the right place for certain cohorts of people.

At the moment, the decision seems to be based on an arbitrary age cut-off. The bill proposes that, up to 19 years of age—effectively, while they are still 18—someone can only be held in secure accommodation, with an expectation that they would probably then move to a young offenders institution, depending on the length of their sentence. It would be unusual for that to be so long but, in the unlikely event that it was longer than that, they would then be moved to an adult prison at some point—perhaps at the age of 25 plus.

Are you comfortable with that set-up, and does it work? Is age the factor that should be taken into account, or are there other factors? How should the Government create rules to know which settings are the right ones for the people who are put into them? I am a bit confused by some of the evidence that I have heard so far.

Perhaps Kate Wallace could start, then I will come to Ms Allan.