Undischarged HMICS Recommendations

Recommendation 5 - Police Scotland should review the current arrangements for allocation of specialist support in relation to online child sexual abuse to ensure the allocation is fair, equitable and meets the needs across the country.

This recommendation focused mainly on Police Scotland’s Digital Forensics Unit. This department received an uplift of 29 staff with recruitment completed through 2022. HMICS indicated it wished to await the completion of recruitment and to assess whether the increased staffing taking effect was making a tangible difference to meeting demand.

Digital Forensics Unit has staff in post and trained. This now better matches demand, with all command areas having equitable access to digital forensic support to meet current demand.

This recommendation has been submitted to HMICS for discharge and a response is awaited.

Recommendation 6 - Police Scotland should review the resources and structure of the Internet Investigation Unit and Communications Investigation Unit to ensure that the force is able to meet current and future demand in relation to initial risk assessment, triage and intelligence development.

The actions in the original recommendation (Internet Investigations Unit (IIU) and Telecommunications Investigation Unit (TIU) reviews) have taken place and other work developed from the dialogue with HMICS during the Progress Review. Work is ongoing work via the Critical Issues Project, under the scrutiny of Policing in a Digital World forum, to implement:

• A Solution to track, manage, assess, triage and prioritise all OCSAE referrals.
• Visual text analytics to identify more investigative leads in less time than manually reading through the unstructured data
• Investigators’ Single Search

The introduction of this technology will address the above recommendation and improve our pursue capacity, helping to protect and safeguard the most vulnerable. The Critical Issues Project went live in March 2023 with an expected delivery date of spring 2025.

A further meeting is to be held with HMICS with documentary evidence to be provided on the work to ascertain if this recommendation can be discharged.

Recommendation 8 - Police Scotland should work with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) to establish a pragmatic and realistic approach to digital forensic examination requests.

A pilot between police Digital Forensics and COPFS and its Standard Forensic Instructions (SFI) was undertaken in the east of the country. This evidenced challenges with Police Scotland processes, but also the benefits of having a single COPFS SPOC. COPFS has committed to rolling this out across the rest of the country. However, this has not yet taken place and Police Scotland is reliant upon COPFS to identify and train staff. COVID impacted training delivery, but dialogue with COPFS remains open and work continues to fulfil this ambition.

A case management system was introduced impacting positively with police Examination Request Forms (ERFs) backlogs.

The original recommendation sought evidence of a “realistic and pragmatic approach to DF examination requests” with COPFS. HMICS’ assessment from the Progress Review reiterated the need for an ‘urgent review’ of Digital Forensics. This has been effected and evidence of the outcomes of staffing uplift is detailed above under Recommendation 5.

Separately Police Scotland and COPFS have had discussions on evidential thresholds and whether limiting examinations in terms of numbers of devices being examined or applying numerical thresholds to images recovered is desirable. However concerns about potentially missing “first generation” imagery were unresolved.

Police Scotland (Digital Forensics and SCD Public Protection) continues to explore whether an “Abbreviated Examination Policy” might be achievable. This will build in investigating officer safeguards and relate to the Risk of Serious Harm posed rather than focusing on the number/type of images – this has been agreed as fundamental to ensuring Police Scotland fulfils its child protection obligations. If this can be finalised it will be presented to COPFS for its view. Further internal work is required.

Police Scotland might reasonably be said to have done as much as it can to achieve a “realistic and pragmatic approach” with COPFS and the recommendation might be discharged, especially given that these matters will continue to be the subject of ongoing dialogue. However, HMICS has indicated a preference to await confirmation of the further COPFS SPOCs being in place.

Further discussion with HMICS is required.

Recommendation 11 - Police Scotland must ensure that sufficient welfare provision is available and provided to staff working within this area of policing.

A final draft welfare strategy has been approved by Police Scotland TOCSA Tactical Group, and is currently subject to review by staff associations and Federation. The strategy encompasses each business area involved in the end-to-end process of OCSAE Investigations. It is anticipated the strategy will be signed off by relevant staff associations by the end of summer 2023, thereafter published within Police Scotland and at that time it will be submitted to HMICS for consideration of the recommendation being discharged.