Community Justice Glasgow
Performance Management Framework 2024
Policy Officer, Community Justice Glasgow
This report outlines our progress towards achieving priority actions which partners should be working to achieve – these have been identified in the National Strategy for Community Justice. Aligned to these, nationally determined outcomes have been identified, along with national indicators which can be used to measure progress towards achieving these. The Community Justice Performance Framework (CJPF) outlines the10 national indicators which are to be used to measure performance in achieving the outcomes. As a Community Justice Partnership, we report on these nationally determined outcomes and national indicators annually, in line with the Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016.
This is the first year of reporting on this new framework, and not all the outcomes have indicators associated with them, and so progress towards achieving these will become clearer over time, as new indicators are identified and information beyond this baseline year is reported. This report will now go through the priority actions and national indicators and summarise our progress towards achieving these
Priority Action 1 – Enhance intervention at the earliest opportunity by ensuring greater consistency, confidence in and awareness of services which support the use of direct measures and diversion from prosecution (DfP).
Nationally Determined Outcome – More people successfully complete diversion from prosecution.
National Indicator – Number of diversion from prosecution: • assessments undertaken • cases commenced • cases successfully completed.
The latest figure (2023-24) indicates a significant rise in all areas of DfP, the number of assessments undertaken rose by 14.7% with both the cases commenced and cases successfully completed rising by just under 28%.
The largest proportion of those whose cases had commenced (50%) were aged 25 and under with the largest proportion aged 16-17.
Just under half of those on DfP were Unemployed or not seeking employment (Males 48.7% 51.4% Female).
Diversion from prosecution assessments, cases commenced, and cases successfully completed has increased significantly in Glasgow since 2019-20 and continues to demonstrate an upward trajectory. An improvement plan has been established, with partners committing to sharing information to enable the diversion where it is safe to do so.
Locally Determined Outcome – The use of custody reduces, and where safe, community and other disposals are used.
Chart 2 illustrates that custody has reduced as a percentage of all disposals from 2017-18 to 2022-23. The overall number of charges processed fluctuated due to COVID-19 restrictions, but in 2022-23, this increased significantly. While community disposals have also fluctuated over this period, other disposals have consistently increased. This demonstrates a positive movement in achieving this outcome, with decreased use of custody and increasing use of other disposals.
Priority Action 2 – Improve the identification of underlying needs and the delivery of support following arrest by ensuring the provision of person-centred care within police custody and building upon referral opportunities to services including substance use and mental health services.
Nationally Determined Outcome – More people in police custody receive support to address their needs.
National Indicator – Number of referrals from custody centres.
While action has been taken locally to increase partnership working across services to improve support for people in police custody, data to support this outcome is not yet available. This will be monitored.
Priority Action 3 – Support the use of robust alternatives to remand by ensuring high quality bail services are consistently available and delivered effectively.
Nationally Determined Outcome – More people are assessed for and successfully complete bail supervision.
National Indicator – Number of assessment reports for bail suitability.
Table 4 demonstrates that support through bail supervision has increased significantly in Glasgow in recent years. The social work team that provides the bail supervision service have worked hard to increase awareness of this support. The increase in take-up of this service demonstrates the confidence that sentencers have in the support they provide.
Priority Action 4 – Strengthen options for safe and supported management in the community by increasing and widening the use of electronic monitoring technologies. No nationally determined outcome, or national indicator has been set for this priority outcome.
Priority Action 5 – Ensure that those given community sentences are supervised and supported appropriately to protect the public, promote desistance from offending and enable rehabilitation by delivering high quality, consistently available, trauma-informed services and programmes.
National Determined Outcome – More people access services to support desistance and successfully complete community sentences.
National Indicator – Percentage of community payback orders successfully completed; drug treatment and testing orders successfully completed.
Table 5 shows the percentage of successfully completed CPOs and DTTOs. This data does not show the reasons why these orders were not completed, and nationally, for CPOs revoked due to breach, the most likely outcome from courts was a new CPO at 31%. For a further 23%, it was a custodial sentence. For around 20% of CPOs revoked due to breach no further action was required from Social Work Services. So, while the CPO completion rate fluctuates at around 70% in recent years, there are often valid reasons for this, rather than no-compliance with the order.
DTTO completion rates are also quite complicated, with those sentenced to these orders often having complicated lifestyles. However, the completion rates for DTTOs in Glasgow is consistently higher than the national rate, which was 49% in 2021-22 and 50% in 2022-23. This demonstrates a positive indicator in achieving this national outcome in Glasgow.
Priority Action 6 – Ensure restorative justice is available across Scotland to all those who wish to access it by promoting and supporting the appropriate and safe provision of available services. There is no nationally developed outcome or national indicator for achieving this priority action.
