Meeting of the Parliament 19 November 2015
I welcome this stage 1 debate on the Community Justice (Scotland) Bill and I thank the many witnesses for their invaluable evidence. I also thank the Justice Committee clerks for their assistance in the delivery of the committee’s substantial stage 1 report.
In December 2012, the Scottish Government published a three-option consultation on redesigning community justice. The options were an enhanced community justice authority model, a local authority model and a single service model. There was no favoured option, but there was a clear preference for a local delivery model that has partnership and collaboration at its heart, but with some form of national arrangements to provide the leadership and strategic direction that are lacking in the present set-up.
A fourth option emerged when various elements of the earlier options were combined, namely 32 community justice partners and a new national body. However, there is some confusion about how the CJPs will interact with community planning partnerships. Furthermore, it is fair to say that other proposals in the bill have not attracted consensus. Concerns remain about the cluttered landscape, with the increase from eight community justice authorities to 32 community justice partners, and about leadership, with the balance in decision making moving heavily towards community justice Scotland, rather than the local authorities.
However, the most controversial aspect of the legislation is the narrow definition of community justice. In the Scottish Government’s 2014 consultation, “Future Model for Community Justice in Scotland”, the definition was:
“The collection of agencies and services in Scotland that individually and in partnership work to manage offenders, prevent offending and reduce re-offending and the harm that it causes, to promote social inclusion, citizenships and desistance.”
However, the definition in section 1 of the bill no longer refers to the prevention of offending. The failure to make any reference to prevention, or indeed to early intervention, represents a major change.
Worryingly, in terms of the Justice Committee’s scrutiny of the bill, and as the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has commented, the definition in the bill was not consulted upon and
“appears to have come as a surprise to stakeholders, and importantly, the statutory partners.”
Furthermore, the approach has attracted widespread criticism from several organisations. Police Scotland said:
“to be successful it is necessary to take a whole-system approach; it needs to be right from start to finish. That leads to the emphasis on prevention and early intervention.”—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 15 September 2015; c 44.]
Sacro said:
“there is no statement regarding prevention, public safety or community safety.”
Turning Point Scotland said:
“It is ... disappointing that the bill does not explicitly direct planning at both national and local levels to consider prevention especially within the wider context of the community planning process.”
Barnardo’s said:
“If we are to take a truly preventative approach to community justice, we must start at the beginning and focus on how to keep people out of the justice system and within their communities. As it stands, the definition is restricted to those who have already offended.”
Victim Support Scotland said:
“the definition does not allow for a greater focus on prevention and early intervention in line with the recommendations of the Christie Commission.”
There has also been criticism that the bill diminishes the role of the third sector in the planning process; that issue was addressed in the minister’s correspondence of 17 November. In that letter, in the wider context of resourcing, there are specific references to the third sector, for example:
“Community Justice Scotland will, with Partners and the Third Sector develop and agree a strategic approach to commissioning.”
Although that acknowledges the third sector’s contribution, it is still evident that if the bill is passed, the role of the third sector, like that of everyone else currently involved in community justice, will be to deliver the Scottish Government’s proposed penal reform agenda to extend the presumption against short-term sentences to up to one year. In other words, I am especially concerned, as are stakeholders, that the bill is a de facto vehicle for the Scottish Government’s penal reforms, which are currently only at the consultation stage.
The minister suggested that the definition requires further consideration at stage 2, but it is deeply worrying that those reforms to community justice have been built on such shaky foundations.