Victim Notification Scheme - Independent Review: SG response

The VNS Review and Report

The review

We commissioned the review of the VNS following a recommendation from the Victims Taskforce^[4] about the scheme serving victims effectively.

Chaired by Alastair MacDonald and vice-chaired by Fiona Young, the review followed an inquiry-type approach, involving extensive interviews, evidence-gathering and analysis. They interviewed^[5] representatives from criminal justice agencies, victim support organisations, and victims. The review held a workshop with key stakeholders to explore ideas in October 2022. They also considered wider criminal justice initiatives, related policy areas and international models of victim information schemes. The review considered the following criminal justice initiatives as being particularly important to the VNS:

• The Victim Centred Approach workstream of the Victims Taskforce, which aims to develop a vision of a victim-centred approach and explore the development of a “single point of contact” for victims
• A Witness Gateway, which aims to provide witnesses with links to justice information (including the VNS) as part of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service’s Victim Information and Advice (VIA) service
• The “Trauma Informed Justice – A Knowledge and Skills Framework for working with Victims and Witnesses”, which seeks to ensure a shared language and understanding of the aims for a trauma-informed justice system in Scotland
• The Scottish Government’s Case Related Data Transformation Project, which looked at case-related data in the criminal justice system

The review’s recommendations

The review made 22 main recommendations, with some made up of more than one part. These range from major shifts in operational delivery of the VNS, through to smaller-scale process changes. The recommendations and our response, are set out in full in the Annex.

We have grouped the recommendations into the following themes:

• process and system improvements
• data, evidence and reporting
• enhanced information
• eligibility to receive information
• communications