Community Justice Outcome Activity Annual Report 2022-23

Laid before the Scottish Parliament by Community Justice Scotland under section 27 of the Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 March 2024 SG/2024/9

On behalf of Community Justice Scotland, we are pleased to present the sixth iteration of our outcome activity annual report, covering activity across Scotland in the year 2022 to 2023.

Our findings show that, across the country, people are working hard with evident skill and commitment for those involved with the justice system. At a strategic level, people are co-ordinating and aligning activity across policy areas for greatest value and impact on shared outcomes. Local areas told us how vulnerability and increasing complexity of need are evident in the populations they serve, and how challenging the circumstances are under which services have been operating. It is to the credit of the workforce that ambition remained undimmed, with continuing efforts across organisations and sectors to deliver collaborative and innovative approaches for communities.

This is the final report measuring progress against the outcomes of the previous national strategy published by Scottish Government, which ran from 2017 until 2023.  The local and national community justice partners are now preparing to deliver the ambitious agenda set out by the revised National Strategy for Community Justice. Each area is taking steps to understand the population it serves, and looking for the data and information so that resources can be directed to where they are most needed.

We thank all who contributed to this report, in particular those working at a local level in community justice. Their candour enables us to better understand the challenges and opportunities faced by delivery partners in community justice, and provides invaluable insight into practice. We will use this understanding to champion community justice issues at a national level and to help to bring change where that is needed. We want to enable those working on the frontline across the public and third sectors to use their invaluable expertise to the fullest, and for the impact to be felt where it is needed most – for communities and vulnerable individuals.

Scotland continues to have an exceptionally high rate of imprisonment compared with other countries. Greater use of appropriate community justice disposals and preventative practice provide the best approaches to address this. But in order to have sufficient impact to safely reduce prison population and improve outcomes for individuals, their families and communities, those approaches must be adequately prioritised and funded to enable partners  to deliver iterative improvements.

Our report makes one recommendation this year – for the Scottish Government to work with CJS and all community justice partners to match the policy ambition with appropriate resource. We look forward to taking this vital work forward enabling  local community justice partnerships to meet the needs of their communities.

This report sets out Community Justice Scotland’s (CJS) assessment of progress towards the national outcomes for community justice between April 2022 and March 2023. Progress is considered against the national outcomes described by the previous national strategy and aligned to the 2016 outcomes performance and improvement framework (OPIF). Activity was planned, co-ordinated and delivered by community justice partners in each of the 32 local authority areas.

The report finds that community justice has consistently received comparatively little funding and resource given the scope and ambition of the activity. At the same time, resources across services are under ever more pressure, while being presented with cases of increasing need and complexity.

The report makes one recommendation: that CJS, the Scottish Government and all partners work together to ensure that community justice across the public and third sectors is resourced in a way that matches the policy ambition.

The report also includes ‘Talking Points’ for future development, with a focus on the following areas: national levers for local issues; equality in the justice system; and scope and synergy.

Key findings from the reporting year

The year overall:

The local picture:

Progress towards outcomes

National Outcome 1: Communities improve their understanding and participation in community justice.

National Outcome 2: Partners plan and deliver services in a more strategic and collaborative way.

National Outcome 3: People have better access to the services that they require, including welfare, health and wellbeing, housing and employability.

National Outcome 4: Effective interventions are delivered to prevent and reduce the risk of further offending.

National Outcomes 5, 6 and 7:

Life chances are improved through needs, including health, financial inclusion, housing and safety being addressed; people develop positive relationships and more opportunities to participate and contribute through education, employment and leisure activities; individuals’ resilience and capacity for change and self-management are enhanced.

This report describes progress towards the achievement of national outcomes for community justice across Scotland between April 2022 and March 2023. This is the final report aligned to the 2016 National Strategy for Community Justice, and the associated outcomes, performance and improvement framework (OPIF). Future reports will be aligned to the National Strategy for Community Justice published in summer 2022 and the associated Community Justice Performance Framework (CJPF) published in March 2023.

In developing the report, we have drawn on the available evidence curated over the first five years of the present model of community justice and have used the new national strategy to consider implications for the future. The report includes a recommendation for CJS, the Scottish Government and community justice partners.

Recommendation

Shifting the balance on funding

Community justice is a preventative process which reduces crime and victimisation. In doing so, community justice creates savings for other parts of the justice system and, in the longer term, produces outcomes that reduce service demand and increase resilience for individuals and communities. Despite this, the proportion of investment in community justice has declined in comparison to investment in justice infrastructure.

In 2022-23, funding allocated by national government to support delivery of community justice accounted for 1.53% of the total Justice and Veterans budget. The ring-fenced funding allocated by Scottish Government to local areas for justice social work (JSW) has remained static at £86.5m since 2017^[1], though significant additional monies are made available to add to this core and in association with particular activities to be delivered. Resource and sustainability for the third sector are ever-present issues.

Although there are significant structural pressures on all parts of the justice system, a lack of funding flexibility can lead to decisions based on ‘what can be cut’ rather than ‘what should be cut’. The result is that preventative work in public sector and third sector provision has been under-emphasised in funding decisions.  This does not serve the preventative aspirations of The Vision for Justice in Scotland or the new National Strategy for Community Justice, and will not achieve the ultimate goal of shifting the balance between custody and community sentences.

We recommend that CJS, the Scottish Government and all partners work together to ensure that community justice across the public and third sectors is resourced in a way that matches the policy ambition of The Vision for Justice in Scotland.

