Outcome Activity Annual Report 2022-23
We are pleased to present the CJS Outcome Activity Annual Report 2022-23.
This report sets out our assessment of community justice activity that took place across Scotland between April 2022 and March 2023 in pursuit of the shared community justice outcomes. This period is the last where partnerships were delivering outcomes set out in the first National Strategy for Community Justice published in 2016.
The reporting year was hugely challenging for all. Nonetheless, needs were identified and services were delivered by community justice partners working hard to achieve positive outcomes for communities.
However, challenges persist. Community justice approaches have the potential to shift the balance between community and custody, to help shrink our exceptionally high rates of imprisonment, to address and reduce harm while improving rehabilitation. But issues like recruitment and retention, capacity for delivery beyond the core, and for creative collaboration and innovation hinge on fundamental resourcing issues. Community justice resourcing for the public and third sectors is a small proportion of justice funding overall. The funding streams are complex, sometimes opaque, and often set on annual cycles that inhibit partner agencies ability to plan and sustain a skilled and experienced workforce.
Our report this year makes one recommendation to the Scottish Government and the community justice partners – to work together to address this resource barrier, and match the resource to the policy ambition.
We recommend that CJS, the Scottish Government and all partners work together to ensure that community justice across the public and third sectors is resourced in a way that matches the policy ambition of The Vision for Justice in Scotland.