The SNP has announced plans to establish community compensation orders in Scottish crime hotspots.

The party says it wants to see offenders "make direct reparations to the community".

The proceeds will go directly to the arresting police force and not the UK Treasury under the proposals.

Speaking on Sunday John Swinney also detailed plans to extend weekend sentencing for those who persistently commit public order offences.

"I will introduce weekend sentencing for people who commit acts of disorder or violence. An offender will either be ordered to report to a prison or will be subject to a weekend curfew through tagging," said the SNP leader.

"The sentence could start on a Friday night and stretch through the weekend. It could be - in the case of a football fan - every Saturday afternoon in the local police station."

The party is also pledging to focus on the civil recovery of fines in a bid to tackle the imbalance in the numbers sent to jail.

Swinney argues that "prison must be used as a last resort". "Scotland's prison population is one of the highest in Europe. Thirty-seven percent of those sent to jail in Scotland are fine defaulters. A fine defaulter here is 15 times more likely to go to prison than a fine defaulter in England," said Swinney.

"And women who default on fines are around 45 times more likely to be sent to prison here than south of the border. Those staggering comparisons show that something is clearly wrong."

"We must look again at why so many people are being sent to jail for these offences and examine whether all available civil recovery methods are being used," he said.

The announcement came as Labour kept up the attack on the SNP.

The party seized on poll data which revealed that only nine per cent of Scots believed Swinney was the most trustworthy party leader in Scotland.

Labour's campaign co-ordinator, Patricia Ferguson, said: "The Nationalist's obsession with negative personal attacks has backfired spectacularly. Today's poll shows that the people of Scotland do not trust John Swinney and what's more even his own party's supporters find it difficult to trust him.

"After months of negative personal attacks on Jack McConnell the voters of Scotland have seen through the Nationalist's smears. It is time for John Swinney to raise his game."