Scottish Sentencing and Penal Policy Commission report: Justice That Works

Chapter Two: Before crime happens: prevention and support

Summary

A strengthened preventative approach to crime in Scotland is needed to address the deep social and economic conditions that shape offending, including poverty, trauma, inequality, poor health, unstable housing and limited opportunity. Prevention is about acting early – before harm occurs and before people enter the criminal justice system – so that individuals and families receive the right support at the right time. Current investment remains weighted toward managing crime after it occurs rather than reducing the risks that lead to harm.

A shift toward prevention would lessen victimisation, ease pressure on prisons and create capacity for public services to focus on long-term outcomes. The inequalities and vulnerabilities that are disproportionately reflected in Scotland’s courts and prisons underline the case for investing earlier in services and social safety nets. Expanded early-intervention programmes, community supports and evidence-led approaches that address root causes would offer more sustainable reductions in crime.

Greater coordination across public bodies, improved targeting of resources and clearer national direction would help embed prevention as a central organising principle of justice policy. Public services must embrace prevention as an organising principle – both as common sense and in the common good, particularly where it prevents people becoming victims of crime.

Scotland’s justice system operates within a wider landscape of inequality. Evidence from Scotland and beyond demonstrates that disadvantage accumulates across people’s lives and shapes their opportunities and outcomes³ The Marmot Review (2010),⁴ as well as more recent, longitudinal evidence from Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime,⁵,⁶ demonstrates that poverty, poor housing, unemployment, and weak community infrastructure do not just harm health, but also increase the risks of social exclusion and conflict with the law. Additionally, they increase the likelihood that children and families will experience other forms of adversity such as ill health, housing instability, exclusion from education, or the stress of insecure work and income. Each of these increases the chances of later contact with the justice system.

Structural inequalities are clearly visible in Scotland’s justice system, where people from the most deprived communities disproportionately represent those who come before the courts and the prison population.⁷ This context is vital – as high levels of inequality and poverty in Scotland persist,⁸ leaving these issues unaddressed exacerbates the already substantial pressures placed on the justice system.⁹ In addition to resulting in obvious social harms, this fuels distrust,¹⁰ further burdens the justice system, and has substantial economic consequences.

“We’re not just the front page of the Daily Record or the Daily Mail. We’re human beings. We’ve got a why.”

– Lived Experience Participant.

“We are spending on reacting, not on preventing, and not on the approaches to rehabilitation that are based in evidence of what works. […] While the justice system might ‘catch’ people who have been failed by other services, it needs to act with, not instead of, those other systems in order to address those failings.”

– Turning Point Scotland, Call for Evidence.

Scotland has a principled ambition to proactively enable better futures and outcomes for care-experienced people. Law reforms like the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Act 2024 and UNCRC have been landmark developments which may help in this area, and justice organisations have developed their policies on corporate parenting responsibilities. The statistics vary in recent years, but it is estimated that between one quarter to one third of the Scottish prison population are care experienced.¹¹ There is still more progress to be made at earlier stages through preventative approaches in order to keep The Promise and reduce the criminalisation of care-experienced people.¹²

The striking number of people in Scotland’s justice system who experience poor mental health and neurodivergence further highlights the need to consider societal contexts.¹³,¹⁴ Services too often struggle to respond effectively, and as a result, many who have been let down by other services later appear before the court.¹⁵ Lack of accessible community-based support and long waits for assessment and treatment, especially for children and young people,¹⁶ mean that problems escalate unchecked. Police officers are regularly called to incidents that are more accurately understood as health crises rather than criminal matters and the justice system is left to manage needs that could be more effectively addressed elsewhere.¹⁷,¹⁸ Mental health and trauma feature prominently in various reviews and inquiries in justice over the years, especially in the Angiolini report¹⁹ in 2012, emphasising the need to better support the mental health of women earlier in community contexts, to prevent women’s imprisonment.

