Criminal Justice privacy notice

This notice is for people being supported or supervised by East Ayrshire Council and partner agencies through criminal justice services.

This includes:

• offenders and former offenders being supported or supervised in the community
• those receiving social care services in prison, or prison throughcare on release
• persons subject to community payback or compulsory treatment orders
• those persons subject to Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA)

We are using your personal information to carry out any supervisory role we have in relation to orders that you are subject to and to more generally look into your circumstances to see what needs you have that are eligible for support.

If you do have support needs or require supervision then we will work with other agencies to put in place a plan to support or supervise you.

We also use your information to:

• verify your identity where required
• contact you by post, email or telephone to maintain our records
• manage any funding of services and your contribution to these
• demonstrate to our own auditors and external regulators that we are providing proper services in accordance with the law

We provide these services to you as part of our statutory function as your local authority under the provisions of the:

• Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968
• Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995
• Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Act 2005
• Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016
• related legislation applying to support for those subject to criminal justice processes in Scotland

Processing personal information

Processing your personal information is necessary to comply with the law and for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest by the council as set out in the legislation referred to above.

We may also require to process your personal data to protect the vital interests of you or another individual. If you do not provide us with the information we have asked for then we may not be able to provide some of these services to you.

We 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 this data in order to carry out key functions as set out in the laws referred to above.

Criminal convictions and offences data

We 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 this data in order to carry out key functions as set out in the laws referred to above.

We are legally obliged to safeguard public funds and will 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 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 and with relevant multi-agency partners to help us improve our services.

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 GP
• any specialist whose care you are under
• hospital staff
• prison-based healthcare staff
• pharmacists
• district nurses
• Scottish Ambulance Service
• 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
• Skills Development Scotland

We will almost certainly share information 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
• 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.

This data sharing will only take place when necessary to discharge our legal duties based on your individual circumstances. It will be done in accordance with data protection legislation and our full privacy statement on our website.

We do not anticipate any need to transfer your personal data out with the UK. We will advise you if any such need arises and explain the reasons to you or your legal representative.

We will only keep your information for the minimum period necessary.

After this time, information is deleted/destroyed in accordance with our Council approved  Retention Schedule (PDF 814 KB) which explains how long we keep information for.

If you have provided anyone else’s details to us, please make sure that you have told them that you have given their information to Social Work Services.

We will only use this information as part of the assessment of your need for services and to contact them in connection with delivery of any such services.

If they want any more information on how we will use their information they can view the Privacy Statement.

Individual data protection rights include the following:

1. Access to your information – you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you.
2. 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.
3. Deletion of your information – you have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:
   • you think that we no longer need to hold the information for the purposes for which it was originally obtained
   • you have a genuine objection to our use of your personal information – see 'Objecting' below to how we may use your information
   • our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations
4. Objecting to how we may use your information – you have the right at any time to tell us to stop using your personal information.
5. 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 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 applies it 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.

How to contact us

Individuals can contact us:

• regarding their data protection rights and the processing of their data
• if they have a concern about the way Social Work Services is collecting or using their personal data

They should raise their concern with our Data Protection Officer in the first instance. Contact details can be found on our Privacy Statement.