Priority Action 7 – Enhance individuals’ access to health and social care and continuity of care following release from prison by improving the sharing of information and partnership-working between relevant partners.
Nationally Determined Outcome – More people have access to, and continuity of, health and social care following release from a prison sentence.
National Indicator – Number of transfers in drug/alcohol treatments from custody to community.
This indicator is in development, with the number of transfers in alcohol and drug treatment from custody to community being measured. The baseline for this measure will be 2022-23, with 134 people in Glasgow City being transferred for alcohol or drug treatment from custody to community. This outcome will continue to be to be monitored, with trends emerging.
Priority Action 8 – Ensure that the housing needs of individuals in prison are addressed consistently and at an early stage by fully implementing and embedding the Sustainable Housing on Release for Everyone (SHORE) standards across all local authority areas.
Nationally Determined Outcome – More people have access to suitable accommodation following release from a prison sentence.
National Indicator – Number of homelessness applications where prison was the property the main applicant became homeless from.
Table 6 shows that the number of homelessness applications where prison was the main address of the applicant has been reducing over time. The number in 2022-23 was the lowest since the data began in 2015-16. Given there has been several tranches of people released from prison during Emergency Early Release during COVID-19 restrictions, this shows the success of the local implementation of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) SHORE Standards, and our Pathfinder to Health Housing and Benefits.
Priority Action 9 – Enhance individual’s life skills and readiness for employment by ensuring increased access to employability support through effective education, learning, training, career services and relevant benefit services.
Nationally Determined Outcome – More people with convictions access support to enhance their readiness for employment.
National Indicator – Percentage of those in employability services with convictions.
There is insufficient data to demonstrate progress made in this Outcome. Our partnership has a Learning, Skills and Employability Forum which supports opportunities for people with convictions and provides a professional network for services and organisations involved in employability to support effective partnership working. The Local Employability Partnership reported that the employability services delivered through their partnership worked with 245 people with criminal convictions. It is understood that more people with convictions will be benefitting from employability support, there is currently no way to measure the extend of this. Our partnership will explore opportunities for implementing local measures to assess progress in making progress in this outcome.
Priority Action 10 – Enhance community integration and support by increasing and promoting greater use of voluntary throughcare and Third Sector services.
Nationally Determined Outcome – More people access voluntary throughcare following a short-term prison sentence.
National Indicator – Number of voluntary throughcare cases commenced.
The data for this outcome will be monitored. The numbers fluctuate and are low but will be monitored as the new Voluntary Throughcare service commences.
Priority Action 11 – Deliver improved community justice outcomes by ensuring that effective leadership and governance arrangements are in place and working well, collaborating with partners and planning strategically.
There is no national indicator for this outcome.
Priority Action 12 – Enhance partnership planning and implementation by ensuring the voices of victims of crime, survivors, those with lived experience and their families are effectively incorporated and embedded.
There are no nationally determined outcomes for this indicator. Community Justice Glasgow (CJG) will be reviewing their partnership in 2025, and the outcome will inform these priority actions.
Priority Action 13 – Support integration and reduce stigma by ensuring the community and workforce have an improved understanding of and confidence in community justice.
Nationally Determined Outcome – More people across the workforce and in the community understand, and have confidence in, community justice.
National Indicator – Percentage of people who agree that: people should help their community as part of a community sentence rather than spend a few months in prison for a minor offence.
The Percentage of people who agree that: “people should help their community as part of a community sentence rather than spend a few months in prison for a minor offence”, is collected at a national level, but not available for Glasgow City. The Scottish Household Survey does measure how safe adults feel when walking alone in their neighbourhood after dark.
Chart 3 shows that a greater proportion of people from Glasgow feel fairly safe in their neighbourhood after dark, while a smaller proportion feel very safe in the most up to date data available (2019). 2022 Figures have been released which accumulate the Very Safe and Fairly Safe response, which gives a longer term indicators since 2013, the latest publication 2022, indicates a lower population in Glasgow (75%) than Scotland as a whole (81%) who feel Fairly or Very Safe walking home at night, however these figures have remained consistent since 2013 and with only 800 respondents in Glasgow it would be hard to attribute a strong statistical significance to any small changes. We are in contact with the Scottish Household survey to obtain a larger data set across a three-year rolling average and will continue to monitor this as data becomes available, and work with our partners to improve perception of safety in the city.
Crime Rates in Glasgow
Charts 4 and 5 show the Scottish Local Authority average crimes alongside the Glasgow City total crimes for 2013-14 to 2022-23.
While total crimes are falling in Glasgow City, it is not at the same rate as the Scottish local authority average. Glasgow City is the largest local authority in Scotland by population, and so will have more total crimes than other areas. Chart 6, below, shows the total crimes for both Glasgow City and North Lanarkshire (a reasonably comparable local authority area), and there is a similar pattern in the overall reduction in crime rate of the period 2013-14 to 2022-23.
