Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has announced an additional £161,979 to help North Strathclyde Community Justice Authority (CJA) deliver swifter and more effective community justice. This means that the authority will be able to employ more staff to support community service projects – and help see offenders start their community service orders earlier than is currently the case

The  extra  £161, 979 for the North Strathclyde CJA is a share of a £1.5 million funding boost across Scotland for this financial year (2009-10). A further #4 million will be distributed in 2010-11 and Tayside CJA will receive a share of that too..

The funding is additional to the £2 million already distributed to Community Justice Authorities for 2009-10 to ensure community penalties are served immediately and delivered with greater speed. Community Service has therefore already received 15% increase in funding between 2008-09 and 2009-10. The latest announcement will see a further £1.5m increase across Scotland  this financial year with a further £4m in 2010-11.

It’s easy to welcome additional funding without stopping to consider the actual amount invovled and what real difference it can make.

£161,979 would be an exciting return for an individual on a few days in Noel Edmond’s Deal or no Deal studio.  It wouldn’t build a sheltered home by Argyll’s standards though, never mind allow all of the local authorities in the North Strathclyde area to see much of a difference in the speed with which they execute community service orders.

The authorities involved are:

• Argyll & Bute
• East Dunbartonshire
• West Dunbartonshire
• East Renfrewshire
• Renfrewshire
• Inverclyde

We enquired of Argyll & Bute Council what uplift it expected to see and how, specifically it would be better resourced as a result of this announcement.

The Council says: ‘The £161k total will be divided between 6 councils.  Argyll & Bute is in partnership with East and West Dunbartonshire and theat partnership will receive approximately 47% of the total. No decisions have yet been taken as to whether the additional staffing will be employed at a partnership level or at an individual council level’.

Of the announced additional funding, Mr MacAskill says: ‘Community justice is a vital part of any justice system.  But to be properly effective, it needs to be swift.  Our recent audit of community services showed a very mixed picture.

‘The previous target of 21 days from sentencing to starting the community service was simply not being achieved in enough cases.  We have agreed a new target of seven days with stakeholders so there is much to do before we consistently deliver the swift community payback we all want to see.

‘But I fully accept that there are pressures on hard-working local authority staff to deliver improvements – I know that they require help to clear the backlog and make real progress towards the targets.

‘That is why I am announcing an extra #161,979 to enable North Strathclyde CJA employ additional staff  – and we are in advanced discussions on the possibility of further funding.

‘Community services need to be challenging.  We need to get people on them and through them more quickly and successfully.

‘But we also need to give the courts tough options, short of prison, for those who fail to comply with their orders.  That’s why we are introducing electronic tagging as a punishment for breach of a Community Payback Sentence.

‘The bottom line is that three out of four of those sentenced to six months or less in prison will be reconvicted within two years compared with just 42 per cent on community service.

‘We need to break the cycle of re-offending and if we get offenders on community service more quickly we go a long way to delivering a safer, stronger Scotland’.

For Argyll has no quibble with the thinking but does have reservations about the sense of dribbling inconsequential amounts of money from a limited pot into dry ground where they will certainly vanish without trace.

Rather than put out a few little bird baths in a drout, the Government might more effectively amalgamate the various drips into a modest drench and pour it somewhere it might grow something.

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