Talking points

Last year we introduced ‘Talking Points’ to our annual reporting. These are used when evidence has highlighted issues that require further development with stakeholders involved with community justice, locally and nationally. CJS used the Talking Points from last year as the basis for knowledge exchange forums and discussions with a range of community justice partners. CJ partners found this approach highly effective in developing understanding, identifying barriers and begin to generate solutions within these collaborative sessions. The products of this engagement will continue to develop and inform community justice.

CJS intends to use this year’s Talking Points in the same way throughout the year following publication. As before, we will also encourage stakeholders to use them as prompts for their own consideration of community justice.

This year we raise three new Talking Points.

National levers for local issues

Local partners solve problems at a local level by identifying and overcoming barriers or by implementing workarounds. However, some challenges relating to regionally and nationally set policy and practice, require decision-making and influence which are inaccessible to local partners. How can the Scottish Government, CJS and national agencies work better with local partners to overcome barriers and advance developments without compromising local autonomy?

Equality in the justice system

People in contact with the justice system are diverse, experiencing the justice system in different ways and with distinct needs. The focus on the needs of women and young people in the justice system is comparatively well developed. However, there is little evidence of a strategic consideration of the needs of other subcategories of the overall population, or on where different aspects of identity may intersect and contribute to additional complexity and marginalisation. How can local and national partners promote and contribute to equality in justice for people who have distinct experiences as a result of their disability, race, sex, religion, sexuality or other aspect of their lived experience and identity?

Scope and synergy

Scottish Ministers have defined the direction for community justice partners through priority actions in the National Strategy for Community Justice and in the outcomes defined in the CJPF. Policy is also in place for other activity such as community safety, violence against women and girls, alcohol and drugs, employability, poverty, homelessness, health inequalities and education. Much of this work overlaps with community justice and encourages partners to work together. However, it can be unclear how some of the work across various local area partnerships contributes to the overarching community justice outcomes. How can partners better identify opportunities for alignment between policy areas to greatest impact without losing the focus on community justice outcomes?

The period between April 2022 and March 2023 included significant policy developments and challenging economic pressures on people, systems and resources. But there were also opportunities for community justice partners to refocus. There were no further Covid-19 restrictions, though the ongoing impact of the pandemic and post-pandemic years is evident.

The policy context

The National Strategy for Community Justice was published in June 2022. The associated CJPF was not published until March 2023. The publication of these documents required community justice partners to revise their community justice outcome improvement plans (CJOIPs) taking both the new strategy and the framework into consideration.

Many local partners reported that the gap between publication of these documents created a sense of uncertainty that hindered their ability to engage and progress their strategic planning. Nonetheless, progress was made. Partners took cognisance of the new national strategy and engaged with each other and their local communities to identify their priorities for development.

Concurrently, local partners were engaging nationally with CJS, the Scottish Government and others over significant policy developments that would ultimately have implications for local planning and delivery of community justice. These included:

The year also included the further development of policy initiatives that will have a significant impact on justice arrangements in the future. These included the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill and the Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill which both entered Stage 1 in June 2022.

Taken together, it was a year of substantial strategic change within and around community justice. It was also an opportunity for partnerships to take stock and focus on strategic directives set out by Scottish Ministers.

Victims, trauma and justice reform

There were significant developments across justice policy relating to victims of crime and violence against women and girls (VAWG). Discussions initiated by the partners involved in the Victims Taskforce were further developed following the recommendations of the Misogyny and Criminal Justice Working Group and consultations on improving victims’ experiences of the justice system, culminating in the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill introduced to the Scottish Parliament in April 2023.

Alongside these developments, the focus on trauma in justice settings was further developed by many national and local partners, in most cases using resources and opportunities available through the National Trauma Transformation Programme.

Restorative justice (RJ) in Scotland continued to develop in line with the vision presented within the RJ Action Plan 2019. As a result of the pressures of the pandemic, and the need to work more collaboratively with partners on serious and complex cases, the timescales for delivery were extended. In early 2023, stakeholders agreed the development of an RJ policy and practice framework to support the delivery of RJ in Scotland as a parallel process to the criminal and civil justice systems, now due for consultation in spring 2024. There is further information about the work completed in advancing RJ during 2022-23 in the RJ Action Plan Annual Report.

There were changes relating to children and young people in the justice system. The Scottish Sentencing Council’s sentencing young people guideline came into force in January 2022, and contributed to local and national discussions about community justice. In December 2022, the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill entered Stage 1 at the Scottish Parliament, including proposals to put an end to placing under 18s in young offenders’ institutions and to create opportunities for 16- and 17-year-olds with offending behaviour to be responded to via the children’s hearing system.

Significantly, the final report of the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce Changing Lives (July 2022) recognised the importance of a shift to community-based alternatives to custody in reducing drugs deaths.

Strategic complexity

It was in this context that the community justice partnerships (CJPs) were working to understand the implications of the new national strategy for their local areas in order to identify their local priorities and to develop their approach to planning and delivery.

Community justice arrangements are complex and link to a wide range of policy issues, strategic partnerships and needs. The partners involved in planning and delivering community justice arrangements are, in most cases, also those directly involved in other linked policy issues. Though the populations involved are often overlapping, there are competing demands for resources to achieve specific aims. This means that, unless strategic engagement is effective, there is a risk of missed opportunities and the duplication of efforts, potentially to the detriment of community justice outcomes.

Where local partners are engaged and strategic alignments are identified, we see impactful collaboration across policy issues, with partners seeking to leverage resources and to create opportunities for collaboration. This enables organisations to benefit from the expertise and resources of other entities.

Community sentences – contextual extracts from statistical reporting [2]

Community Payback Orders

The total number of Community Payback Orders (CPOs) imposed in Scotland in 2019-20 was 16,800. The Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting decrease in court business meant numbers fell sharply in 2020-21, to 8,200. Numbers recovered in each of the next two years, reaching 14,700 in 2022-23, still below the level prior to the pandemic.

