Community Payback Orders: Breach Applications
Breach applications during the life of Community Payback Orders which were completed/terminated in each year from 2012-13, by gender.
Data
Community Payback Orders: Breach Applications
Description
Community payback orders (CPOs) replaced probation, community service and supervised attendance orders. They were introduced for offences committed on or after 1st February 2011. CPOs are now by far the most commonly issued social work order. When local authorities become aware that a person has breached their order, they submit a breach application to the court which the court then considers and takes the necessary action.
This data is derived from an annual return made to the Scottish Government by local authority social work departments and gives the number of breach applications during the life of community payback orders which were completed/terminated in each year from 2012-13 by gender. More data which shows the number of different social work order types (encompassing drug treatment & testing orders and fiscal work orders as well as CPOs and their predecessors) back to 2004-05 can be found in the datasets Social Work Orders Commenced and Social Work Orders Terminated on this website. Further data on CPOs at local authority level can be found on the Scottish Government website.
Metadata
| Theme | Crime and Justice |
|---|---|
| Organisation | Scottish Government |
| License | UK Open Government Licence (OGL) |
| Published | |
| Last updated | |
| Next update | 1 Jan 2026 |
| Update frequency | annual |
| Reference period | 2012 to 2024 |
| Geographic coverage | Council Areas, Country |
| Contact | justice_analysts@gov.scot |
Data quality
Completeness
This data brings together gender breakdowns for all years in the one place.
Uniqueness
Not assessed
Consistency
Community payback orders were introduced for offences committed on or after 1st February 2011. Numbers on breach applications for orders terminated were first collected in 2012-13 and have been collected on the same basis since then.
Timeliness
As a large volume of data is collected at unit level for both community payback orders and drug treatment & testing order, these statistics are normally updated around January.
Validity
These statistics help provide trends related to the workload of community payback orders and the type of orders which local authorities deal with.
Accuracy
These statistics are considered of good quality as they come from recording systems which local authorities use for case management and internal monitoring. The data has, in addition, been quality assured by the Scottish Government via extensive accuracy checks, including identifying any major differences between the current year and previous years. In 2012-13, the gender breakdowns are estimated for 3 councils - Aberdeen City, Fife and Moray.
Quality management
Extensive quality assurance is conducted to ensure the data received from local authorities is as accurate as possible. Part of this involves the data loading system putting the data through a number of checks and identifying issues with the data which local authorities then need to look at and fix. Checks are also made by the Scottish Government to ensure there is consistency across the data for different years for every individual order.
Additional details
Revisions
Data for previous years are revised annually as a result of revised information being received from local authorities. The figures for 2020-21 for Renfrewshire were originally published as estimates but were changed following the receipt of the actual data.
Confidentiality policy
The data on Breach Applications In Community Payback Orders does not contain any directly identifiable personal information.