Draft minutes of December 2024 meeting of the Scottish Sentencing Council

The 35th meeting of the Scottish Sentencing Council took place on Friday 6 December 2024. The draft minutes of the meeting are now available. The meeting was preceded by a fact-finding visit to the Orchard Clinic and Islay Centre at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital and a discussion with Dr Jo Brown, the Clinical Director of the Orchard Clinic, and Dr Ganesan Rajagopal, the Clinical Director of the Intellectual (Learning) Disability Service in NHS Lothian. The visit and discussion provided an opportunity for the Council to learn more about the services provided for offenders with mental health issues or intellectual disability, building on research and engagement carried out across 2023 and 2024, which resulted in two recent publications: Judicial perspectives of mental health and sentencing which presents the findings of research undertaken by the Council in late 2023 and early 2024 with members of the judiciary; and Mental health, neurodivergence, and learning disability in sentencing, which summarises discussions at a stakeholder conference the Council held in August 2024.