Drug Treatment and Testing Orders The reduction in court business meant the number of Drug Treatment and Testing Orders (DTTOs) commenced was lower in both 2020-21 and 2021-22 than in the pre-pandemic years. Between 2021-22 and 2022-23, the number commenced fell by 18% to 300, the second lowest level in the last decade. The main driver for the reduction in 2022-23 was the

suspension of new assessments for several months in 3 local authority areas due to clinical staffing issues.

Structured deferred sentences

Structured deferred sentences offer courts the option to provide a short period of intensive supervision to individuals post-conviction but before final sentencing. After falling sharply in 2020-21 to 450 during the coronavirus pandemic, the number of these measures imposed in Scotland rose in each of the next two years, reaching its highest level of 1,300 in 2022-23.

Court reports

There were 1,700 same-day reports provided to the courts in 2022-23. This was higher than the pandemic years but still much lower than earlier years’ levels. In 2022-23, there were 11,000 post-sentence interviews with people remanded into custody or receiving custodial sentences for the first time. This was higher than the Covid-19-affected totals for both 2020-21 and 2021-22 but still 28% lower than in 2019-20.

The number of criminal JSW reports (CJSWRs) submitted (including supplementary reports but excluding letters sent instead of reports) averaged 28,200 over 2017-18 to 2019-20. With the lower volume of cases going through courts during the pandemic, numbers inevitably fell in the following two years to 16,900 and 23,000 respectively. For 2022-23, numbers increased by 15% to 26,400, though this was still slightly lower than the pre-pandemic levels. The number of full CJSWRs (that is excluding supplementary reports) also fell sharply between 2019-20 and 2020-21. Numbers then rose in both 2021-22 and 2022-23, reaching 24,600 in 2022-23. In 2022-23,7% of all reports were supplementary, the lowest in the last ten years.

Fiscal work orders

The number of Fiscal work orders (FWOs) commenced in Scotland increased after they were introduced nationally, reaching a high of 1,000 in 2017-18. Numbers then dropped in each of the next four years, though they did rise from 76 in 2021-22 to 140 in 2022-23. In 2022-23, 290 FWO assessments were undertaken by local authorities. In 150 of these assessments the orders were accepted, with the remaining 140 deemed unsuitable by local authorities. The number of orders that finished was 110, of which 76% were successfully completed.

Restriction of liberty orders

Restriction of liberty orders (RLOs) have been available in Scotland since May 2002. This order can be imposed for periods of up to one year. It involves restricting an individual to a specified place for up to 12 hours per day and/or from a specified place for up to 24 hours^[3]. There were 5,893 RLOs issued in 2022-23. This is the highest number on record, 4% more than 2019-20[4].

Bail supervision

Updated national bail supervision guidance was published in May 2022[5].

There were 1,100 bail supervision cases commenced in 2022-23, the highest in the last 10 years. Around 130 bail supervision cases (11%) involved an electronic monitoring order.

There were 4,200 assessment reports for bail suitability submitted to the courts in 2022-23.

Community justice and imprisonment

Scotland’s rate of imprisonment on 1 January 2023 was 131.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, marginally lower than in England and Wales (136.8). This is significantly higher than that of other otherwise comparable European countries, including Austria (98.8), Northern Ireland (86.6), Finland (51) and Iceland (36.1)[6].

There are multiple drivers of the high level of imprisonment in Scotland. These include shifts in behaviour, social attitudes, sentencing practice, capacity of the courts, capacity of wider public services, and national legislative and policy decisions. Taken together, the consequences of these factors have resulted in an excessive rate of imprisonment in Scotland.

While imprisonment can temporarily remove someone who may otherwise reoffend, the consequences of incarceration can be profoundly harmful for individuals, communities and Scotland as a whole. Even a comparatively short term of imprisonment can result in the disruption of family life, the loss of employment and accommodation, damage to social capacity, and exposure to trauma and retraumatisation. These experiences have an impact on an individual’s ability to move on from offending behaviour after release.

Policy and practice targeting the balance of custody and community have had an impact. For example, the share of the (average daily) sentenced population serving shorter index sentences remained below pre-pandemic levels in 2022-23. In 2019-20, 53% of the sentenced population had index sentences of four years or less. In 2022-23 this proportion had fallen to 43%[7].

This reduction in the use of short-term sentencing occurred in tandem with evidence that people were presenting with more complex needs in services. The proportion of CPOs with supervision requirements was 67% in 2022-23[8], its highest level except for the pandemic years. Similar indicators in the complexity of cases exist in the long average length of supervision requirements at 16.4 months and long average length of community payback requirements at 131 hours[9]. Both exceed pre-pandemic years.

Similarly, 1,100 bail supervision cases were commenced in 2022-23[10], the highest number in the last 10 years.

The (average daily) remand population fell by 3%, but it remained high at 1,804 which equated to 24% of the overall prison population[11].

These contributions are well represented in the new National Strategy for Community Justice, which has been formative in many partnerships’ development activity since publication in June 2022. The most powerful contribution that community justice can make to address the excessive use of imprisonment in Scotland is through focusing on improving and increasing the use of community-based solutions, ensuring that provision matches need and that services are truly accessible.

These are high-level indications that community justice arrangements are making a significant contribution towards a shift in the use of custody and community. There are, however, ongoing structural problems that limit the potential for further improvement, including a general lack of investment in community infrastructure compared to other justice spending, alongside the broader drivers of imprisonment.

