National Improvement Recommendation – Electronic Monitoring

Community Justice Scotland (CJS) are today, 13 October 2025, publishing a National Improvement Recommendation to set out improvements required for the development of new technologies for Electronic Monitoring (EM). This recommendation details key areas of current policy that require urgent improvement to ensure the effective functioning of community justice and to allow the achievement of national priority actions in the National Strategy for Community Justice.

CJS have raised concerns relating to Electronic Monitoring policy consistently with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs and a range of national stakeholders in recent years. We are now issuing a NIR as we believe that, despite some recent activity and the implementation of regulations for GPS monitoring with an implementation group, progress has been too slow.

Concerted and effective improvement activity delivered at pace is now urgently required nationally to develop our approach to Electronic Monitoring. This includes the adoption of new EM technologies such as GPS and alcohol monitoring technologies, in order to help address current operational challenges and to improve the effectiveness of EM to support progress towards achieving community justice outcomes nationally.

Section 28 of the Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 empowers Community Justice Scotland to issue a National Improvement Recommendation (NIR) in pursuance of its function “to monitor, promote and support improvement in, and keep the Scottish Ministers informed about, performance in the provision of community justice”.

Section 30(1) of the Act defines an NIR as a “recommendation addressed to the Scottish Ministers which sets out action which Community Justice Scotland considers —