Community experiences of serious organised crime in Scotland: research report

Appendix A: Enhancing Meaning & Improving Impact – Findings of the Co-inquiry Sessions

Scottish Community Development Centre

1. Methodology

Purpose: This approach used interim analysis of interview data to stimulate group discussion in order to clarify and build on the patterns in the material from the core fieldwork and provide some triangulation of the findings. It involved bringing some of those interviewed in the study, together with local community planning & community justice stakeholders to:

• hear an accessible overview of findings and explore their resonance to inform data analysis.
• use this overview in a front-line context to consider what shifts in practice, policy or broader community responses could help prevent crime, tackle its social determinants or help communities deal with its impact.
• utilise these insights and proposals to inform the conclusions and recommendations of the report.

Recruitment of Participants: Three co-inquiries were organised across the case-study areas, including one 'Urban, Embedded', one 'Semi-Urban Embedded' and one 'National Diffuse'. This report covers the output of all three sessions. Scottish Community Development Centre worked with participants from each area including local residents, staff in community based or third sector projects, and staff in statutory agencies including teachers, social workers, housing staff, youth workers or police officers. The table below provides a breakdown of participants in the three sites.

Field site type	Community Representatives	Statutory or third sector agencies	Community Justice Partnerships Reps	Totals
Urban Embedded ( UE)	5	3	2	10
Semi Urban embedded ( SUE)	3	3	2	7
National diffuse ( ND)	3*	11	2	16

*In this session community representatives were local councillors

Participants were identified in consultation with the research team who nominated those likely to be willing and able to participate in the sessions. Attempts were made to maintain a balance of participants in line with the overall research aims. The invitation was extended to a cross-section of participants from the study, as well as nominated others from within Community Justice Partnerships.

Staff in relevant community planning and community justice co-ordination roles were also invited, irrespective of whether they had been interviewed in the earlier phase, to explore issues related to strengthening key operational links between communities, Community Justice Partnerships and wider community planning. The purpose of these invitations was to support links envisaged in the Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 and the subsequent implementation of its local community justice model as described in Community Justice Outcome Improvement Plans.

The process: A presentation was delivered by lead researchers and SCDC staff. This restated the research aims and provided an overview of the methods used. It summarised and presented emerging themes at the time of the co-inquiry which were categorised as follows:

• Wider Disadvantage – how it can create conditions for crime
• Importance of Stories – Which attract people to get involved in serious organised crime
• Vulnerable People – And how they are used / exploited by serious organised criminals
• Services and related policy – And their effectiveness in combating crime

These themes were illustrated with relevant quotations from the draft report and an additional description of views expressed in the interviews to provide participants with an overview of the nature of responses. The presentation of findings provided a starting point for further discussion on the issues and how they might be addressed.

Facilitation Methods: SCDC facilitated the sessions using techniques for collective reflection based on an initial analysis of the interview data. This involved using two facilitated group exercises. In the first participants reflected on content of the findings in terms of authenticity and resonance. In each case the collective view was supportive of the findings. The second exercise focused on future community, policy or practice responses. Each theme was discussed in turn with participants asked to identify what actions they believed they needed more of, less of and what could be done differently.

2. Overview of Co-inquiry findings

Resonance: The four themes resonated deeply with those participating, although in every location the point was made that it is a minority who engage in criminal activity – including those who also experience very significant poverty and disadvantage. Additional depth was achieved via structured collective discussion which helped participants to frame ideas and develop solutions for the future. Overlaps in participants' reflections across the themes demonstrated that participants viewed them as closely inter-related in practice and that in order to achieve change some core concerns needed to be emphasised wherever opportunities would allow.

Preventative focus: The co-inquiry participants were less focused on detection and punishment than may have been expected given the severity of the effects SOC has on communities. In fact, there were no responses from participants which focused on increased sentencing or harsher treatment of those committing crime. Whilst this may speak to the nature of the sample it also appears to reflect a sophistication in the contemporary community and institutional responses. These highlighted the importance of how SOC is socially constructed and the implications of this for reducing crime by tackling the mechanisms which nurture and replicate it. The emphasis in the discussions tended to focus on the need for Police and other services to work more closely with communities by addressing these social determinants and their effects at community level.

