Services
- Bail Information Scheme
- Bail Supervision
- Bail accommodation
- Children and young people who offend
- Community Service Orders (CSO)
- Court Services
- Court reports
- Diversion from Prosecution Scheme
- Drug Treatment and Testing Orders (DTTO)
- Fast-tracking court cases at Linlithgow Sheriff Court
- Fines and Compensation Orders
- Prison Through-care and Aftercare
- Probation Orders
- Restriction of Liberty Orders
- Risk Assessment
- Supervised Attendance Orders
- West Lothian's Criminal Justice Teams and their services
Supervised Attendance Orders (SAO)
What is a Supervised Attendance Order?
This is an order requiring a person to carry out unpaid work when they have failed to pay a fine. They can be ordered to carry out from 10 to 100 hours.
The work aspects of a SAO are operated in a similar way to the Community Service Order (CSO). There is however an expectation that someone placed on a SAO for the first time will take part in some groupwork education, looking at the issues that have led them to be in this situation.
Why do we need the Supervised Attendance Order?
The Supervised Attendance Order is one of the ways in which the Scottish Government tries to reduce the unnecessary use of imprisonment. In the past, a considerable number of prisoners in Scottish prisons have been people serving a very short sentence (most often only a few days) imposed because of non-payment of a fine.
There is never any benefit to the prisoner from such a brief period of imprisonment, which is far too short to allow the person to take part in programmes in prison, or to engage with organisations set up to help prisoners.
What does a person have to do if they have been placed on a Supervised Attendance Order?
They are expected to follow all instructions given by the Criminal Justice worker responsible for the Order. This may include attending for work arrangements, and also attending office appointments if there are problems in completing the hours of work.
They are also expected by law to notify the Criminal Justice worker immediately of any change of address or of work arrangements (hours of employment). These are important, to ensure that we can continue to keep in touch with people and to make suitable arrangements for them.
What sort of work do people do on a SAO?
There are a range of opportunities available, including working with voluntary organisations (where workers are supervised by a member of the organisation that they are working for) and in work teams, supervised by Community Work Order Supervisors. Work teams carry out a range of tasks, including painting and decorating, gardening, landscaping and environmental projects, furniture removals for a local charity, and helping patients from a local psychiatric unit who are taken on regular outings.
Not all options will be available for everyone. The supervising officer will have to take into account the risk of someone offending again, what skills they have, when they can be available for unpaid work, and, of course, what places are currently available.
How can people who work full-time carry out their SAO work?
The Council's Supervised Attendance Order scheme is obliged by law to take into account any genuine demands made by a person's employment. This means that we have to make arrangements for people to carry out work at a time when they are not contracted to work for their employer. As a result of this, we have work opportunities available every day of the week, and most evenings.
Please note, though, that in our planning with people, while we will try to take into account any overtime that they are being asked to do by their employer, we may have to ask them to turn this down if that is necessary to allow them to carry out their Supervised Attendance Order work.
We are clearly not able to excuse anyone from SAO work to carry out any employment that is illegal (such as ''working on the side'').
What happens if people don't keep to the conditions of the order?
As a SAO is intended only to be used where the court would have been otherwise considering custody because of non-payment of a fine, there is a clear disciplinary code that is applied to each order. The end result of non-compliance will be breach proceedings, and a proportion of such proceedings end up in imprisonment.
As with every court order, such situations are avoidable, and we always urge everyone on a court order to keep in touch with us about problems they are having.
If someone's circumstances change and they can't complete the order, what happens then?
There is a separate process for taking orders back to court if a person is unable to finish the number of hours ordered by the court. This can be arranged either by the supervising officer or by the person (or their solicitor). We have found that the courts will take a reasonable view of genuine problems.