20% of criminal fines are unpaid

Published on Saturday 2 May 2009 19:37

ONE in five fines imposed in Scotland on convicted offenders are unpaid, according to new figures released by the court system.

Scotland on Sunday can reveal that many offenders are simply ignoring millions of pounds of financial penalties levied by the courts, the police and prosecutors, often with no immediate punishment.

In what opposition leaders claimed was a huge blow to the credibility of Scotland's justice system, figures obtained under Freedom of Information legislation show collection rates running at just over 80% for fines imposed by sheriffs and only 70% for those dished out by justices of the peace.

Criminals and minor offenders now owe at least 9.2m in overdue fines, enough money to hire more than 300 extra police constables a year. The figures have emerged just as the Scottish Courts Service launches a major new enforcement drive to try to collect more unpaid fines and restore confidence in the justice system.

Tory justice spokesman Bill Aitken MSP, however, said the sheer scale of ignored penalties showed that the entire fining regime should be overhauled. He said: "Monetary penalties under the current system have no value whatsoever. This is just a disgrace: fines just have no deterrent effect at all and some offenders are just laughing them off.

"I have been pressing for years to have fines collected directly from wages or benefits, but both the previous Labour executive and the current SNP Scottish Government have refused to go down that route."

The Scottish Court Service (SCS) figures disclosed that sheriffs had imposed 98.8m worth of fines in 2005-08. It said 75.8m had already been paid and another 5.8m was expected to be paid in instalments, amounting to an overall collection rate of just over 80%.

Sheriffs, however, have discharged another 10m in fines, often because offenders, including some defaulters, had been given alternative sentences, including jail. Yet 7.2m in sheriff court fines remain officially in arrears, the offenders who owe the money effectively unpunished.

The service said its new justice of the peace courts – new tribunals being brought in to replace the old council-run district courts – had issued 2.9m worth of fines between March 10 and December 31, 2008. However, 700,000 of those fines are already in arrears. Of the 3.7m in fines imposed in the same period by fiscals, just 2.5m of that figure has been paid or is expected to be paid in instalments. That leaves further arrears of 1.2m.

Richard Baker, Labour's justice spokesman, said: "These are incredible figures. It is fair to acknowledge the greater efforts are going to be made to recover fines in the future, but the fact is – particularly given the financial straightened times for public services – this is a massive amount of money. The community court in Glasgow, for example, will now not be going ahead for the want of just 3m.

"This money is owed by people who have committed offences and it has not been recovered. This is a deeply unsatisfactory and concerning situation because this is money that could be invested in community safety or a more efficient justice system. Offenders must not be allowed to escape the penalty that has been imposed upon them."

A Scottish Government spokesman said that for too long a minority of people had simply ignored their fines and tied up police officers and the courts process as a result. "That's why we introduced the new fines enforcement regime last year.

"The regime, approved unanimously by the previous Parliament, includes new fines enforcement officers whose work has freed up more police to keep our streets safe and enabled the courts to focus proceedings on serious criminal cases."