Community first

International evidence indicates that desistance from offending is best supported by addressing needs, building social capital, and helping people build empowered lives with agency and resilience. In Scotland, these principles underpin approaches to community justice delivered by partners across the sector, from JSW to community-based organisations. Community justice approaches alone cannot solve the prison population problem. However, community justice partners can make contributions that not only help individuals but can also be part of shifting the balance from custodial responses to community approaches first.

Governance

Community justice comprises the activities, services and partners that work with and around people from the point of arrest, through the justice system, exit from justice contact, and integration with the community. The Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 requires that the relevant statutory partners take a strategic approach to planning and delivering these arrangements at local authority area level.

All local areas now discharge these duties via a strategic partnership approach, aligned to the relevant local governance and planning arrangements: ’community justice partnerships’ (CJPs).

Priorities

The purview of the CJPs is set by the scope of the National Strategy for Community Justice alongside any additional local priorities. This can encompass a wide range of practice issues. The following issues were commonly identified by local areas across the reporting year:

Further detail about activity on these priorities is in this report.

Engagement

Last year we highlighted a Talking Point about the difficulties of engaging community justice partners. There are signs of improvement, but partnerships continue to report difficulties in building and sustaining engagement with partner agencies. Over recent years, every sector and organisation has seen substantial change, including staff changes. Areas report that, when people move on, it is often challenging to transition, to develop quality relationships and to maintain momentum in the shared community justice agenda.

This is particularly acute if the change is in a key role, such as a community justice co-ordinator or partnership Chair. It is also difficult if it involves a representative who is entirely new to community justice.

Several areas reported that some partners struggle to clearly identify their roles and responsibilities in the shared community justice agenda. This was a barrier to engagement. Many areas reported developing induction packs with an explicit focus on introducing community justice to new partner representatives. They often used products from CJS to add content and context, such as templates to assist in developing the local evidence base.

Resources

Public sector budgets across the system were put under strain throughout the year, with unanticipated inflationary pressures reducing the intended impact of spending plans at a time of increased demand.

Areas reported increasing pressure on housing and homelessness services. In many areas, a shortage of suitable housing stock and supported accommodation is not, in itself, a new issue. However, several respondents reported that there were more challenges than previously.

As a result of these budget pressures, in some areas the capacity for innovation and collaboration was reduced. Areas reported that some partners were struggling to maintain their existing commitments to community justice collaboration and engagement alongside their core service delivery. Typically, as agencies must prioritise their statutory functions, this meant that resourcing activities beyond statutory requirements, particularly third sector and community-based prevention activities, were at significant risk throughout the period.

Workforce and wellbeing

The rising interest rates and high inflation throughout the reporting year also meant that much of the workforce was under significant pressure in their own lives. Poor mental health and wellbeing, and ‘burnout’ are issues evident across the workforce. At the same time, workloads were high and increasing because of demand and limited capacity. In spite of these challenging circumstances, areas reported progress against their activities.

Recruitment and retention of staff were reported as significant issues across agencies, in JSW[12] and also the third sector and wider community justice workforce.

Cost of living

Poverty remains an endemic issue for those who experience community justice. The challenging economic circumstances undoubtedly made this more acute, with community justice agencies supporting more people in a greater degree of need than before. The evidence returned by local partnerships frequently highlighted the requirement to provide support to meet basic needs, including access to food.

Trauma for people who are in conflict with the law

Sometimes, a previous experience of trauma can lead to behaviours and reactions that are challenging for other people, services and systems to respond to. Those involved with the justice system have often themselves been victims of serious crimes, in some cases unreported and unrecognised.

Service providers emphasise that individuals entering the justice system present increasingly complex needs, often stemming from unresolved trauma. Human connection serves as a protective factor against the impact of trauma, and the restrictions of the pandemic significantly increased isolation for many. The complexities in casework in community justice may be exacerbated by these factors.

There are examples of the community justice workforce using its expertise in trauma to cascade learning to other policy issues, with practical examples of trauma-responsive work evident in many local areas.

The third sector

As in previous years, there was a strong presence of third sector agencies supporting delivery of community justice across Scotland, from operational level to strategic involvement within partnerships. Research indicates that interventions that support desistance are, ideally, often delivered by non-statutory routes. Service provision from the third sector is important for a range of quality services that meet the needs of a diverse and vulnerable group, in the interests of increasing desistance from offending.

The limited funding opportunities, tightening public sector budgets, the precarity associated with single-year contracts, and absolute need to increase wages if recruitment and retention are to be supported, all combine to put the third sector and the mixed provision of services at significant risk[13].

As the straitened economic conditions continue to put pressure on commissioning bodies and the public sector, it is likely that this will show in the further reduction of third sector funding, and in turn the sector’s capacity. This will inevitably have a consequence for organisations across Scotland, their staff, the people who receive services and the communities in which they live.

There will also be implications for strategic implementation of community justice. In many partnerships, the role of the third sector often not only incorporates frontline service delivery but also contributes to strategic discussions and activities; represents or links to the wider sector; and frequently facilitates engagement with marginalised groups and communities. Many third sector partners contribute to community justice outcomes. The following organisations were highlighted most by partnerships:

Community integration and person-centric outcomes are enabled with contributions from thousands of other community-based groups. Third Sector Interfaces play a pivotal role in many CJPs. Additionally, partnerships report that local Women’s Aid groups, rape crisis centres and others provide valuable insights for community justice arrangements.

This reporting period is a transition year for community justice. It relates progress towards outcomes set out by the previous national strategy.

National outcome 1: Communities improve their understanding and participation in community justice.

How did local areas engage with partners, communities and individuals to improve their understanding of and participation in community justice?

