Justice for children and young people: vision and priorities 2024-26

2. Vision

Our vision is to make Scotland the best place in the world to grow up, where all children and young people are loved, treated with respect, have their voices heard, their rights respected, and their outcomes improved.

Children, young people, and their families should be supported at an early stage through preventative, de-escalatory and early intervention approaches.

For those who come into conflict with the law, their rights must be upheld, their life chances improved, and services and systems must support them effectively to address their needs and the circumstances which have brought them to the attention of the authorities, in order to achieve positive outcomes.

Children should be diverted away from the justice system, wherever possible and appropriate, to avoid the inappropriate criminalisation of their behaviour. Instead, they will receive effective support to meet any needs, therefore, reducing future risk of harm to themselves or others. Where children do require the support of formal systems, this should be via the welfare-based, age and stage appropriate children’s hearings system, as far as possible. For the small minority who will go through the justice system, then the systems and supports must be appropriately modified for individual children to ensure that they are meaningfully supported to engage, participate and have an increased understanding of the system and processes.

If a period of detention is required then this must be in smaller, trauma informed settings such as secure accommodation, with no under 18s detained in Young Offenders’ Institutions.

Support and information for victims must be enhanced with work undertaken to ensure that victims are appropriately protected, irrespective of the age of the person who has caused the harm or the system that deals with them.

Providing trauma-informed and responsive approaches, and a continued commitment to ongoing partnership delivery, are core to achieving this vision for Scotland.