Additional Local Indicators
Our partnership works closely with the Glasgow Violence Against Women Partnership, to support the aim of improving multi agency responses for women, children and young people who have experienced violence against women and girls. One of the local outcomes identified to monitor the impact of this work is the number of domestic abuse incidents recorded by the police. While it is acknowledged that this does not capture the full extent of offending in this area, it does provide an indicator of the pattern.
Presumption Against Short Sentences (PASS)
The Scottish Government did release data relating to sentence length by Local Authority (LA) immediately following PASS, however this has not been repeated. Currently we have no known source to demonstrate sentencing in Glasgow. Scottish Prison Service (SPS) Population Statistics are an ‘as at’ population by sentence length on the first of each month. This cannot be used to demonstrate movement away from short sentences as there is no way of knowing how many different individuals are counted over the year.
Remand
The figures released by SPS statistics is an ‘as at’ count on the first of each month, this does not give enough information to be able to give an accurate count of individuals who were remanded in custody across the year – simply a total number remanded at that time by local authority. Across each month figure may be double counted individuals which does not allow for a count of individuals as they process through their justice journey – figures in the Performance Framework are recorded at April of each year, however will only account for individuals remanded at this time.
The hope is, that with the review of the SHORE standards which will bring a new data sharing agreement for local authorities, will allow a focus on the remand population and give an accurate picture of remands for individuals, allowing Community Justice Glasgow to not only facilitate a greater degree of support for an individual, but to also give a greater accuracy in annual reporting figures of individuals who are remanded in custody throughout the year.
Service User Feedback
‘Your Voice’ is the mechanism used by Justice Social Work in Glasgow to gather feedback from the people who use their services. In 2023-24 there were 1270 questionnaire sent to clients, either electronically or in paper format. These included questions relating to Procedural Justice – the degree to which someone perceives people in authority apply processes / or make decisions about them in a fair and just manner. Table 7, below, shows the mean scores for each of the questions included in this survey.
The survey also included specific questions on the perceived quality of Community Payback Order (CPO) Supervision, Unpaid Work Placement and Throughcare. Table 8 below outlines the responses to this part of the questionnaire. The responses to these questions will be used by Social Work Services to inform improvement planning in the service.
Youth Justice
Scottish Children’s Reporter
It can be seen in Chart 9, below, that the number of children referred to the Scottish Children’s Reporter has been declining since 2006/0, and has remained under 2,000 referrals per annum since 2020/2. A similar pattern is seen with North Lanarkshire, which is a useful comparator local authority. This fall in referrals can be attributed to effective pre-referral screening, where formal measures are not deemed necessary, and effective local support for families including Early and Effective Intervention for young people at risk of entering formal justice systems are utilised.
Early and Effective Intervention
There is a national Early and Effective Intervention (EEI) framework for working with young people of 8 – 17 years who have come into conflict with the law. This framework helps in diverting young people from statutory measures, including referrals to the Scottish Children’s Reporter. Glasgow has a dedicated team who deliver EEI, tailoring their programmes to meet the needs of the young people they are working with at any time. They take a restorative approach, and programmes can include areas such as victim awareness, consequential thinking, peer relations, knife crime, problem solving and skills practice. The team are also increasingly working with parents and families in delivering EEI and taking a more holistic and community-wide approach. This year, the team has also focussed on wider partnership working to ensure they can support families in accessing services to meet the full range of needs. The team average around 60 referrals per month and Table 9 below shows the total referrals to EEI from 2020-21 onwards.
One Glasgow
Unique to Glasgow, our One Glasgow Reducing Offending partnership also works to support young people away from the justice system through early intervention. It is led by Police Scotland in partnership with Glasgow City Council HSCP, Children and Families Social Work Services and Community Justice Glasgow. Its purpose is to co-ordinate and monitor progress of the Whole Systems Approach for young people, with the aim of providing positive pathways for people aged under-25 who are involved in, or at risk of becoming involved in, the criminal justice system. This partnership is built upon effective information analysis by Police Scotland to refer young people to the most appropriate services to meet needs. In 2023-24, 114 young people were identified by Police Scotland to be supported through the One Glasgow Approach. This is 15 more than last year. For this total, 87% successfully engaged with the third sector organisations who work in Partnership with Police Scotland to deliver the One Glasgow Approach. Of these young people,93% had no further crimes of violence within three months of completion of a diversion project, and 80% reduced their offending (75% of them committing no further offences). Within six months of completion, 100% of young people had no further crimes of violence and 72% reduced their offending (67% of them committing no further offences).