Differences Between the Areas: Across the different types of site described in the research the co-inquiries confirmed that while people found the four key-themes useful, there were differences of emphasis. However, there seems no doubt that although disadvantage, unrealistic SOC stories and exploitation of vulnerability are important causal factors in all sites and are systemically linked to each other, as illustrated in Fig 1 , it is the intensity of this experience of multiple disadvantage that creates the biggest challenges for services and policy development. This intensity was highest in the urban embedded context and least intense in the national diffuse location.

Each site exhibited differences in levels of confidence and ability to respond depending on how the four themes interacted locally with 'real world variables'. These included - the prevalence of SOC activity, levels of realistic access to work, contemporary industrial decline in high wage industries, consequent impacts on educational attainment and the quality of services and community infrastructure. The co-inquiry findings and further use of this four theme model seems to offer potentially accessible starting points for dialogue on how local people and staff working locally could accurately assess local SOC conditions, improve services and initiate community action which could make a difference.

Fig 1 Systemic links between the themes

3. Summary of Output on Key Themes

Wider Disadvantage

Participant reported experience in the sites confirms that higher levels of disadvantage - and real experience of inequality, deepen the propensity for involvement in SOC for a significant minority of those living there, particularly younger men. Reductions in individual life chances for these individuals and their wider social group were deeply embedded in the urban sites. This intensified feelings of powerlessness which in turn increased the likelihood of some people looking outside of established norms to make a living. This included turning away from legal employment, which was often difficult or impossible to achieve, to work in the informal or illegal economy in order to earn a reasonable income in line with their aspirations. Whilst few participants endorsed this course of action, most recognised it as understandable given the conditions facing those involved.

Non SOC engaged residents in these areas also experienced disadvantage created by the same conditions and exacerbated by the stigma which accompanies the cycle of inequality, alienation, poverty and crime. Perspectives differed regarding the inevitability of links between disadvantage and crime but participants were agreed that structural disadvantage was an important part of the explanation.

Despite the ubiquity of disadvantage across the co-inquiry sites creating the conditions for serious organised crime to take root locally, it is the multiple and enduring disadvantage evident in the Urban Embedded ( UE) category that is a key exacerbating factor. This arises from real and demonstrable obstacles for individuals and families to access secure employment and a reasonable standard of living. The impact of being unable to do so increases vulnerability to getting involved with criminal activity. Participants described a range of interlocking factors which led to a visceral sense of hopelessness and despair driving behaviours which were illegal, anti-social and therefore "anti-community".

In the UE site SOC was viewed by many participants as a major employer, as influential as legitimate employers are in other communities. In this sense it seemed that SOC institutions had filled gaps vacated by the legitimate economy in areas of intense post-industrial decline, or where urban planning had never fully succeeded in creating enough meaningful employment in the first place.

It is the severity of these conditions operating together which affect the gradient of the "slippery slope" described by some participants. This affects people on the fringes of getting involved in organised crime and seeking to find a way to turn away from these influences. These more overt structural factors and the resultant conditions for SOC growth was also felt to affect the success or failure of intervention to tackle multiple disadvantage as a whole. Whilst some practice and policy interventions would claim to address these, the co-inquiry participants suggest that many current responses are insufficient.

In the 'National Diffuse' field sites, the impact of poverty on factors such as educational engagement and attainment was also present, particularly as a result of rapid decline in key local industries. Whilst the effects of this were as significant on affected individuals as in the other sites the concentrations of poverty relative to the population as a whole were less. This distribution, although highly concentrated locally sometimes in a few streets, is less likely to blight localities as a whole but does tend to stigmatise particular neighbourhoods in similar, if less intensive, ways than in urban contexts.

Paradoxically, the drug market in these areas was characterised by demand from those on both low and high incomes – although it was generally not locally supplied. This was felt by co-inquiry participants to create complexity in the local determinants and the related SOC stories and understanding these nuances needed to frame the responses to vulnerability and service development in ways were quite different in some respects to the more urban locations.