Participation

All areas provided evidence of their approaches to enabling people to participate in community justice. The depth of this engagement varied significantly. Examples are publishing partnership meeting papers on local authority websites; references to scrutiny of community surveys; use of targeted surveys and feedback; and active and participative facilitated engagement to have community justice-focused conversations with communities and individuals. Engagement, particularly where it has involved the latter approaches, has been used to inform strategic planning and CJOIPs.

Use of technology

There is substantial evidence of areas using technology for engagement and participation. This included using social media to promote community justice topics; publishing content on websites; and conducting interactive discussion and consultation events online. Using technology to facilitate virtual engagement is clearly invaluable particularly for remote and rural communities. It creates opportunities to connect local and national justice partners, people and services.

Learning from the pandemic has optimised the ability of areas to use technology as part of a portfolio for engagement, with some areas becoming particularly skilled in ensuring that online participation is meaningful and inclusive. This has benefited a range of audiences across Scotland. Some partnerships, however, reported that virtual engagement with partners and the public limited their ability to develop high-quality conversations and relationships. They emphasised the importance of face-to-face interaction. The strongest examples used a mix of approaches including technology and in-person contact.

Awareness raising

Approaches to raising awareness of community justice included publishing reports and holding large-scale events on community justice themes. Several areas used opportunities and products from CJS and worked with their local communications teams to promote local justice topics, such as the benefits of unpaid work undertaken as part of CPOs.

Public confidence in JSW is essential, and areas took steps to increase awareness and understanding. In some cases, local areas sought to maximise exposure for community justice through local and national press. Several areas told us about events focused on community justice and community justice inputs to other events, or training and development opportunities. Most of these events targeted organisations with a potential overlap with community justice, including the public and third sectors.

Participation with people with lived experience

JSW and third sector services are commonly cited as sources of information for engaging with people with lived experience to co-produce services.

The following talking point was raised last year on co-production with people with lived experience. ‘It is reasonably straightforward to summarise high-level activity where the expertise of those with lived experience is valued and incorporated. However, as well as providing valuable context about needs, evidence and innovation for the partnership, it can create both risks and opportunities for participants. It is not always clear how these risks and opportunities are managed to ensure that engaging those with lived experience is authentic, meaningful, ethical and effective.’

This year, partnerships provided more examples of meaningful strategic engagement with people with lived experience of the justice system.

National outcome 2: Partners plan and deliver services in a more strategic and collaborative way.

How did partnerships enable strategic and collaborative service planning and delivery?

Partner engagement

Several local areas reported difficulty in building and maintaining momentum at a strategic level in the community justice agenda because of changes in staff. New partner representatives are often not clear about their roles and responsibilities in the community justice agenda, and it takes time for relationships to be built and buy-in to be gained. Nonetheless, there is substantial evidence of partnerships working collaboratively to progress strategic responses to local community justice priorities.

Strategic engagement across policy issues

Several areas reported strategic engagement with other local or regional partnership groups with overlapping populations of interest. Most frequently this was with ADPs. ADP involvement is evident across a wide range of community justice activities at operational and strategic levels, from point of arrest through to release from custody and beyond. There are clear indications of developed strategic relationships enabling targeting of resources at local priorities, particularly as partnerships work collaboratively to deliver the MAT standards in justice contexts.

The strategic development of services for women

The other frequently cited example of strategic engagement was with VAWPs. For example some areas highlighted collaboration with their local VAWP to increase their CJP’s  understanding of victims’ experiences in order to inform their planning. Some areas specifically highlighted that women involved in offending are often also survivors of abuse. Local areas provided several examples of collaborative working across policy areas to support women in the justice system.

There is a clear priority in local areas to reduce the barriers to women accessing services. Justice-linked services incorporating co-ordinated ‘wraparound’ approaches and co-location to are now common. There are some examples of embedded structures, such as the Glen Isla Project and the Glen Clova Project also known as ‘The Glens’, an all-women team that supports women across Angus.

SPS opened two new community custody units (CCUs), the Bella Centre in Dundee and the Lilias Centre in Glasgow. SPS states: ‘The purpose of the CCUs is to provide safe accommodation and to support the needs of women who will benefit from closer community contact and access to local services, to create and sustain independence in preparation for successful reintegration into the community. Each CCU is comprised of a number of small accommodation units and a community hub where women can meet with visitors and a range of services and activities will be delivered’[14]. From a community justice perspective, the local areas in which these new CCUs reside have been, and continue to be, engaged in developing community connections to support these aims, with an initial inspection[15] of the Bella Centre identifying a positive trajectory in these efforts. Elsewhere, the opening of the new national facility housing young and adult women prisoners provided an opportunity for the local area to collaborate in raising awareness of women’s imprisonment and rehabilitation.

Collaboration and multiagency working

There are many areas where strong strategic relationships have supported targeted collaborative efforts to work towards community justice outcomes. Notable examples often occur around points of transition between stages of the justice process; around point of arrest and admission into custody; and around release from prison. Two areas highlighted their multiagency collaborations to develop approaches to arrest referral services, working to enhance access to services to address needs.

Most areas reported their collaborative efforts on working with prisons to enable targeted support on release from prison, including housing, benefits and access to treatment for drug and alcohol issues.

These efforts are best enabled by local partners who understand the local networks, relationships, assets and information sharing to inform planning and delivery. However, they cannot be implemented without commitment from national partners. For example, agencies that work on a national or regional basis such as NHS boards, Police Scotland, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) and CJS, should ensure that they provide meaningful support and resource to these approaches. There has been good practice in, for example, developing information-sharing protocols. However, further work is required.

Despite the strategic challenges, some partnerships demonstrated strong examples in co-ordinating resources, planning and service delivery.

National outcome 3: People have better access to the services that they require, including welfare, health and wellbeing, housing and employability.

