Scottish Spending Review 2026

Chapter 8 Justice & Home Affairs

The Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) portfolio is responsible for keeping communities safe, supporting the administration of justice, and ensuring Scotland can respond to changing demands, including rising sexual offences and domestic abuse prosecutions, and threats such as serious and organised crime and cybercrime. The portfolio ensures the effective provision of vital public services, including police, fire, prisons, courts, tribunals, the legal aid system, and criminal justice social work services, as well as the contribution of third sector services. This work is underpinned by the principle that everyone has the right to access justice.

The Portfolio supports the First Minister’s four strategic priorities, in particular the delivery of high quality and sustainable public services, and has a strong track record of delivering significant reform and transformation. The reform of police and fire services best exemplifies this. The Justice reform journey will continue through the delivery of the priorities outlined in the Vision for Justice and Programme for Government commitments. As outlined in the Three Year Delivery Plan, the JHA budget will focus on core public services and support improvements through reform and transformation, delivering the aims of the Vision for Justice and working in partnership to achieve efficiencies across the justice system for better outcomes.

The Scottish Spending Review allocation allows us to continue to support essential frontline emergency and justice services; prioritise prevention and rehabilitation; support victims and witnesses; and invest in justice infrastructure, including two new prisons. The portfolio funds a range of programmes focused on prevention, which aim to keep communities and people safe. This includes the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, which is working to identify, understand and address the underlying causes of violence, and the Cashback for Communities Programme which is supporting projects to support young people most at risk of involvement with the justice system, towards positive futures. Shifting the Balance is a priority programme promoting system improvements to reduce reoffending and shift the balance towards community sentences, which can be more effective than short prison sentences at addressing underlying causes and breaking the cycle of reoffending. An additional £30 million will be invested into Community Justice Services over the next three years compared with 2025-26.

Cross-justice programmes including Summary Case Management, and the Digital Evidence Sharing Capability (DESC), are delivering efficiencies and benefits to organisations across the justice system with fewer victims and witnesses having to attend court, cases at court concluding quicker, and valuable police officer time being saved. The Digital Front Door programme will deliver a single online gateway for victims and witnesses to simplify their engagement with partners across the justice system.

We continue to explore every opportunity to offset costs against savings to ensure an effective and efficient justice system, that provides the best possible return on investment to ensure the long-term sustainability of the justice system.