STRUCTURES, PEOPLE AND COMMUNICATIONS
Structures
The principles identified in 'Reform and Revitalise' are relevant across the whole of offender management - they are about speedy delivery of an appropriate range of sentences, which meet the community's and victims' needs for visible rigour and payback for harm done, while giving an offender the opportunity to access support to turn their life around. So our strategy focuses on ensuring that when a sentence is given it is implemented immediately and with rigour, but in a way which builds a foundation for changed behaviour.
We do not plan to create another community justice body. We believe that the aims envisaged by the Prisons Commission for a National Community Justice Council can be achieved just as well by developing the existing structure which sets our strategy for offender management - the National Advisory Body ( NAB) on Offender Management. We will work with those represented at the NAB to establish a forum which can help to guide the delivery partners - the Scottish Government and local authorities represented by COSLA - in taking forward the strategy for offender management set out here.
People
It is vital to the success of this package that our judges have confidence in the risk assessments carried out by social work and in the robustness of the sentences which social work supervises. The Prisons Commission's report raised important issues about how best to organise criminal justice social work to ensure a timely and appropriate flow of information to the judiciary, both before sentence and as part of sentence management.
Social work resources and social workers are valuable and finite resources. We must make the best use of them, ensuring that the delivery programme is flexible enough to allow for a proportionate response to each offender's risk and needs. Not all offenders need the same levels of supports, intervention and supervision. Many offenders simply need help - into housing, employment or training or with basic matters such as getting the right benefits. We need to think innovatively about how we deliver for all types of offenders.
Communications
We will continue to work to get our message across to the public. In particular we will show the benefits to communities and victims of tough community penalties instead of short term prison sentences. But we will also stress our determination to ensure that offenders whose crimes deserve custody are kept under restriction for the entire length of the sentence whether it is the part served in prison or under licence conditions in the community.