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Feasibility Study for a victim and witness support service in Scotland

Summary of results and recommendations

(Paragraph numbers in brackets refer to source paragraphs in the main body of the final report)

1. Much has been done in recent years to tackle the needs of victims and witnesses of serious crime, as well as of bereaved next of kin of murder victims and accident fatalities. More is also planned, with a number of significant initiatives already under way (para 1.3.1). However, some significant gaps remain to be filled, particularly those involving the provison of case-specific information to victims and witnesses, those associated with the handover of responsibility between criminal justice agencies (para 3.1.15), and domestic abuse (para 3.1.11).

2. The Lord Advocate has recently proposed a new victim and witness support service (VAWSS), to supplement the existing provision (and planned new initiatives), as a means of filling the remaining gaps (paras 1.1.6 to 1.1.9). This study has examined the feasibility of the proposal in the light of the current, and planned, provision of services and of the identified needs of victims and witnesses (paras 1.2.1 to 1.2.6). It concludes that the proposal offered by the Lord Advocate is soundly based, is practical, will compliment existing and other planned initiatives for victims and witnesses, and can be cost-justified in terms of the benefits it will offer in relation to the cost (para 4.1.5). There would be additional practical and cost benefits in combining the proposed Victim and Witness Support Service with the proposed Child Witness Support Service proposed separately by the Lord Advocate (para 4.1.9).

3. The research in this study identified other gaps in provision for victims and witnesses which the Lord Advocate’s proposal on its own would not meet (para 1.3.3); these could potentially be met in a cost effective manner through other initiatives. The main recommendation of the study therefore has three strands:

• the creation of a Victim and Witness Support Service (VAWSS), located within, but separated from, the Crown Office and Fiscal Service, which would provide a range of services to victims and witnesses directly (primarily concerned with giving case-specific information to victims and witnesses); it would also be responsible for commissioning and organising other services - support services for victims and witnesses, use of CCTV facilities, protection, etc; it would have three levels - an operational level, based at or near existing Fiscal offices, a regional level to coordinate activity, and a national level, to manage the service overall;

• other criminal justice agencies would take responsibility for meeting the needs of victims and witnesses within their respective jurisdictions - for example, the police taking responsibility to ensure that all victims are given relevant information on sources of support;

• a national level strategy and coordinating group, to develop a strategy for victim and witness support services in Scotland, monitor achievement, raise awareness about victim and witness issues, and coordinate activity across the criminal justice agencies, judiciary and voluntary organisations. (para 4.1.7)

4. The needs of victims and witnesses, which these initiatives are intended to tackle, fall into 6 broad categories:

• physical protection and security
• information throughout the criminal justice process
• emotional and counselling support
• courtesy, respect, and sensitivity to the experience they have lived through
• assistance in coping with physical disability, speech or hearing impairment, language or cultural differences
• comfort - to be addressed when, for example, attending court.

5. In addition, there is a less well defined need, for many victims of crime and some witnesses - to make an active contribution to the decision-making in the criminal justice process.

6. The tasks to be undertaken by the proposed Victim and Witness Support Service would fall into five main categories:

• coordination and commissioning of services from other sources (including from existing voluntary resources) to meet the identified needs of victims and witnesses
• monitoring of victim and witness service provision and liaison with service providers to ensure that all required services are provided
• provision of services (notably assessment of need in complex cases, provision of information of a case-specific or legal nature)
• development and delivery of training to all agencies, statutory and voluntary, which provide services to victims and witnesses
• development of materials, such as leaflets, information packs, training resources. (para 4.2.2)

7. The staff of the proposed Victim and Witness Support Service (VAWSS) will require a range of skills - organisational/facilitational, administrative, legal/para-legal, interpersonal, training. In practice, if the main thrust of the VAWSS is to be provided from within the Crown Office, some of these skills will require to be commissioned as required from other sources in order to preserve the independence of the prosecutor in the legal process. (para 4.3.1)

8. It is proposed that the Victim and Witness Support Service will be based in, or close to, existing Procurator Fiscal offices, though will be differentiated organisationally and presentationally from the prosecution service. The small size of some of the existing Fiscals’ offices will pose difficulties for staffing the VAWSS; the workload of the smaller offices will not justify a full-time victim and witness support staff. At these offices, staff will require to be based regionally, to service a number of sites (para 4.3.2-4)