The role of stories

Across the co-inquiries it was felt that understanding the power of SOC narratives is essential. This is due to both the real experiences of disadvantage, and the myths about how SOC can transform life chances and bring about a better life. The extent to which these stories motivate people's "choices" was felt not to have been effectively understood or challenged. Those suffering as a result therefore include not only victims but also SOC actors. Participants articulated a need to take disadvantage seriously as a major part of the story, whilst exposing the fact that the myths of SOC mask high attrition rates in terms of how few people really benefit from it and for how long. This included highlighting the impact of violence and the expendability of those in low level SOC positions.

Therefore, SOC myths both frame aspirations for some and obscure the harshest realities of SOC lifestyles for others. Exploitation of vulnerability was also viewed as more likely either by manipulating vulnerable people to engage in low level crime, as part of personal survival strategies, or by selling involvement in SOC as one of the few available means for vulnerable young people to achieve a lifestyle they desire. This was often based on distorted ideas of what 'role models' engaged in various forms of criminality are earning. This insight demonstrated how the impact of stories and exploitation of vulnerability are deeply connected.

This narrative was notably less intensively experienced in the national diffuse site as a result of two key factors. The first is that fewer people are affected by the type of multiple disadvantage that blight neighbourhoods in the urban embedded category making them less susceptible to the SOC narrative as a way out of poverty, and secondly because of the realities of the drug supply network.

Participants felt that targeting the narrative requires understanding of its role in creating new social norms amongst some groups in communities committing and tolerating crime. This understanding needs to include how stories and peer pressure can transmit, reinforce and replicate the myths of SOC as a means to achieve material or social status. Effectively challenging these myths requires investment in a coherent, authentic and effectively targeted counter-narrative. This is likely to involve work which gathers the stories of those involved, maps these against more accurate real-world consequences and seeks to profile and share them as a preventative strategy.

Participants were clear that achieving this is only likely if those currently affected by SOC as victims or offenders are part of the authentic voices who are supported to help combat its inaccuracies and provide the lived experiences which helps people make more informed personal and social choices. This should include work to create modes of gathering and transmitting real stories and their consequences to those at risk of becoming involved. This could usefully be done at key points of transition in schools and youth work environments and in work on addictions, employability, or with low level offenders. This will require skilled activity to build trust and gather experiences using oral and social history approaches which could help 'immunise' communities against the worst of the myths which characterise this landscape. This needs to happen in face to face contexts and through other means such as social media, to challenge the glamorising narrative which is sometimes characteristic of the mainstream media.

The importance of vulnerability

The extent to which vulnerability is consciously used by SOC organisations is recognised but not well understood in communities in terms of its sophistication. Improving understanding of this could help mitigate its impact. Participants were very aware of the overall practice of exploitation but much less so of the variety of contexts where it took place in terms of making use of those least able to defend themselves (such as older people, those with mental health issues or those with serious addiction and other health issues).

There may be mileage in actively mobilising collective community resistance to SOC, partly utilising the anger at the exploitation of vulnerability. This would also involve capturing and sharing new stories which expose the ways in which SOC uses people for its own ends. Mapping and targeting support to the most vulnerable was felt to be a viable strategy. It was considered that this could have positive personal outcomes for those supported and the potential to create a significant prevention dividend by reducing SOC opportunities for exploitation of those who are vulnerable. Techniques of awareness raising on this issue, such as those employed to raise awareness of other adult protection issues, was felt to be potentially useful as were greater links between work to combat SOC and other community based health and social care initiatives on addiction.

This preventative approach needs to be combined with targeted support which can recognise and respond to the needs of those already vulnerable or currently being exploited. Participants felt strongly that achieving this holistic approach to tackling vulnerability requires learning from previous experience in communities. There was felt to be a need for investment, and understanding of the impact of disinvestment, in terms of services supporting those with mental health issues or other key local services supporting young people at key life stages.

Work locally to develop and position positive visions of community with effective role models underpinning these was also seen as essential in securing an appropriate counter narrative. Also identified as important was ensuring that more generic services such as housing and or employability services were responding appropriately to vulnerability. This included issues such as effectively regulating rogue SOC landlords or reviewing the operation of eviction for conviction policies which can deliver people to the most vulnerable situations and move problems from one area to another.

