Justice Social Work Statistics in Scotland: 2023-24 – Part 1

2 Background

Local authority justice social work teams provide a range of services, including:

• assessments and reports to assist decisions on sentencing
• court services to assist those attending court
• bail supervision services as an alternative to custodial remand
• supervising people on court orders (e.g. community payback orders) to tackle offending behaviour
• supervising people who need to perform unpaid, useful work for the benefit of the community
• prison-based social work services to those serving custodial sentences
• preparing reports for the Parole Board to assist decisions about release from prison
• throughcare services including parole, supervised release and other prison aftercare orders to ensure public safety
• delivering group work interventions on programmes such as Caledonian and Moving Forward Making Changes

The data presented in this publication comes from justice social work management information systems for each of Scotland’s local authorities. Further information on the collection and processing of the data is in Annex A and definitions are in Annex B.