What steps have areas taken to improve access to services, and what impact has there been as a result?

Access to services

Local community justice arrangements have successfully leveraged resources in some areas to support multifunctional, multi-organisational and inter-team working within co-located facilities.

Community-level connections are important in both urban and rural areas. Therefore, community justice partners must remain observant to the fact that local flexibility and empowerment in community justice arrangements are prerequisite for success. The challenges are different across areas, and partnerships use their local knowledge and expertise to find solutions to meet local needs.

A Talking Point on geographic difficulties – place-based challenges in accessing services – was raising in last year’s report. Local returns for this year included more information about geographic challenges.

The centralisation of police custody centres has created challenges for some local areas, such as providing suitable adult services. Similarly, centralisation of court business has created difficulties for service provision. Some local authorities have neither a police custody centre nor a sheriff court, which means their residents interact with multiple police custody centres and courts. This makes local integration of support arrangements more challenging. Host local authorities also have additional workloads from out-of-area clients.

Further analysis is required to improve understanding of the impact of distance and compliance on requirements to attend courts and police stations. The prohibitive cost and lack of availability of public transport to access services are ongoing issues which services try to mitigate. However, there are also examples of more consideration of geography in designing and delivering services. Place-based working is a person-centred, bottom-up approach used to meet the unique needs of people in a given location by working together to use the best available resources and to collaborate to gain local knowledge and insight.

The development of the local community justice plan is considering a place-based approach and associated service mapping.

Geographic access to services is also a concern in urban areas.

Linking services in the community

Police custody

Many local areas are prioritising the development of services linked to police custody. There is strong collaboration with ADPs so that this work bridges support on substance use. Similarly, mental health services have been leveraged locally through Action 15 of the Scottish Government Mental Health Strategy 2017–2027: ‘Increase the workforce to give access to dedicated mental health professionals to all A&Es, all GP practices, every police station custody suite, and to our prisons. Over the next five years increasing additional investment to £35 million for 800 additional mental health workers in those key settings. Full local integration with wider services, such as housing, social security, financial inclusion, language and communication support, is also critical for success. Some areas have developed connections between services that provide local voluntary throughcare arrangements, arrest referral and bail support. This is advantageous because there is a core

group of people with significant and complex needs who are arrested, held in custody and often returned to prison for short periods. The ongoing instability that they experience means that continuity of care from the same key workers is beneficial.

There are continuing challenges including:

An issue of potential significance that is not yet developed at a local area level is the role of Appropriate Adult Services in enabling equitable access to justice for people who are vulnerable. During the reporting period, COSLA hosted the national appropriate adult co-ordinator and the policy and participation officer. This was a result of an agreement to work with the Scottish Government to implement the new statutory duties relating to Appropriate Adult Services in justice settings. There is an associated oversight group which has regard to duties relating to the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 (Support for Vulnerable Persons) Regulations 2019. During the reporting year, the Care Inspectorate was developing its quality improvement framework for Appropriate Adult Services. This will be an area for further development by community justice partners, with support from national partners to identify and address issues.

Employability

There are positive examples of employability workers based in some JSW services and local links with employability pipelines through the No One Left Behind strategy. These provide pathways to employment and wraparound support for continued complex needs. There is, however, less evidence of the availability of services relating to when, why and how to disclose criminal convictions (or to legally not disclose) to support employment progression. Further, there is still little evidence of progress towards embedding the

opportunities which arise from more realistic disclosure/rehabilitation periods implemented by the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2019.

Employing people with convictions

Some partners are leading the agenda in recruiting people with convictions, beyond the peer role function. This demonstrates to local employers that there is untapped potential which they can deploy by recruiting people with convictions.

Peer workers

Mistrust of public services is a barrier. This can stem from bad experiences over lifetimes and generations, and lack of hope after previous unmet promises from services. Peer workers can be important in overcoming this. There has been progress through increased employment of people with lived experience within service delivery, and the term ‘peer worker’ is used more commonly in local returns. Employing people with lived experience enables a more diverse and relatable workforce to encourage participation in services. There are several examples in the returns.

There are complications such as vetting and disclosure. Similarly, more evidence is required to ensure that the ‘peer’ workforce is supported, integrated and developed effectively through supervision, fair pay, training, career progression, vicarious trauma monitoring and equality of opportunity.

Health

Justice settings are used as an opportunity to address health inequalities by reaching people in poor health who do not commonly access services except in an emergency or crisis. For example, Keep Well nurses, occupational health and mental health professionals have been deployed in justice settings. There is considerable pressure on the availability and accessibility of universal health services. However, community justice remains a critical opportunity for health boards to address health inequalities by engaging with people who they otherwise cannot reach.

Financial inclusion

The cost-of-living crisis has created new needs. Areas have described access to financial inclusion services such as Citizens Advice Bureaux and emergency referral to foodbanks. This is often, as stated by the Trussell Trust, to provide‘additional support to help people resolve the crises they’re facing so that they don’t need to use a food bank again in the future. This could include things like debt advice, mental health support, or benefits guidance’[16].

Housing

The availability of suitable housing remains a structural problem. However, there are significant developments through the Ending Homelessness Together strategic work; implementation of the SHORE Standards (sustainable housing on release for everyone) (described later in this report); and anticipated new policy and legislative proposals on homelessness prevention.

Liberation from prison

Enabling access to services after short periods of imprisonment is particularly challenging, especially unplanned liberations from court. Many local areas have prioritised activity in this area.