Service and Policy developments

Much of the discussion on services focused on the importance of developing, strengthening or securing community involvement and partnership infrastructure, suggesting that a focus on community based developmental activity to enable these connections could form a useful fifth D within the strategic approach to tackling SOC. This could augment and enable key aspects of the existing SOC strategic categorisations of Divert, Deter, Disrupt and Detect. In all of the sites there was both a strong commitment to interagency working and a strong desire to involve local community infrastructure. Participants felt that preventing SOC and mitigating its effects required both very good universal service provision ( e.g. education and youth work which would divert people from getting involved), and cognisance of the social determinants which grow SOC. It also needs to support those already involved to turn away from SOC. Such services e.g. diversionary youth work, need to be sustainably funded, credible and sufficiently attractive to provide a real alternative to what can be seen as exciting experiences linked to SOC. Whilst getting people while they are young is something of a cliché – it is utterly pertinent in the transition points when young people are forming their identities and trying to make their way in the world as young adults. Effective and trusted local services which young people feel positive about, and are sustainable can make a real difference to outcomes. Investment in these is thought to be crucial in communities.

Participants have suggested that the package of required responses needed to create an enduring infrastructure that has a number of key elements including:

• Physical focal points like community spaces, services mitigating social exclusion and poverty, and processes for empowerment and dialogue.
• Investment in building community solidarity and involving communities in the design and delivery of relevant services ( e.g. youth work, addiction services and support for those who have offended).
• Community based service evaluation would greatly enhance the effectiveness of services. This would require better relationships with communities either specifically in the context of community justice issues, or in the context of broader more preventative place based responses described above and building on existing assets in communities.
• Corresponding investment in good generic place based planning informed by the views and ideas of local people.
• Locally based integration of planning processes such as Community Planning, Community Justice, Children and Young Peoples Services and Health and Social Care planning.
• Realistic investment in the social and economic infrastructure, even in places where improvements in the physical environment have been achieved.
• Preventative services e.g. community policing, pastoral care teaching or community wardens need to be afforded more stability and higher professional status than some participants felt they did currently in organisational hierarchies. This is in order to maintain local commitment to them and a continuity in their impact by stable staff deployment where trust and good relationships can flourish.

In all sites, participants emphasised the negative impact of recent cuts and austerity and the need to focus on working with the coming generation of young people to ensure access to sustainable work and educational opportunities. In many cases these opportunities would need to be created in recognition of their current absence or inaccessibility for some communities.

Understanding the real scale and experience of SOC locally in communities is essential to responding preventatively and in supporting those whose lives are already enmeshed with SOC enterprises. This will require deeper understanding of how SOC actors can be deeply intertwined with the majority of law abiding residents via families, friendship groups and other social connections. The implications of this and other issues should be further explored and frame prevention, policing and other responses. At the same time this should be balanced with building opportunities for all in communities, including rehabilitation and social support for offenders seeking a route out.

Finally, the intensity of the engagement described in these co-inquires suggest potential for engaging people in more powerful social learning using approaches such as community-led action research which could build on these initial conversations, deepen insights and help design better services. This could be transformative in understanding the complexity of the issues and developing and testing local solutions. This could augment existing dialogue and bring a wider array of participants to the table as this appears to have been highly valued by participants in this process. We suggest that steps to capitalise on this should be encouraged in the wake of the research and the findings utilised to continue the dialogue:

• Between local people and the emerging Community Justice partnerships
• And to feed into a richer dialogue between the Serious Organised Crime Taskforce and communities themselves.

Highly localised, preventative planning is the focus of the Community Empowerment Scotland Act 2015 and the links between it and other specific local planning processes are acknowledged in its statutory guidance. Joint activity between these processes is still at an early stage locally, and the focus on the issues afforded by the co-inquiry process was felt, by participants, to have potential to aid future collaboration. In all cases verbal commitments to follow this up were made at the events which could aid further innovation in tackling crime in future.

