On 23 March 2021, the Scottish Government published a report on ‘Extended Presumption Against Short Sentences Monitoring Information: January – December 2020’. It contained some interesting geographic disparities in sentencing that suggest that some of the judiciary are more willing to ignore or bypass PASS than others.

On 8 March 2021, Criminal Justice Social Work Statistics: 2019 -20 were published. The figures only cover up to 31 March 2020, therefore are only very minimally affected by the pandemic. it highlights a number of interesting points, compared to the previous year: the number of diversion from prosecution cases commenced rose by 8%; the number of bail supervision cases commenced rose by 40%; a 69% successful completion rate for community payback orders (77% for those aged over 40 and 66% for those aged 40 or under); the number of Drug Testing and Treatment Orders (DTTOs) decreased by 15% which is the second lowest level of the last seven years.