Statistics relating to individuals who are automatically barred from working with children: FOI release

Information requested

1. How many people have been automatically barred from working with children in Scotland as a result of committing a sexual offence, (with this information broken down into males and females to allow for comparison). You clarified you are looking for the number of people automatically barred (listed) who have committed an automatic listing offence of a sexual nature over the last year.

2. How many people have been referred to Disclosure Scotland within the last year as a result of concerns about sexual harm or sexual misconduct (with this information broken down into males and females to allow for comparison). You clarified that you were asking about all cases in this question irrespective of the referral source where there has been a sexual element to the conduct resulting in listing.

3. How many people have been barred from working with children as a result of a discretionary decision about sexual harm (with this information broken down into males and females to allow for comparison). You clarified that this question related to discretionary referrals made to Disclosure Scotland by Scottish Courts.

We have rounded the numbers in queries 1 and 2 to the nearest 5 and query 3 to < 10. As the numbers of discretionary Scottish Court referrals received for this type of behaviour are very low we have provided the figures since the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Bill 2007 introduced this as a referral route.

Response

We have rounded the numbers in queries 1 and 2 to the nearest 5 and query 3 to < 10. As the numbers of discretionary Scottish Court referrals received for this type of behaviour are very low we have provided the figures since the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Bill 2007 introduced this as a referral route.

1.  

Number of people automatically barred from working with children in Scotland during the period 31/11/2019 to 01/12/2020
Male	Female	Total
110	0	110

Source – PU CMS and manual reading and sifting of return. Rounded to nearest 5.

2.

Number of people referred to Disclosure Scotland as a result of sexual harm or sexual misconduct during the period 31/11/2019 to 01/12/2020.
Male	Female	Total
640	35	675

Source – PU CMS. Rounded to nearest 5.

Included in the above numbers are referrals where sexual harm or sexual misconduct was also alleged and, cases where during the course of consideration of the initial referral behaviour of a different type was obtained that supported that there was also behaviour of an inappropriate sexual type. That is the referral conduct may have been dishonesty but subsequent information obtained showed there was also behaviour of a sexually inappropriate type too.

A caveat around the above figures is that until March 2020 there was system capacity to record only one behaviour type at the beginning and end of a consideration for listing (barring) therefore it may be where there were two or more types of behaviour e.g Murder and Rape that the “violent” rather than the “sexual” tab would have been selected. This would not greatly affect the above numbers.

3. 

Number of people barred from working with children as a result of a discretionary Scottish Court referral about sexual harm to disclosure Scotland since 01/03/2011.
Male	Female	Total
<10	0	<10

Source – PU CMS and manual reading and sifting of return

4. See above. 

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