subject: Missing Records Put The Scottish Public At Risk [print this page] . Thousands more of the cases have also been missed in the years following on from 2007. It has also been suggested that some of the details in the records are incorrect and worryingly incomplete.
The Scottish police force and judges will now be unable to decide what the risk posed on the public is due to the errors. It is thought that public safety may be at risk in some cases.
The number of impending prosecutions recorded in the Scottish system is said to be much larger than the amount for the rest of the UK. Impending prosecutions are cases that are ongoing.
Updating the records is carried out by the Scottish Courts System, Crown Court and Procurator Fiscal Service.
The figures released show that there were 35,000 impending cases entered onto the system in 2007 incompletely. The figures for England and Wales were only 15,000 combined.
Reports have claimed that the full gravity of the incident is still being measured by Scottish authorities but that everybody was fearing the repercussions. One of the most worrying outcomes could mean people are now working in sensitive areas such as schools and hospitals when really their criminal record should be preventing them from doing so.
The risks that are posed by this have caused detectives to raise the problem to the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland. What makes it worse is that the system that logs the Impending prosecutions also wipes clear any records kept incomplete after three years which now means that the outcomes of lots of cases will not be recorded.
The police are meant to carry out the job of manually cross referencing the list of impending prosecutions but many forces have responded by stating they do not have the time to dedicate to the task.