There are significant challenges in enabling access to services, including:

Co-ordination of integration support after liberation from prison

In response to these challenges, some local areas have implemented complementary services to improve arrangements for people returning from prison. Some local areas described improving their use of the information-sharing agreement between SPS and local authorities. A growing number of areas have developed co-ordinated systems to help reach people with the right service, in the right place and at the right time, so that basic needs are prioritised. Local co-ordination is essential because the best outcomes are achieved from holistic approaches with joined-up services. The availability of services is fluid, and their accessibility is relevant at microgeographic levels inside local authorities. People commonly present in services again after being arrested, and a continuum of the same system of support is beneficial.

Accommodation

Local areas are continuing to develop their housing solutions in line with the SHORE Standards. Areas are at various stages of implementation but problems with the availability of suitable housing remain, amid increasing demands for housing.

Support with substance use

The profound impact of drug-related deaths in Scotland is clearly recognised. Community justice partners are collaborating with ADPs to implement the MAT standards across all justice settings. The progress made by ADPs in developing MAT standards in previous reporting years is valuable learning for integrating these standards within a justice framework. Recovery groups have also further developed inside prisons and in the community.

Voluntary throughcare

There are some new local services to support people after liberation and there is increasing reference to peer workers. These new services are operating inside local systems of support in tandem with voluntary throughcare from JSW and the New Routes, SHINE and Moving On Scotland voluntary throughcare and mentoring programmes.

CJS will continue to support improved access to services when it assumes grant management and monitoring responsibility for the Scottish Government-funded third sector voluntary throughcare and mentoring service.

Social security

The return to usual working after the pandemic for DWP work coaches in prisons and additional resources in some areas are welcome developments. Some areas mentioned positive collaboration in enabling financial inclusion.

Mental health

Integration Joint Boards are statutory community justice partners. There are numerous examples of investment in services to reach people with mental health services in justice settings using allocations from Action 15 of the Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027.

Employment

Community justice partners are collaborating with their local employability partnerships to maximise the impact of the No One Left Behind strategy and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Some people are ready and motivated for employment, education or training straight after prison. Some partnerships have described strengthening pathways to jobs and learning for people being liberated so that they can access opportunities at the right time.

People being liberated from prison can connect to these community pathways but, ideally, there should be links before they leave prison.

SDS and SPS collaborated to develop a memorandum of understanding on the approach for services to young people in custody. This identified the need for further work such as revising the data-sharing agreement so that services, such as access to training and education, can be better facilitated when the young person is liberated.

Families

Many partnerships described close working with Families Outside to raise awareness within local systems of services for families and to develop referral mechanisms for support. The welfare and resilience of families affected by imprisonment are critical. There is, however, little policy focus in local areas or at a national level on families affected by imprisonment. Partnerships mentioned learning from engaging in the development of Paying the Price: the financial cost to families of imprisonment and release.

Overall, the work of local partners aims to improve integration of and support for individuals, emphasising collaboration, proactive planning and addressing needs.

Equality and access

The activities described cover the breadth of need associated with the justice population. Nonetheless, it is not clear that partners are accounting for diversity within the justice population. The Equality Act 2010 created a duty for the public sector to consider all individuals in shaping policy and delivering services, and to take steps to eliminate discrimination and advance equality of opportunity. Good practice in equality impact assessments encourages agencies to take into account the challenges that individuals with protected characteristics experience, and to consider how a policy may affect, positively or negatively, different sectors of the population in different ways. It is not clear to what extent community justice partners are considering diversity in developing and delivering community justice arrangements.

National outcome 4: Effective interventions are delivered to prevent and reduce the risk of further offending.

What changes have been made to community justice arrangements to enable desistance, reduce reoffending and promote integration, and what impact has there been as a result?

Bail support services

Some local areas have prioritised improving and developing bail support services. The Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Act 2023 brings opportunities to improve bail support. Increasing the effective use of bail assessment reports by sheriffs will be key. However, resourcing production of these reports and associated bail support services will continue to present difficulties.

There are clear links to third sector support in the community. Bail must be considered within the local system as a whole, including voluntary throughcare, arrest referral, MAT standards, mental health provision, financial inclusion, employability pathways, whole family support and housing.

Electronic monitoring is in its infancy in Scotland compared to south of the border. The research evidence on electronic monitoring[17] asserts that it is ineffective without wraparound support. Electronic monitoring, with improved support and supervision, has the potential to reduce the ever-increasing prison population. However, resources are needed to ensure that the necessary wraparound services are available before electronic monitoring can be expanded.

Diversion from prosecution

Redirecting individuals from prosecution, when suitable, allows them to address early on the various issues contributing to alleged offences. This benefits both individuals and communities, reducing instances of offending and reoffending, leading to fewer victims and less harm to society. Recognising that those in contact with the justice system often have greater vulnerability and complex needs, the aim is to ensure timely diversion after arrest. It uses well-informed and tailored opportunities reflecting the nature and severity of the alleged crime to address underlying needs and causes of offending behaviour.

Diversion activities can occur in the form of warnings from the police or the PF or fixed penalty notices. There are other types of non-court-based disposals available to police and prosecutors such as a conditional offer, compensation offer or a FWO. More formal diversion from prosecution cases is managed by JSW when an individual accepts an offer from the PF to receive services or treatment to address underlying needs which relate to the offending behaviour.

Local partnerships have reported widely on formal diversion from prosecution cases for the reporting year. Services have been developed and links have been strengthened with third sector organisations. There is widespread reporting of needs assessment and service planning to improve outcomes for diversion from prosecution. Several areas have established working groups to explore opportunities, with increasing use of formal diversion.

The number of diversion from prosecution cases commenced fell by 2% between 2021-22 and 2022-23 to 2,600. This was the second highest level in the last 10 years[18].