9. It is proposed that there should be three levels to the Victim and Witness Support Service - an operational level, working in or near individual Fiscal offices and Sheriff Courts, regional working at sheriffdom level, and a national level, for overall management of the new service. To ensure close interworking between the Victim and Witness Support Service and the proposed strategic planning component, the national manager for the VAWSS should be a member of the strategic group. (para 4.1.7)

10. The cost of the VAWSS will range from around £0.7 million annually to about £1.7 million (£0.97 million to £2.1 million if additional allowance is made for accommodation and to allow for inefficiencies of placement at smaller sites), depending on the scope of the services offered and the extent to which the costs are offset against expected savings; much of the work proposed for the VAWSS is already undertaken to an extent by the Fiscal Service, and the costs of these components can be offset against the total costs of the new service. It is recommended that pilots are undertaken initially, both to test the cost model on which these estimates are based, and to trial the methods of working and verify the cost effectiveness of these before the service is rolled out throughout Scotland (paras 4.3.10, 4.6.2)

11. One of the key elements of the Victim and Witness Support Service is that it should routinely provide information to victims and witnesses involved in the criminal justice process, and should continue to provide information on a regular basis throughout their involvement in it. This information should be partly in the form of written notifications and information sheets, and partly though telephone and face to face contact. It should also provide a mechanism for ensuring that the particular needs of individual victims and witnesses are accurately assessed and communicated. From the research in this study, this means that the Victim and Witness Support Service should comprise three main components - (1) an automated system for generating letters and notifications to victims and witnesses, (2) a staff resource to coordinate victim and witness services and to provide case-specific information to victims and witnesses, and (3) a staff resource (possibly commissioned as necessary from outside the Crown Office) to tackle effective assessment of victim and witness needs and to provide professional support and counselling to victims and witnesses with special needs. (Section 4.4)

12. Looking beyond the proposed Victim and Witness Support Service, agency-specific actions to improve the range and quality of services offered to victims and witnesses would also be of benefit - this should include the police, Scottish Courts Service, Scottish Prison Service, and Law Society of Scotland (section 5.1)

13. In addition, there requires to be cross-agency activity to develop strategy and provide better access to information for victims and witnesses. Four strategic initiatives are required:

• first, a mechanism at national level for developing strategic thinking on victim and witness issues, coordinate activity between the different statutory agencies of the criminal justice system, the judiciary and voluntary sector, in order to ensure that initiatives aimed at meeting victim and witness needs are coordinated and carry the support of all agencies involved;

• second, the development of a guiding strategy for tackling victim and witness issues, supported by effective research and routine performance information;

• third, a national mechanism for providing information on sources of support to victims and witnesses before they come into contact with the criminal justice system (or after the criminal justice process has been completed);

• fourth, a national information base of cases disposed of, in order to provide information to victims downstream of the case disposal (para 5.2.3). Extension of the SCRO database to provide a victim "chapter" is already under way, under the ISCJIS program to integrate computer systems throughout the criminal justice system.

14. The existing multi-agency Victim Steering Group, for which the Justice Department of the Scottish Executive provide the secretariat, should be considered as a vehicle for addressing the question of how services to victims and witnesses can be better coordinated and managed, to ensure a common standard of service throughout Scotland, and a consistent quality of service between agencies. (para 5.2.4). This could extend to coordinating activity on victim and witness issues between agencies, raising awareness between agencies on victim and witness issues, providing training, monitoring and raising standards on victim and witness services, and encouraging a system-wide view of the approach to tackling victim and witness needs (section 5.2)

15. The national information sources, if implemented by means of a national telephone helpline and Web-site would cost in the region of £300,000 to £600,000 annually.

16. The current study was constrained to some extent by limitations of operational data on current work with victims and witnesses and by a paucity of research on victim and witness needs and service provision in Scotland. Although limited in sample size, the research conducted in this present study is potentially the most significant research on victim and witness issues in Scotland in the past five years. There would be benefit in establishing key performance indicators for victim and witness service provision, and in establishing the necessary routine data collection systems for monitoring performance against these indicators. (section 6.2)

17. It is also recommended that a program of objective research is undertaken to investigate the impact of the quality and extent of victim and witness services on the perception, by victims and witnesses, of their participation in the criminal justice process, and more significantly in the relationship between service provision and the willingness of victims and witnesses to participate in the process. (section 6.3)

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