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Feasibility Study for a victim and witness support service in Scotland

6 Information and research needs

6.1 Introduction

6.1.1 During the course of the current study, it has become evident that there are significant gaps in the information currently available on the needs of victims and witnesses, and how best to meet them.

6.1.2 This missing information is of two main types. Firstly, very little of the information held within the operational systems of the criminal justice agencies relating to victims and witnesses is routinely extracted or analysed. There is little information on basic measures such as the numbers of witnesses per case, the numbers of witnesses with identified special needs, the measures taken to meet these needs, and the costs associated with them. Secondly, there has been little substantive research on victim and witness needs generally in Scotland (and relatively little in England and Wales). As far as we can determine, there has been virtually no research in Scotland which looks rigorously at the real benefits of meeting victim and witness needs - hence there is no measure of the benefits arising from the initiatives to tackle victim and witness needs. The subject of victim and witness needs is highly subjective; funding decisions need to be based on reliable objective evidence of the extent of that need, and on the effectiveness of measures to tackle it.

6.2 Records

6.2.1 The accuracy of the data used in this feasibility study would have been greatly enhanced if management records included the following information about each report, in addition to that already recorded. The data should then be collated to provide management statistics available for each Fiscal's office, and national statistics.

• Whether the crime has identifiable individual victims, corporate victims, or is victim-less

• Number of individual victims

• Number of witnesses from whom statements are taken by police

• Time spent on marking the case

• Number of witnesses precognosced, and how many times

• Duration of each precognition interview

• Staff level of person undertaking precognitions

• Telephone calls made to, and received from, victims and witnesses (or e.g. social workers, on their behalf) - number, duration and staff level

• Meetings with victims and witnesses - number, duration and staff level

• Number of witnesses cited, and number of citations (and countermands) sent to each

• Number of different trial dates set

• Pre-trial court visits organised - number, duration and staff level

• Number of witnesses who attended court and were dismissed without giving evidence due to a guilty plea on the day

• Number of witnesses who attended court and were dismissed without giving evidence for some other reason

• Number of witnesses who attended court and gave evidence

• Length of time witnesses waited at court before giving evidence or being dismissed

• Number of witnesses precognosced, cited, attended court and/or gave evidence, broken down by type of need - e.g. children, person with learning difficulty, etc.

6.3 Research

6.3.1 Research should be undertaken which would provide a rigorous evaluation of the benefits of meeting victim and witness needs. Such research could look at two main issues.

6.3.2 Firstly, research is needed to look at the issue of the extent to which providing services to meet perceived victim and witness needs actually affects their experience of going through the criminal justice system. This would include measuring "customer" satisfaction with the criminal justice system quantitatively, as well as qualitative research into how well victims and witnesses feel they were treated, to what extent they feel justice has been done, their perception of their own role in the process, etc. In addition, the research should look at issues related to victims’ emotional recovery from the crime, to what extent it has affected their lives, how long term this effect is, and whether different experiences of the criminal justice system themselves affect emotional recovery from the crime.

6.3.3 Secondly, research is needed to look at how the provision of victim and witnesses services impact on the outcome of the criminal justice process itself. This would include evaluating, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the effects of providing:

• enhanced protection programmes on the willingness of intimidated witnesses to come forward to give evidence, on the quality of the evidence they are able to give, and on trial outcome.

• information and support to victims and witnesses - between the commission of the crime and the trial date, and on the day(s) in court themselves - on the quality of the evidence they give in court, on trial outcome, and on attitude to reporting crime or coming forward as a witness in future.

• victims of domestic abuse with appropriate counselling and legal advice on their interest in pursuing the case in court, on numbers of cases taken to court, and trial outcome.

• information and support to victims and witnesses on the proportion of crimes which are reported.

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