By Maura Bowman

The fall in the number of criminal cases calling in Dundee’s sheriff and district courts has become “quite drastic and quite dramatic,” according to a senior city lawyer.

Past dean of the Faculty of Solicitors George Donnelly said other courts are not experiencing anything like the downturn in business being suffered in Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh —giving rise to the growing conviction among lawyers that the cities are part of a cost-cutting experiment.

For example, said Mr Donnelly, an intermediate diet court in Dundee consisted of just eight cases last week, while a remand court—where offenders are sentenced—dealt with the same number the following day.

In contrast, Kirkcaldy has instituted daily intermediate diet courts after 90 cases were set down on a day when there were 36 custody cases to be dealt with.

“These are figures not seen in Dundee for months and months and months,” he added.

“No one associated with the criminal justice system thinks that Kirkcaldy and its environs is such a hotbed of criminal activity compared to Dundee.”

Mr Donnelly said the suggest- ion that solicitors were more concerned with the drop in their fees than with justice was “a cheap shot that is always being thrown at lawyers.”

“The fact of the matter is that everyone involved knows courts could not operate efficiently without the goodwill of solicitors, who do a lot of work in the courts that they are not paid for.

“The whole justification for this is financial. To say that it is saving the taxpayer is one thing but whether it is serving society well is quite another.”

Against this background, it emerged yesterday that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) could not say how many violent offenders in Dundee have been given fixed penalty “fiscal fines.”

Suggesting that offenders might tailor their criminal activity to fall just short of the level that would trigger prosecution, COPFS also refused to give a detailed account of the guidelines it uses to decide which cases should be diverted away from the courts.

The Courier had attempted to use freedom of information legislation to shed light on the use of fiscal fines and clarify the types of offenders that prosecutors felt could be dealt with appropriately without a court appearance.

However, our efforts have come up against a brick wall.

The service was asked how many fiscal fines—formally known as direct measures—were issued in Dundee in the financial year to date and in each of the three previous years, and how many related to violent crime.

COPFS said it considered the requested information to be exempt on the basis that it was intending to publish the statistics within 12 weeks in any event.

When they are published the figures will provide a breakdown of offences but there will be no breakdown of violent/non-violent offences.

Indeed, the service made the perhaps startling admission that it does not hold that information.

The Courier had also asked for a copy of any guidance and/or criteria held by COPFS regarding the issuing of fiscal fines.

Again the response was that the information was exempt from the terms of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 “because disclosure would be likely to substantially prejudice the prosecution of offenders.”

According to depute fiscal Ian Wallace, from the COPFS policy division, “The disclosure of this information would potentially bar the Crown from taking an alternative course of action from that contained in a policy which has been made public and disclosure would allow offenders to circumvent the law by restricting their offending to conduct which falls short of a prosecution threshold or, for example, a threshold which determines the prosecution forum.”

He added, “In addition, it is not considered in the public interest to fetter the discretion of the Lord Advocate who is independent of the judiciary in relation to the court in which a particular offence will be prosecuted.

“However, I am able to inform you that COPFS does not regard direct measures as appropriate for domestic violence, drug dealing, violence which is likely to attract a sentence of imprisonment or which is directed against police or emergency workers, offences involving the possession or use of knives or offensive weapons, any case where there is a significant sexual aspect, and cases where the accused suffers from a mental disorder.”