Legislation / Legal
ScotGov: Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs), giving police officers the power to issue £40 fines for lower level offences such as breach of the peace, urinating in a public place and drinking in public where it is banned, have been rolled out across Scotland from this week.
Tayside Police began piloting FPNs in April 2005 and the findings of an independent evaluation by the University of Abertay in Dundee, included:
* 73% of police officers agreed that FPNs saved them time.
* Tayside police estimated to have saved 1,300 hours over 12 months.
MoJ: A mixed picture of how community penalties are started emerges from a joint HM Inspectorate of Probation and HM Inspectorate of Court Administration report, published last week.
The two Inspectorates undertook a short focused inspection earlier this year to check that systems for recording & transmitting court results speedily & accurately to the Probation Service were working effectively. They did this by tracking a sample of 212 cases from a number of courts and probation areas.
The inspection found that generally the system worked well, with Courts and Probation taking their respective responsibilities for ensuring that results were transmitted accurately. However, despite this, in a small minority of cases the Order was either not started at all, or not started with the completely correct requirements.
Press release ~ Getting Orders Started ~ Her Majesty's Courts Service ~ HM Inspectorate of Court Administration ~ HMI Probation ~ Xhibit computer system
SGC: An addendum to the Sentencing Guidelines Council's Compendium of Court of Appeal Guidelines has been published. It relates to the dangerous offender provisions and brings together key judgments, setting them in the context of the statutory provisions; the document also contains two flow charts to help in ensuring that the proper stages are followed in the decision making process.
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