National Care Service - justice social work: overview

Court-based services: bail information, pre-sentencing and sentencing reports

There are various tasks associated with providing information and advice to the court:

Bail information

Bail information services assist procurators fiscal and courts through verification of information in cases where bail might otherwise have been opposed or refused. In a proportion of cases, this will result in a period of supervised bail

• In 2019-20 there were 5,700 requests from court for bail information.
• During this year there were 460 individuals who required bail supervision. This was the highest level in any of the last seven years.

Same day reports

A court may ask for a same day oral or written report from a court-based social worker during the court proceedings and adjourn a case until later in the day for this to be completed. A same day report will be a brief report and not a full justice social work report. Same day reports tend to deal with issues specific to the case to inform decision-making. The information may be relevant to decisions regarding bail or custodial remand, the need for a full report or the need to defer a case to a future date and final sentence.

• In 2019-20 there were 3,500 same day reports supplied to the courts. About one third of these were oral rather than written (Chart 2).
• The trend for court services has changed over the last ten years, with more requests for written reports since 2017-18.

Post sentence interviews

Following someone being remanded into custody or receiving a custodial sentence for the first time, a court-based social worker will interview them. Some of the purposes of this interview are to:

• Clarify the decision of the Court.
• Establish whether any pressing problems should be dealt with immediately.
• Assess risk of self-harm
• Inform the prisoner about social work services in prison and how to access them.
• Record details of the interview on a standard form.
• Pass on any other information which may help the Scottish Prison Service in providing better care for the offender or in terms of public protection.

In 2019-20 there were 15,300 post-sentence interviews undertaken within court. This was lower than in any of the previous five years.

Home Detention Curfew Assessment Reports

Home Detention Curfew (HDC) allows prisoners, mainly on shorter sentences, to serve up to a quarter of their sentence (for a maximum of six months and a minimum of two weeks) on licence in the community, while wearing an electronic tag. The licence includes a range of standard conditions and a curfew condition that requires prisoners to remain at a particular place for a set period each day. Where it appears that an individual may qualify for release on HDC, the proposed curfew address must be assessed for suitability by local authority justice social work.

• In 2019-20 there were 810 reports. This was lower than in any of the previous five years.