National Strategy for Community Justice: Review Consultation

5. Purpose of this consultation

Section 16 of the Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 includes a statutory duty for Scottish Ministers to review the National Strategy for Community Justice no later than 5 years after the previous review. The previous review concluded in November 2021^[5]. This consultation, alongside additional engagement with statutory partners and community justice stakeholders, will support Scottish Ministers in undertaking a review of the current National Strategy.

Following the review, the 2016 Act requires that Ministers must either publish a new National Strategy or publish a statement indicating that they consider the strategy should not be revised.

To help inform the review process, this consultation has been designed to determine respondents’ views on the following:

• Whether the strategy’s current scope is appropriate or not
• The impact of the strategy
• The usefulness of the aims and priority actions
• The elements of the strategy that are considered most and least useful
• The future priorities for community justice.

As part of the review, responses will be used to better understand the national strategy’s suitability and identify any areas for improvement.

We anticipate that most submissions to this consultation will be from partner or stakeholder organisations involved in community justice or individuals or groups with experience or knowledge of the justice system, but we welcome all responses.

Additional engagement activity

In addition to this consultation, the Scottish Government will be undertaking a series of workshops with partners and community justice stakeholders to explore specific topics and themes in greater detail. These will run over the coming months and details will be provided to partners and stakeholders separately. For further information please contact cjstrategy@gov.scot.