focus on disabled people, but does sometimes include questions around access and medical issues. Although SCTS had no mystery shopper process in at the time of collating this information, court users and visitors had the opportunity to provide feedback on services and facilities through the SCTS Court User Satisfaction Survey, conducted biennially. The Survey, which is conducted primarily by exit survey, provides valuable and impartial evidence on service delivery and performance. Although questions posed do not mention equality and diversity directly, respondents are afforded the opportunity to provide comment on their experiences and on whether their particular needs were met. General feedback may also be given by way of the SCTS website. Further work is underway to improve the quality of information available on the experiences of vulnerable witnesses, who have not been required to attend at the court building. COPFS was in the process of launching its Service Improvement Strategy which will facilitate the collation of such feedback. SLAB does not currently carry out any mystery shopper exercises. However, they regularly carry out large scale surveys and engagement with both legal aid applicants and solicitors registered with SLAB to deliver legal aid. Through these surveys, they specifically explore views on our own service delivery and experience of the legal aid system. By capturing demographic information, they are able to explore specific issues or positive experiences of people who declare they have a disability. A mystery shopper scheme is impractical for SPS. However, they do conduct annual employee surveys and biennial prisoner and visitor surveys. These surveys ask questions around disability and access and the results are used to improve SPS policy and practice. The site access audits they have conducted, and the feedback gained from inviting deaf sector organisations into SPS establishments, provide a rich source of information on how they can improve the experience of disabled and BSL-using people visiting SPS establishments. 5. Future The Criminal Justice Disability Project has been operational for almost four years. During that time, we have addressed the recommendations from the source reports as part of our Terms of Reference. Some recommendations were eventually deemed to be out with the scope of our authority but have been directed toward those who would be in a better position to take action. Very few were considered to
compared to other categories of hate crime, but the proportion is now similar to other categories. At the time this report was compiled, 7 charges (4%) were awaiting the outcome of further enquiries before a final decision on proceedings was taken. It is generally accepted that hate crimes perpetuated on the basis of disability are significantly under-reported. In the 2011 census, over 1 million people [exact figure is 1,040,000] (20% of the total population) stated they had a long term health condition or disability yet in the most recent statistics (June 2017), only 188 disability-related hate crimes were reported to the police. In contrast, 849,000 people living in Scotland do not consider themselves to be Scottish, (16% of the total population) yet there were 3349 racist crimes reported in 2016-17. Comparing the hate reporting rates for race and disability, there were 394 racial charges reported to police per 100,000 people who are not Scottish. Whereas for disability related crime, only 18 charges were reported per 100,000 people who consider themselves to have a disability.