Sheriff Martin-Brown’s Story

“I’m Summary Sheriff Jillian Martin-Brown. I’m a floating Summary Sheriff so that means I work in courts all round Tayside, Central and Fife, but I’m predominantly based in Forfar Sheriff Court in Dundee. Well, I’m from this area, I was born in Dundee and I went to Carnoustie High School. Initially I wanted to be a journalist when I was at school, but I ended up studying law because I enjoyed arguing and asking questions. I studied at Aberdeen University and then I moved to Edinburgh to work as a solicitor for six years. Part of the reason why I applied to be a Summary Sheriff was an opportunity to give back something to the community that supported me when I was younger and I lived here, so I take personal satisfaction in seeing the lives of offenders, whether they be young offenders, female offenders or older offenders, seeing them being able to look at the causes of their offending behaviour and turn that around. It’s one of the more satisfying aspects of my job.”

“The problem solving court in Forfar arose out of a project in Arbroath Sheriff Court that was created for female offenders and then when that work moved to Forfar, we broadened the scope beyond female offenders to include men between the ages of 18 to 25 as well, although there are no formal entry criteria and our aim in the problem solving court is to combine the multidisciplinary treatment in the community with regular reviews to try and monitor and encourage progress. We try to use the authority of the court to try and enhance the rehabilitative power of community sentences and hold offenders accountable. Problem solving courts have been part of Scottish justice since about 2001 when the Glasgow drug court opened. Edinburgh has a specialist alcohol court and Aberdeen also has a problem solving court. The main difference with Forfar is that rather than a large urban population the court covers a smaller more rural population which is spread over a large geographical area. In terms of the layout of the court, we moved from a large busy court with lots of different types of cases to a smaller, more dedicated court where we could focus on repeat and vulnerable offenders and encourage the offenders to feel comfortable discussing their progress in court.”

“As well as the Procurator Fiscal and the defence agents we also have social workers attending court, who can provide updates on the progress. The majority of the offenders in the problem solving court have experienced some trauma in their life. Many of them have addiction issues whether that’s alcohol or drug issues and so on. We tend to find that some people are having a bit of a crisis or a spiral of offending and try and stop that rather than giving a short custodial sentence which might not really do particularly much to help them with the causes of the offending. The problem solving court is an opportunity to target things such as the alcohol addiction or the drug addiction and so on In a trauma informed way.”

“I think that success has already been evidenced in the relatively recent statistics from Glen Isla.  They showed that over 80% of offenders referred to them by the problem solving court managed to complete their community payback orders. It also showed that, I think, there’s only 5% appeared on the custody list in the same period, which was down from 55%. So, I think there is evidence that this different approach is working well.”

“I think there are many cases where I’ve seen people engage with community payback orders and turn their lives around. I think personally the ones which are most affecting for me are the ones where there’s young people who are successful in getting their lives back on track, so for example that maybe that they complete their order and then they’re able to find employment, or to enrol at college and I have to say that I do enjoy telling offenders at the end of their orders, that in the nicest possible way, I hope to never see them again.”