Court orders to offenders to address their drug problems are meeting high levels of breaches and nearly nine out of 10 of those involved are reconvicted.

Breaches of the Drug Testing and Treatment Orders (DTTO) handed down by sentencers run at 45%, according to the most recent figures.

Those back in the dock and found guilty of subsequent offences within two years run to 88% - a level sustained over several years. The lowest it fell over the first half of this decade was 83%.

According to figures released by the Scottish Government, in answer to a question from Margaret Smith, the LibDem justice spokesman at Holyrood, some areas are finding much higher breach levels than others.

Nine council areas had more than half of their DTTOs breached, including the Grampian area, Dundee, Fife, South Lanarkshire and West Lothian.

The highest levels of breaching were in Renfrewshire, where 14 out of 15 DTTOs were breached in 2006-07, and in North Ayrshire, 29 out of 36 did so.

The figures of reconviction within two years of receiving a DTTO sentence are less easy to break down into local authority areas, and the statistics are patchy. But the most recent figures, up to 2004-05, show all of those in Dundee went on to re-offend.

Across Ayrshire, that went for 95%, and in Glasgow, it was at 91%.