4. Sample Co-inquiry outputs - Insights and proposals for action from the sessions

Notes from the co-inquiry exercises have been recorded for each stage of the discussion. The notes were reproduced as faithfully as possible but some interpretation was required. These notes have been retained for use if the dialogue with communities initiated in the research is continued by the Taskforce. Key outputs relating to the community-led proposals on vulnerability are included as an example of the type of observations made by participants.

In relation to vulnerability, participants identified the following in terms of the need for:

Urban Embedded

• Mapping of vulnerability at community level – perhaps involving wider range of services e.g. housing associations.
• Targeting and engaging directly with those likely to be vulnerable in order to focus resources towards them.
• Vetting of private landlords – establish who owns the roof over people's heads and whether they are fit to do so.
• Learn from mistakes such as removal of funding to key local services and supporting vulnerable people.
• Better understanding of young people in vulnerable areas and what their needs are.
• Ensuring young people can get involved in community processes and have a say.
• Improve/defend community-based mental health programmes.
• Ensuring vulnerable people can access employment opportunities, training & development, family learning and advice services.
• Mentoring services through schools which engage vulnerable young people at key times.
• Community champions promoting positive role models in communities.
• More of the essential youth diversion work aimed at children and young people in precarious or other vulnerable situations.
• Less uncritical acceptance of services that do not meet local needs.
• Fewer qualification-based job adverts which exclude vulnerable people by not valuing life skills.
• Work to reduce community acceptance that violence (or threat of) is just a part of living in a community/ housing scheme.
• One-to-one issue based support for vulnerable people especially younger people e.g. on housing, education, addictions.
• A comprehensive family learning strategy which is community-based.
• Realignment of responsibilities of agencies to encourage more flexible responses i.e. police supporting tenancy support and housing officers providing policing intelligence, would need to allow use of less punitive measures prior to arrest to divert behaviours and support vulnerable people to achieve changes in their lives.
• Including the use of formal and less formal restorative justice.

Semi Urban Embedded

• Building individual and collective social resilience.
• Creating tangible opportunities for more vulnerable young people: education, employment, empowerment.
• Training for all agencies to help identity when individuals are vulnerable and how that impacts on them using awareness raising approaches, similar to that successfully used to highlight the needs of other vulnerable adults such as those with learning disabilities.
• Investment in development and realisation of personal power + control.
• Strengthening connections with other services e.g. early years.
• Mentoring services for communities.
• Sharing research, evidence and what works with the public.
• Supporting of self-community policing.
• Focusing on young people's education.
• Improving opportunities post offence & conviction.
• More restorative justice approaches in communities.
• Ensuring significant community involvement in reintegration.
• Carry on this kind of dialogue in the community.
• Counter government policy which disempowers individuals.

National Diffuse

• More visibility of support services with community safety wardens in vulnerable communities (especially at times when communities feel less safe e.g. night-time)
• Promotion of specific information on SOC vulnerability to general public
• Better understanding of the causes, patterns of abuse and social impact of vulnerability among service partners is needed.
• Vigilant analysis of administrative data e.g. who requires crisis loans and why - to help identify those who are vulnerable and in need of support.
• Adequate and accessible mental health services to protect vulnerable people and act preventatively is under resourced.
• Relationships are key to reaching vulnerable people – investment in the model of intensive and assertive approach to engaging vulnerable adults should be implemented.
• Without a shared understanding, we cannot expect community members to accept people with convictions back into communities.
• Early identification of vulnerable children of 'functioning drug users' should be initiated to target wellbeing support and early intervention.
• Earlier intervention generally prior to crisis point should be a key organising principle for services.
• May require services to re-balance priorities e.g. less emphasis on child protection, more emphasis on building family support leading to greater resilience before crisis points are reached.
• More varied and imaginative therapeutic alternatives to clinical treatments for drug misuse are required – people need more than being on a 20-year methadone script.

Different starting points which are needed include;

• Developing ways to connect with those not used to engaging with services – based on developing trust.
• Increased universal support mechanisms to avoid labelling by targeting services.
• Different attitudes to the co-existence of issues like drug misuse/mental health and how this frames when/which services should be involved or take the lead are needed. The aim should be more effective ownership of issues by services irrespective of presenting priorities. It should be the increasing vulnerability of the service user which is the trigger for action.