The driver of a bin lorry that crashed and killed 6 people in Glasgow has avoided criminal charges. The ruling was made by Scotland’s Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service which also advised that a fatal accident inquiry be performed to determine the facts and find the causes of this [...]

Scottish government proposals to stop automatically releasing prisoners two thirds of the way through their sentences could end up creating a wide range of legal issues, experts warn. The fear is that lengthier waiting lists for rehab courses could breach the European Convention of Human Rights by denying inmates the [...]

The Director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, warned law enforcers that they would have to struggle to keep up with the changing landscape of the criminal world. The largest instigator of change here is the Dark Net, a series of websites invisible to search engines like Google, through which illicit and [...]

Big Joe Beltrami, often considered the father of modern criminal law in Scotland, died in Glasgow on February 24, 2015. He was 82. Mr Beltrami led a well-regarded legal career, appearing in courts all over the country. This included acting in more than 350 murder cases. A Pioneer Joe Beltrami, [...]

Independent experts have released a report recommending that local authorities impose tough new licensing laws in a bid to combat the increasing problems associated with so-called "legal highs". The expert group was established by the Scottish Government last year to look at the sale and supply of legal highs and [...]

Dumfries and Galloway MP Russell Brown has voiced his concerns in the sharp increase in cases where innocent drivers have been pulled over and charged by the police. His belief is that officers have been placed under pressure by Police Scotland to meet targets and that they have focused on [...]

Police in Scotland have been requested to explain the "sorry mess" over its handling of data on stop-and-search, reports the BBC. According to Liberal Democrat Alison McInnnes, a member of the Scottish Parliament Justice sub-committee on policing, they will have many questions to ask senior officers. Labour's Hugh Henry also [...]

Councils in Scotland have used covert surveillance hundreds of times in the past three years, BBC News revealed this week. Data obtained by BBC Scotland shows that local authorities authorised 501 clandestine investigations, sometimes for relatively minor offences. These investigations, carried out under counter-terrorism laws, were intended to gather evidence [...]

Henry McLeish, former chair of the Scottish Prisons Commission, asked delegates at a recent Holyrood conference to consider an end to six-month custodial sentences in all but the most exceptional circumstances. At the annual female offenders conference earlier in January, McLeish noted that in the category of six months or [...]

According to latest figures obtained by The Times, Police Scotland are using surveillance to intercept 20,000 emails and phone calls every year – the equivalent to 53 a day. The head of the Scottish Parliament's justice committee, Christine Grahame, has warned police that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act should [...]