Information relating to Order of Lifelong Restriction: FOI review

Information requested

Information, in detail, but only that relevant to persons with a life licence including the Order of Lifelong Restriction (OLR) -

1. Information on how a supervising officer can make such a request and to whom such a request be directed.
2. The mechanism and considerations by which the Scottish Ministers scrutinise and judge such a request.
3. How the Scottish Ministers convey this decision to the Parole Board and the person's supervising officer.

Response

Your request for a review raised the following points:

• there was insufficient detail given; and
• that the impression given in the response is that the Scottish Government merely forwards the request from a supervising Social Worker to the Parole Board without any input or expression of opinion from the relevant department in the Scottish Government – you do not believe that this is the case; if there is no input from the Justice Department then why can the supervising social Worker submit the request directly to the Parole Board?

You will be aware that the third part of your email is now being treated as a separate FOI request - Case Reference: 202200294386.

I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed, with modifications.

The original response provided answers to the points that were raised and it may be that there is a misunderstanding as to the role of the Scottish Government in this process. As the original reply outlined Scottish Ministers have no role in scrutinising or judging the request to terminate supervision. The Scottish Ministers role is to refer the dossier of information and licence termination request to the Parole Board for Scotland to assist the Board in reaching its decision.

Therefore, this is a formal notification under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not hold information relating to parts 2 and 3 of your request. This notification should have issued as part of our original response.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.