Alcohol and drug dependency, both closely associated with deprivation,²⁰ are also prevalent within the justice system. There are intergenerational dynamics and inequalities, as young people who have foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system.²¹ Across the wider adult prison system, almost a third of those imprisoned in 2024 were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crime and consider substance abuse to be a problem for their communities.²² Alcohol is a major contributor to violent offending²³ and road traffic incidents,²⁴ while drug dependency drives acquisitive crime and is linked to some of Scotland’s highest levels of harm, including the continuing crisis in drug-related deaths.²⁵ The issue of drug-related deaths in Scotland is itself a symptom of a system that has failed to sufficiently fund preventative approaches. As with mental health, addiction services are often fragmented or under-resourced.²⁶ Gaps in treatment and recovery provision, long waiting times, stigma, and instability in funding mean that many people do not receive support until their difficulties have brought them into contact with the justice system.

“…the place where the investment is really needed is upstream – the eradication of poverty, the protection of children from adverse childhood experiences, an education system that meets the needs of young people… it is on these upstream areas that we would encourage investment and focus.” – Next chapter Scotland, Next Chapter, Call for Evidence.

“People reoffend with the same crimes. They’re sentenced based on previous offences, but no one looks into the reasons for offending. ‘You’ve done this, so we’ll just punish you now – send you to prison to teach you a lesson.’ But that’s not really the point. No one is asking the right questions.” – Lived Experience Participant.

Of course, poverty does not determine destiny. Many individuals who grow up in disadvantaged circumstances never come into conflict with the law, and some from more affluent backgrounds do. Accountability for harmful behaviour is central to any justice system, and prevention does not remove personal responsibility. Rather, it recognises that choices can be shaped by circumstance. This underlines the central lesson that effective penal policy begins not at the point of sentence, but in the social conditions that shape the likelihood of whether an individual comes before the courts at all. This balance between individual responsibility and structural context underpins the core sentencing principles of proportionality, fairness, and rehabilitation. The Commission’s work has been guided by the need to maintain this balance throughout its approach to sentencing and penal policy.

The case for prevention is both clear and longstanding. Addressing poverty to give every child the best start in life, reduces the risks of neglect and developmental delay. Enabling children and young people to maximise their capabilities reduces the chances of later conflict with the law. Fair employment and a healthy standard of living both reduce the stress and insecurity that can feed into offending. High quality services to support people with mental health, drug or alcohol issues prevent them coming into the justice system. To deliver justice that works, what is needed is not only prevention-focused policy initiatives, but also effective delivery, which requires improved resourcing and collaboration across relevant agencies and organisations.

Sentencing policy is shaped by the cases that come before the courts. Preventative measures reduce the number of people entering the justice system and therefore changes both the nature and the volume of sentencing decisions. A reliance on custody can reflect earlier failures to prevent problems from escalating. A credible sentencing and penal policy must therefore sit alongside a strong, system-wide commitment to prevention, one that treats poverty, poor mental health, and substance use as drivers of demand for support rather than problems to be addressed after the fact. Research indicates that involvement with the criminal justice system does not inherently lead to a reduction in offending. In fact, for some individuals, such contact may contribute to ongoing criminal behaviour.²⁷,²⁸

“I fell into a worse hole through my involvement with the criminal justice system. Sentencing put me off the right path. I’m not asking for special treatment, just more understanding of the situation.” – Lived Experience Participant.

More than a decade ago, the Christie Commission (2011) argued that Scotland must shift resources away from crisis management and towards early intervention.²⁹ While there have been some promising policy initiatives since then, Scotland has yet to experience the meaningful change required. The current Scottish Government acknowledges that, despite some progress in adopting a preventative approach across public services, the shift has not gone far enough to truly prioritise prevention.³⁰

“…there is commitment right across the public services system to a preventative approach, and many examples of success, but we have not made sufficient change to ensure our system is prioritising prevention.” – Scottish Government, 2025.

Scotland already has the institutions and professional expertise to intervene earlier and more effectively. What is required is not new theory, but the will to move beyond rhetorical commitment to concrete, sustained action. That means embedding prevention not as an aspiration in policy documents but as a funded priority across all public services, with clear targets and accountability for delivery. If implemented efficiently, preventative measures can be a cost-effective use of public resources in the long run.³¹ It is estimated that reducing overall poverty in Scotland by a quarter could save £2.9bn in public spending.³² Investing in prevention therefore leads not only to significant cost saving and more effective functioning of the criminal justice system, but to better well-being overall, resulting in fewer victims, less harm, fewer people in prison, and a safer, healthier society.

Prevention must be treated as the default approach rather than the exception - with every budget decision, service plan, and outcome measure tested against the question: will this reduce the need for justice intervention tomorrow?