National Strategy for Community Justice - review: consultation analysis

2. Introduction

2.1 Background

This report presents an analysis of the responses to the National Strategy for

Community Justice: Review Consultation, and sets out the Scottish Government's next steps. We would like to thank all respondents for their contributions. Where granted permission, responses have been published in full on the Scottish Government Consultation Hub website.

The current model for Community Justice came into operation on 1 April 2017, underpinned by the Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 (the Act), which places duties on a group of statutory partners to engage in community justice planning and to report against a set of nationally-determined outcomes.

The Act also established Community Justice Scotland and required Scottish Ministers to produce a National Strategy for Community Justice (the strategy), an Outcomes, Performance and Improvement Framework (OPIF) and Guidance for Local Partners to support the delivery of the new model.

As per section 16 of the Act, Scottish Ministers reviewed the current strategy by 24 November 2021. This consultation formed part of that review process.

2.2 The consultation process

This consultation was open from 27 September 2021 to 8 November 2021. Respondents were invited to respond in a number of different ways, including online, via email and via post.

The consultation was primarily intended to be responded to by partner organisations that are engaged with or have a direct interest in the current strategy.

Analysis is based on those who responded to the consultation and is therefore not necessarily representative of the wider population.

Consultation responses were analysed and allocated to certain themes under each question. For any given question, the number of themes identified may differ from the number of comments received as one comment could include a number of themes.

Consultation events

Three virtual workshop sessions were held to encourage participation in the consultation. The events provided attendees with the opportunity to find out further information about the consultation from officials, and to provide feedback to help shape the approach to the revised strategy.

The events were attended by a broad range of stakeholders, including social workers, community justice co-ordinators, third sector organisations (including victims organisations) and national community justice partners.

A summary of the discussion from these events is included in section 6 of this report.

2.3 Who responded

There were 52 responses to the consultation. Of these the majority (40) were received from groups/organisations and 12 were received from individuals. 46 respondents gave permission for their responses to be published.

A list of respondent organisations is available in Annex A.