Privacy Statement for Criminal Justice Social Work Reports (CJSWRs)

Last updated on Wed, 25/07/2018 - 14:33

Who we are:
Dundee City Council is a local authority established under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994. Its head office is located at City Square, Dundee, DD1 3BY and you can contact our Data Protection Officer by post at this address, by email at: infogov@dundeecity.gov.uk, and by telephone on 01382 434206.

Why do we need your personal information and what do we do with it?
You are giving us your personal information to allow us to complete a CJSWR. This is a report requested by the Court, after you have been convicted on an offence . The CJSWR provides the sentencer (most commonly Sheriff) with background information to inform sentencing options. We also use your information to verify your identity where required, contact you by post, email or telephone and to maintain our records.

Legal basis for using your information:
We provide these services to you as part of our statutory function as your local authority. You can find more details of our role on our website at www.dundeecity.gov.uk/service-area/chief-executive/chief-executives-serv.... Processing your personal information is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest by the council. The legal basis for gathering information for a CJSWR is set out in Section 203 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 . “Where a person commits an offence, the court shall not dispose of the case without obtaining from the local authority a report as to the circumstances of the offence and the character of the offender.”
As the CJSWR is a report to the Court, the information in it will be drawn from the information you give but will also utilise existing records held and may involve contact with other relevant agencies, with whom you are in contact. Although the CJSWR obtains your perception, the Report writer is being tasked to exercise professional judgement in presentation of background, assessment and recommendations.
A CJSWR will, of necessity involve the processing of sensitive information about yourself, such as relevant past convictions . We may also need to process more sensitive personal information about you for reasons of substantial public interest as set out in the Data Protection Act 2018. It is necessary for us to process it to carry out key functions as set out in law.

Who do we share your information with?
We are legally obliged to safeguard public funds so we are required to verify and check your details internally for fraud prevention. We may share this information with other public bodies (and also receive information from these other bodies) for fraud checking purposes. We are also legally obliged to share certain data with other public bodies, such as HMRC and will do so where the law requires this. We will also generally comply with requests for specific information from other regulatory and law enforcement bodies where this is necessary and appropriate. Your information is also analysed internally to help us improve our services. This data sharing is in accordance with our Information Use and Privacy Policy and covered in our full privacy statement on our website. It also forms part of our requirements in line with our Records Management Plan approved in terms of the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011.

The principal recipient of the completed CJSWR is the Court.

As a local authority we are also obliged to consider issues of Child or Adult protection and it may be necessary to share information from the CJSWR that is relevant to Child or Adult Protection . Supervision and social care support often involves multi-agency work. There are many other agencies with whom we are likely to share your data in order to support you. These include the NHS - which may be your G.P, any specialist whose care you are under, hospital staff, prison-based healthcare staff, pharmacists, district nurses, Scottish Ambulance Service and allied professions involved in your care and support. We are certain to share information with the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) if you are, or have recently been, in prison. We will routinely share information with any provider of care and support to you, either your own private carers, those being paid to provide services to you or voluntary agencies offering you support. As well as the NHS and SPS we may share information with certain other Community Justice Partners including Police Scotland, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, Scottish Government and Skills Development Scotland and will almost certainly do so if you are subject to MAPPA arrangements. In addition, we may share information with some other agencies depending on your individual circumstances. These include your housing provider, if aspects of your support relate to housing adaptations or other housing-related issues and the Department of Work and Pensions in terms of benefits you may receive. We will also share information with other council services where we are working with them to provide services to you.

How long do we keep your information for?
We only keep your personal information for the minimum period amount of time necessary. Sometimes this time period is set out in the law, but in most cases it is based on the business need. The retention periods for CJSWR vary and are determined by Scottish Archives and details of retention periods can be found at https://www.scottisharchives.org.uk/resources/scarrs/

Your rights under data protection law:

  • Access to your information – you have the right to access the information we hold on you. There are two ways to access your data:
    Subject Access Request: you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you.
    Data Portability: you can ask us for a copy of your information so that you can re-use it and we will provide it in a machine-readable format. This is a qualified right, which means it only applies in certain circumstances and only relates to information you have given directly to us.
  • Correcting your information – we want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date. Therefore you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.
  • Deletion of your information – you have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:
  1. you think that we no longer need to hold the information for the purposes for which it was originally obtained
  2. you have a genuine objection to our use of your personal information – see Objecting to how we may use your information below
  3. our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations.

Objecting to how we may use your information – You have the right at any time to tell us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

Restricting how we may use your information – in some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information. This right might apply, for example, where we are checking the accuracy of personal information that we hold about you or we are assessing the objection you have made to our use of your information. This right might also apply if we no longer have a basis for using your personal information but you don't want us to delete the data. Where this right is realistically applied will mean that we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.

Please contact us as stated above if you wish to exercise any of these rights.

Information you have given us about other people:
If you have provided anyone else’s details on this form, please make sure that you have told them that you have given their information to Dundee City Council. We will only use this information to inform a CJSWR where relevant. If they want any more information on how we will use their information they can visit our web site at https://dundeecity.gov.uk/service-area/chief-executive/chief-executi... or email infogov@dundeecity.gov.uk

Complaints:
We aim to directly resolve all complaints about how we handle personal information. However, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office, who can be contacted by post at: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. By phone on 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745. Visit their website for more information at- https://ico.org.uk/concerns

More information:
For more details on how we process your personal information visit www.dundeecity.gov.uk/service-area/chief-executive/chief-executives-serv...