Justice Analytical Services Statistics: code of practice compliance

Public Involvement and Engagement Strategy

Introduction

This Public Involvement & Engagement strategy sets out the approach taken by Justice Analytical Services (JAS) to consulting with and informing users about our statistics, including actions planned for the year ahead (2026-2027). The development of this strategy is a requirement under the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, whereby areas will outline how they engage with users both inside and outside their organisation, as well as other stakeholders. More information on this is available on the Office for Statistics Regulation website. (See Practice 8.5 - Publish your Public Involvement and Engagement Strategy)

JAS is responsible for developing and communicating the evidence base for a safer and stronger Scotland. It comprises social researchers, statisticians, economists and operational researchers who work collaboratively to inform policy-making and improve justice outcomes. We currently produce 16 sets of Accredited Official Statistics, Official Statistics and Statistics in Development (shown in the Justice Analytical Services statistical releases chapter). We also publish a range of other analysis in response to user demand, including management information, operational research (for example prison population projections) and occasional papers. Examples of recent occasional papers include long-term drivers of the Scottish prison population and trends in sentences imposed by Scottish courts.

Our statistics cover a wide range of topics, with analysis sourced from (i) the administrative data of Justice Partners, (ii) our own secondary analysis (i.e. new data) created from administrative data or (iii) commissioned research (for the Scottish Crime & Justice Survey (SCJS)).

Approach to Public Engagement

Whilst a significant proportion of our resource will be committed over the coming year to ensuring the successful transfer of all our statistical products to new data production and storage facilities, JAS will continue to take forward a wide program of engagement related activity with our users. This will be underpinned by the Scottish Government’s strategic statistical priorities, which focus on improving data quality, efficiency, user engagement and analytical capacity to support evidence-based policy and public understanding. More information is available via the Statistics Group strategic priorities publication.

Our approach will also continue to be informed by wider external drivers that have an impact on the production of our statistics. These include changes in legislation or policy, requirements set by regulatory bodies (for example the Office for Statistics Regulation), key milestones in the governance of particular statistics (such as when we newly procure future sweeps of the SCJS), changes to the data supply or production process, changes in the level of user interest and changes in the production of statistics within the rest of the United Kingdom.

It should be noted this strategy does not seek to provide an exhaustive list of all work and analysis undertaken by JAS to support our users, which is extensive and varies depending on the topic and user group. For example, we currently respond to a significant volume of user requests each year through Freedom of Information requests, Parliamentary Questions and other ad-hoc queries, which we will continue to prioritise in 2026-2027 and beyond. We plan to undertake further monitoring of these to identify any common themes, and whether changes to the production of our statistics might help reduce the volume of queries we receive.

The following two sections split our engagement activities into (i) actions we already undertake to engage with and inform users about the production of our statistics and (ii) new specific actions that are planned for 2026-2027.

Public involvement and engagement: ongoing activities

Beyond publishing our statistical bulletins, the ongoing activities undertaken by JAS to engage with and inform users about our statistics are highlighted below;

• We publish an annual Statistical Work Programme and pre-announce dates for our statistics publications.
• We ensure each statistical publication has contact details, where user views and feedback can be provided.
• We communicate updates on statistics-related developments through the Scotstat network.
• We publish comprehensive Technical Information on the methodologies used to produce our statistics.
• We provide more open access to our data through the statistics.gov.scot website, and in due course the replacement data.gov.scot platform.
• We liaise with the UK Data Archive to ensure the latest SCJS datasets are available to users for further research (available at UK Data Service).
• We produce interactive data dashboards, such as the Scottish Prisons Interactive Analysis Tool, the SCJS interactive data tool and the Criminal Disposals Dashboard.
• These all allow users to explore those datasets further, including demographic and geographic breakdowns.
• We attend conferences, seminars and other stakeholder-related events to talk directly with users about our statistics.
• We engage regularly with our Justice partner bodies to discuss how our statistics can help meet their needs.
• We run formal user consultations on our statistics (including through Citizen Space). This includes hosting engagement events which provide an opportunity for all users to contribute their views.
• We publish feedback reports on changes made to our statistics following those user consultations. Police recorded crime, the SCJS and Justice Social Work statistics have all taken this approach in recent years.
• We run the Scottish Crime Recording Board, whose remit includes taking into account the needs of both users and providers in the production of Scotland’s recorded crime statistics, and any changes to this.
• We identify and establish ongoing relationships with specialist user and stakeholder groups, to help inform changes to both our established statistical products and the development of new data sources.

Public involvement and engagement: actions planned for 2026-2027

In addition to the above activities, several specific actions are planned for 2026-2027.

• We will review the Police Officer Quarterly Strength statistics and will likely consult with users on whether any changes in our approach will increase their analytical value.
• We will consult with users about potential improvements to how we produce statistics on police recorded domestic abuse, reflecting recent changes to how this information is collated by Police Scotland.
• We will consult with data supplier/users on changes to the Justice Social Work statistical collection for 2026-2027.
• We will continue engagement with users and specialist stakeholders on the next phase of work to deliver annual reports under the ‘Statistics in Development’ heading on police recorded hate crime in Scotland. An associated earlier report was published as social research in February.
• We will continue to publish a regular quarterly report which provides users with an overview of key justice and safer communities statistics.
• We plan to make greater use of Scottish Government Blogs to provide users with important updates about our official statistics.
• We plan to consider whether a new user-forum for the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey would be the best approach for improving engagement and user involvement in the survey.
• We intend to move the Journey Times bulletin from its current status as Statistics in Development to Official Statistics. This will involve stakeholder engagement alongside other quality assurance activities to meet Code of Practice requirements.
• We intend to develop the existing disposals dashboard into a public facing sentencing dashboard.
• We intend to consult with policy colleagues and other users on their requirements of a revised civil justice publication after this product’s current pause.