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Feasibility Study for a victim and witness support service in Scotland

1 Introduction

1.1 Background

1.1.1 It has been recognised for some time that victims and witnesses of crime, and bereaved next of kin of those who die as a result of crime or of accidents, can find the subsequent processes, legal and otherwise, a source of considerable trauma and stress. Victims of crime often have to re-live the experience of the crime in a court setting - an experience which they can find frightening, stressful, and intimidating.

1.1.2 According to the British Crime Survey, about half of crime in Scotland goes unreported; rape, and crimes against lesbian and gay people, are particularly under-reported for reasons which are said to be due in part to perceptions of the investigative and prosecution process.

1.1.3 Much has been done over the past 10 years to recognise the needs of victims and witnesses, and to take positive steps to make their involvement in the criminal justice process as free from stress as the process itself permits. However, there is evidence that more could yet be done to build on the existing services to victims and witnesses to offer a seamless, consistent and supportive service to victims and witnesses.

1.1.4 This has been recognised by the statutory agencies involved in the criminal justice process, as evidenced by the joint funding of this current research study to investigate the feasibility of practical steps to improve the services offered to victims and witnesses both individually by agencies and more generally by the criminal justice system as a whole.

1.1.5 The particular service enhancements which this study addresses were proposed by the Lord Advocate in 1999. The Lord Advocate’s proposal suggests establishing a victim and witness service within the Crown Office, to tackle the needs of victims and witnesses in cases which are reported to the Procurator Fiscal. This is aimed at tackling those aspects of victim and witness needs which occur while the Fiscal carries responsibility for the case. The proposal is consistent with, and seeks to complement, other initiatives in other parts of the criminal justice system and in the voluntary sector.

1.1.6 The Lord Advocate’s proposal includes the following components:

1.1.7 The proposal also suggests that the staff of the proposed new service could also serve the following additional functions:

1.1.8 It also proposes that consideration should be given to any management function which the new service could perform regarding the delivery of services by voluntary agencies to Crown witnesses.

1.1.9 In terms of organisation, the Lord Advocate suggests the attraction of structuring the proposed service as a central unit, with local delivery at Regional or Sheriffdom level. Further, he suggests that there might be scope for creating specialised units, at regional level, for providing services to particular classes of vulnerable witnesses.

1.2 The study

1.2.1 In March 2000, Lambda Research and Consultancy Ltd was commissioned to undertake a feasibility study of the Lord Advocate’s proposal, to identify how it could be staffed and operated, and to evaluate the costs of the proposed service in relation to the benefits. As part of the study, Lambda was invited to take a broad look at the current practices of working with victims and witnesses throughout the criminal justice system, looking beyond the Crown Office and Fiscal Service alone.

1.2.2 In the study, Lambda carried out over 80 in-depth interviews with statutory agencies involved in the criminal justice process, representatives of the judiciary (Sheriffs and High Court Judges), voluntary organisations with a remit for victim and witness issues, policy makers, professional bodies, and victims and witnesses themselves. Workshops were also held, in which those involved in contributing to the study were given an opportunity to review the study findings to date, and to contribute further to the study. In absolute terms, the sample of interviews on which the research was based is small, and care must be taken in drawing conclusions from its results. However, included amongst the persons interviewed were key representatives of all of the main organisations involved in the provision of services to victims and witnesses (including both statutory and voluntary agencies), and between them, they represented the broad base of the victim and witness population. The sample of victims and witnesses interviewed was also derived from consultation with the voluntary agencies - both to derive a representative sample, and to temper the information provided by individual victims and witnesses with the broader view of the agencies. There was also a very high degree of consistency in the results emerging from the research, both within the study and between this study and other, earlier research, to an extent which gives considerable confidence that the results are representative.

1.2.3 The study also benefited from written responses submitted by:

1.2.4 One of the key points to emerge from the study was the paucity of objective research on victim and witness issues within Scotland. This current study, despite its small size, is one of the more detailed and significant research studies conducted into victim and witness needs and services within the last five years.

1.2.5 The approach adopted for the research study was participative and open, involving feedback workshops at key points in the study, to permit those who had participated in the research to review emerging issues and conclusions to contribute further to the research. The workshop also provided opportunities for those who had not been interviewed to contribute to the study. The workshops were arranged separately for the victims and witnesses, and for the service providers (both statutory and voluntary).

1.2.6 The study comprised:

1.3 Issues

1.3.1 From the study, there emerged a clear picture that:

1.3.2 The Lord Advocate’s proposal had already recognised that more should be done to support the needs of victims and witnesses. In the light of the above findings, Lambda examined the Lord Advocate’s proposal for the service within the Crown Office in the context of the gaps that could be identified in service provision for victims and witnesses in cases which were the responsibility of the Fiscal. In order to fill the gaps, a range of services require to be provided, which mainly match those which had been proposed by the Lord Advocate.

1.3.3 The proposals offered by the Lord Advocate for the Crown Office will not, on their own, meet the victim and witness needs which have been identified in this study, however. The issues concerned with the gaps in delivery in other agencies (the police, courts, prisons and social work), the geographical differences in service provision, the problems at handover between agencies, and the inconsistency in identifying and communicating victim and witness needs, all point to the need for activity both in individual agencies (other than the Crown Office) and at a cross-agency level to raise the standards of the services provided, increase the level of consistency, and encourage more effective inter-working between the agencies involved. For this reason, Lambda has looked beyond the Lord Advocate’s proposal to identify other potential initiatives which will tackle these broader requirements.

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