Next Steps

Police Scotland continues to progress towards finalising outstanding pieces of work for the undischarged recommendations and also the work to bring to a conclusion and submit further evidence for the outstanding recommendations.

Police Scotland awaits feedback from HMICS as to whether those recommendations might be discharged or further evidence is required.

Whilst the majority of this work stream sits within ACC Smith’s portfolio of Public Protection, the area of Digital Forensics provision sits within the portfolio of ACC Freeburn. 

Both ACC Smith and Freeburn meet regularly to drive efficiency and effectiveness across these disciplines, which are both essential for the protection of children and the identification of offenders. 

As requested by the Committee, this paper also outlines some of the specific challenges which are being encountered in Digital Forensics which we are currently attempting to address.

 Scale and Complexity of the Challenge

The ever-increasing scale of investigating OCSAE is not only being witnessed in Scotland (511% increase in last 5 years), but is also reflected worldwide.   

The breath of technology and proliferation of platforms such as the Dark Web, encrypted communication (such as WhatsApp, Snapchat and Telegram) and the use of crypto currency make investigating crime of this nature extremely difficult and time consuming, but not impossible. 

Despite a resource uplift of 29 staff this year, Digital Forensics’ capacity is still not in equilibrium with the greater enforcement capacity that exists across NCAIU and Local Policing teams. Consequently there is an enduring enforcement backlog for NOCAP enforcement. This is imminently expected to reduce as these new staff have been recruited and trained and are now ready to bolster our efforts.

Partnership Working and Collaboration

As the challenge of CSAE is not unique to Police Scotland, we have forged a network of strategic partnerships across the UK and the world.

We are currently working closely with the NCA and COPFS to ensure that our processes are constantly evolving and improving and are liaising with a range of international law enforcement partners to obtain intelligence, share data and best practice and carry out joint-enforcement activity.

Use of Technology

Police Scotland have a Policing in a Digital World Programme to constantly examine how we grow and shape our capabilities to meet the increasing threat and harm of child sexual abuse and exploitation. 

We completely understand the need to ensure public confidence and appropriate safeguards in developing new technologies, however the challenge is to balance this against our statutory obligations to keep children safe and make best use of available technologies to assist us in this mission.

Developing and introducing new technologies also requires significant financial investment and additional resource to assist with the change and transformation process. As an illustration, one software licence for a single product we commonly use, is the same cost as a police officer’s annual salary.

Technology can of course make Police Scotland more efficient and effective and make better use of police officer’s time and this is actively explored through the Policing in a Digital World Programme.

Recruitment and Retention Challenges

Our recent recruitment drive to secure an additional 29 digital forensic staff, highlighted that there are insufficient academically qualified candidates for these very specialist roles and the nature of the role can be unappealing for some.

Retaining staff within our Digital Forensics is also challenging as once in role, their training and experience is often attractive to private industry, who can often offer greater remuneration.

In order to address this, we are establishing strategic alliances with a number of academic partners across the country which will allow us to be at the forefront of new research and also assist us in identifying new staff with the skill sets required by an effective modern police service from both a digital forensics and cyber investigations perspective.

Welfare and Well-Being

The personal impact on our officers in viewing and categorising CSAE images should not be under-estimated and it is important that we seek to minimise their exposure through technology and efficient processes, whilst ensuring that the identification of children at risk is paramount.

The work highlighted in recommendation 8 to work with the COPFS to establish a pragmatic and realistic approach to digital forensic examination requests continues at pace with a key objective being to establish a balance which ensures we meet the welfare and well-being provisions for our staff whilst maximising child protection opportunities.