It is less a matter of people being charged and then the charges being dropped—in fact, the charges are rarely dropped—but I understand that it is normal practice throughout Scotland for fiscals in sheriff courts to strike out charges and make certain arrangements. That never happens in football cases. Almost every case is prosecuted right up to trial and cases are not dropped, even though they have a lower chance of success once they come to trial.
On the numbers, we can speak about our analysis of the Government and Crown Office data, which we have followed and analysed regularly throughout the past six years and we can speak about the people who come to us. We have a website with a forum through which people who have been charged can ask for support. As the person who takes most of the initial phone calls from such people, I can think of only two cases in the whole six years in which somebody had previous convictions. The people who contact us to tell us what has happened, ask what they should do and seek advice are rarely people with previous convictions.
The Crown Office does not collect that data. The Crown Office official who was here this morning referred to one case, but the Crown Office does not collect data on whether people have previous convictions; I suppose that we have the only evidence of that. Over the past six years, around 200 people have contacted us and I would say that only two had any previous convictions—and even those were 10 or 15 years old. It has also rarely been people who are older; most of them have been a lot younger.
You asked about what happens to them and what the impact is on them. I do not know whether you are aware of this, but there are usually three appearances at court: the pleading diet, the intermediate diet and the trial. The evidence, from our experience and the Stirling research, is that the process is often extended in football cases and people have to appear in court four or five times for various reasons. Because of the nature of where alleged offences are supposed to have taken place, those appearances often involve people travelling quite long distances and having to take time off work and tell their employers that they have been charged.
The worst case that we had involved seven young men who sang a song at an away game and appeared in court 17 times over 23 months. They were all acquitted in the end. During that time, one of them lost a promotion and two of them were completing studies that would have involved professional registration, so they were in jeopardy of losing not just their job but their entire career. Thank goodness, that did not happen. That is an extreme case, but it reflects the kind of cases that we see quite often.
Football cases take longer and are never dropped. Numerous fiscals have said privately to the defence solicitors that we work with, “This would go, but I’m not allowed to drop it.” They are simply not allowed to drop cases; they are made to proceed with them to the furthest extent.