Crime trends in Scotland since 1950 statistics and the problem of crime in Scotland classifying Scottish criminal procedure the politics of prevention - the safer cities experiment in Scotland situating Scottish policing the prosecution service - independence and accountability criminal justice responses to bail abuse courts sentencing in Scotland the fine as auto-punishment - power, money and discipline community-based disposals imprisonment and other custodial sentences preventing offending by children and young people in Scotland mental disorder and criminal justice women and the Scottish criminal justice system Scottish ethnic minorities, and the police victims of privatization, policing and control - tracing the contours of the public-private divide the politics of penality - an overview of the development of penal policy in Scotland.

Chinese criminal procedural law has recently been undergoing rapid transformation. While the search for ‘truth’, embodied in a confession by the accused, has traditionally dominated the criminal process, efforts are now being made to secure more procedural fairness. This is exemplified by the introduction of rules to render inadmissible at trial confessions extorted from suspects by ill treatment. Unsurprisingly, it has proved difficult to shift the mindsets of the players in the criminal justice process. The new rules have not been fully implemented in many respects and there is still confusion over the criteria to be used by the courts in making decisions about inadmissibility. Further, it has proved difficult to enable defence lawyers to play a more active role in defending their clients and to render it normal for witnesses to testify at trial. This handicaps the drive to secure a better balance between the search for truth and procedural fairness in the Chinese criminal trial.

In this article, Peter Duff considers the issue of the stage at which otherwise unobjectionable police questioning of a witness or suspect must stop for reasons of the application of fundamental liberal principles, primarily the privilege against self-incrimination and the "equality of arms". The article examines the historical development of the law from the case of Chalmers v HMA, through the period of the Thomson Committee report, the case of Cadder v HMA, up to the present time.

As a general rule, no person can be convicted of a criminal offence in Scotland in the absence of corroborated evidence. This means that there must be two sources of evidence in respect of each essential element of the crime, including the identity of the accused as the perpetrator of the crime. The Scottish Government has proposed to abolish this rule. In February 2014, Lord Bonomy was appointed to chair a Reference Group “to consider what additional safeguards and changes to law and practice may be needed in Scotland’s criminal justice system when the corroboration requirement is abolished”. Lord Bonomy’s review is known as the Post-Corroboration Safeguards Review. It remains the Government’s intention to abolish corroboration as part of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill, currently before the Scottish Parliament. Lord Bonomy requested that an academic expert group produce a report covering additional safeguards against wrongful conviction and other changes in law and practice which might be considered for introduction into the Scottish criminal justice system. This is the report of that expert group, which was considered by the Reference Group in September 2014. This report provides background information and analysis based on research into the law and practice of Scotland and other jurisdictions, along with relevant social science literature and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. It does not make direct proposals for change, but does identify issues and proposals which it is recommended that the Review should consider. This executive summary provides an account of chapter 4 of the report, which reviews the evidence on causes of wrongful conviction; and Part B, which canvasses various possibilities for change. It does not summarise chapters 1-3, which set out background information, or the separate reports found in Part C. It sets out all the specific issues which the report recommended that the Review consider.

☼ Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Aberdeen. I am grateful to Liz Campbell, Fiona Leverick, Fiona Raitt and Margaret Ross for various helpful discussions I have had with them on this topic. 1 I will use this phrase as a convenient abbreviation despite the fact that in the Scottish case of MM v HM Advocate 2004 SCCR 658 (reported sub nom Moir v HM Advocate 2005 JC 102 but without Lord Macfadyen’s opinion), Lord Macfadyen (at first instance) indicated at para 13 that he did not like the term, agreeing with McLachlin J’s disapproval of the phrase in the influential Canadian case of R v Seaboyer (1991) 83 DLR (4th) 193 at 258e. Additionally, I shall refer to “rape” trials throughout, rather than sexual offence trials more generally, because it is in the former that the issue of sexual history is most likely to emerge owing to the frequent use of the consent defence. However, many of my comments will also apply to the trial of other sexual offences.

This chapter examines critically the approach of the Scottish courts to determining appeals based on the failure of the Crown to disclose material evidence to the defence prior to trial. In particular, it analyzes in some detail the level of confusion which has arisen as a result of recent cases, and argues briefly that a more principled approach might have avoided much of this. A more principled approach would make it easier for the judiciary to come to a conclusion, tentative although it might be, on the appropriate approach to disclosure appeals. Instead, the courts seem to be stumbling about blindly between the two possible options — treating disclosure and fresh evidence appeals similarly or differently — giving no explanations for their decisions other than the selection, from a wide range of authorities, of those which happen to support their conclusions. The result is that after a succession of disclosure appeals, it is still not possible to discern whether the test for a disclosure appeal is less exacting than that in a fresh evidence case.

Taxonomy, as a methodological tool introduced from natural science, brought the categorization of legal systems to comparative law.1 The term ‘legal family’2 is normally used as a metaphor, because it recognizes that within each grouping there are many variations. Each of the legal families is regarded as a combination of fundamental features of legal systems which have certain similarities. As an analytical device, taxonomy renders the comparison of different laws and legal institutions manageable by means of simplifying or abstracting the diverse and complicated realities of a myriad of legal systems. As a result, the concept of legal families acts as a support for legal borrowing and transplantation, as well as comprising an inevitable part of most comparative law works. Even where as few as two jurisdictions are involved, the categorization of legal families is still a useful tool for most comparative legal analysis. Assisted by the notion of legal families, comparativists can readily understand and explore an unfamiliar legal system.3 Normally, such scholars tend to accept the conventional or widely accepted categorization of a particular legal system as belonging to a certain legal family. However, without detailed scrutiny of the first-hand material, distortions may arise as a result of preconceptions held at the beginning of the comparative study.4

In this paper, I draw upon the 'systems theory' approach to miscarriages of justice (adopted by Nobles and Schiff) to reflect upon my experience as a member of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. I demonstrate how the Commission manages the tensions between the rather different 'legal' and 'lay' worlds which it inhabits. More particularly, I argue that the Commission, while heavily constrained by the law and a legal world view, is more independent of the legal 'system' than some commentators would suggest. I substantiate my arguments through describing some of the debates that took place within the Scottish Commission and analysing in depth the judgements of the Scottish appeal court in some of the cases referred to it by the Commission. Much of what I say is applicable in varying degrees to the English Commission and to the current debate in England as to what constitutes a 'miscarriage of justice'.

Based on the results of an evaluation of the Scottish pilot victim statement schemes which ran for two years until November 2005, this article is a contribution to an earlier debate about victim statements in the pages of the Review. In particular, it takes issue with the arguments presented in an article by Sanders et al., which was based on an evaluation of equivalent schemes in England and Wales. It argues that victim statements have more potential to improve the satisfaction of victims with the criminal justice process than has previously been acknowledged.