Local areas have raised concerns about how to resource growing demand for formal diversion from prosecution without increased funding. Some areas have managed to leverage funding for third sector provision. However, there are sustainability concerns. Though there are comparatively small number, concerns about diversion referrals relating to gender-based violence have been raised by some partnerships. There is also widespread reporting of people presenting with more complex needs. Such cases typically require more time.

The Joint Review of Diversion from Prosecution was carried out by HM Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland, the Care Inspectorate and HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland. It highlighted that diversion from prosecution, designed to address the underlying causes of offending behaviour, was well established as an effective intervention for those aged under 18, but that more could be done to promote confidence in its use for adults. It found scope for improvement in how diversion from prosecution operates and made 34 recommendations. This will be monitored by national partners as part of the Community Justice Strategy Delivery Plan.

Partnerships reported on work to review these recommendations locally within the context of their planning and improvement processes. Local areas which participated in the review expressed positive experiences from the process and the wider recommendations have been welcomed by stakeholders.

There are reports that people with more complex needs are presenting in formal diversion services. However, there is no rigorous evidence yet to define whether the increase in cases is being driven by de-escalating prosecution or the escalation of cases which would previously have been resolved through fiscal warning letters, or other drivers. The CJS improvement tool and associated proposed logic models will provide better evidence for this in the future.

COPFS reports[19] that there were significantly fewer fiscal warning letters issued in the reporting year. Only 3,249 fiscal warning letters were sent in the reporting year compared to 5,203 in 2021-22, 6,583 in 2020-21 and 5,261 in 2019-20. This will be monitored through the lifecycle of the National Strategy for Community Justice.

There are several developments in diversion from prosecution from some local areas.

Alcohol brief interventions

Alcohol remains a significant factor in relation to crime and some areas use ABI as part of efforts to address the issue.

Some areas reported activity linked to nationally set policy priorities and programmes, including those linked to domestic abuse, sexual offending behaviour programmes and statutory duties linked to public protection.

Domestic abuse The Caledonian System has been embedded in JSW in a number of Local Authorities across Scotland since 2011. It is an integrated approach to addressing domestic abuse, combining a court-ordered programme for men aimed at changing their behaviour, with support services for women and children. The Scottish Government commit £4.1m annually

to support delivery of the System and it is now in operation across 20 Local Authorities In Scotland. In the areas that do not presently have the Caledonian System, alternative approaches are taken.

One area that does not receive direct government funding for the Caledonian System has taken steps to implement the approach from within its existing resources.

National outcomes 5, 6 and 7

What mechanisms and arrangements enable areas to understand progress for people against these outcomes?

Specific person-centric outcomes have been removed from the new National Strategy for Community Justice. However, embedding person-centredness and trauma-informed practice is threaded through the strategy.

Person-centric issues are unique to individuals. Therefore, defining person-centric outcomes for someone else or for groups of people, is contradictory. Meaningful reporting and evaluation of person-centric outcomes at a systemic level was challenging under the previous national strategy. These are a core principle of trauma-informed, person-centred and assets-based working rather than something that is easily measurable across a system.

It remains important for person-centric outcomes to be monitored within the context of services and for them to be integrated within quality improvement. Local areas have described the use of various mechanisms, such as Justice Outcomes Star, which measure progress of individuals. These are valuable operational tools which add value to case management and service quality improvement. However, any inference from aggregating the data beyond a single service is limited without wider qualitative data to support quality improvement across systems of services.

At a partnership level, there should be curiosity and the right leadership across whole systems of services to develop person-centric outcomes. In last year’s annual report we raised a talking point about the difficulty of identifying progress in the longer term to inform community justice improvements at system level.

To respond to these challenges, CJS is designing a series of resources to complement the CJS improvement tool to support partners to assess progress towards national outcomes and to identify opportunities for improvement. A core feature of the resources is triangulation of evidence involving community justice leaders, the community justice workforce and people with lived experience. The intention is to improve oversight of the disconnections and gaps between services; to monitor solutions or workarounds; and to provide clearer evidence for changes that partners need to make at regional or national level.

Community justice partners are moving ahead with the new national strategy and the national outcome and indicators set out in the Community Justice Performance Framework published on 31 March 2023.

The nine national outcomes are:

CJS published the Community Justice Improvement Tool to complement the national framework at a local level. This tool will help promote improvement in local areas, setting out the local supporting evidence that should be considered throughout the year to help local community justice partners plan and monitor improvement activities.

The next annual report to be produced by CJS will describe progress against the nine national outcomes above. We will request information from local and national partners to evidence progress towards outcomes and to understand what needs to happen to support progress.

All areas have been working to produce their new CJOIPs that will set out how they will work towards the national outcomes. Local areas will develop, gather and use information in collaboration with CJS to support improvement; to report on progress towards outcomes; and to provide CJS with local evidence as part of their annual reporting for Scotland. CJS will support implementation of the improvement tool throughout the coming year and beyond, and will work with partners to encourage and monitor improvement in community justice.

This was another year during which the collective community justice workforce strove, in exceptionally challenging circumstances, to deliver improved outcomes for some of Scotland’s most vulnerable people. Existing challenges were aggravated, and it is unlikely that conditions will ease soon.

In the introduction, we set out our recommendation:

We recommend that CJS, the Scottish Government and all partners work together to ensure that community justice across the public and third sectors is resourced in a way that matches the policy ambition of The Vision for Justice in Scotland.

A substantive shift from custody to community, as set out by the Scottish Government’s Vision for Justice, cannot be achieved without a more systemic approach to reform. It needs to adopt a cross-portfolio approach to tackling the causes and effects of offending. More effective approaches to prevention and support could lead to substantial financial savings, improvements for communities and victims of crimes, and less offending and reoffending.