Compromise, partnership, control: Community Justice Authorities in Scotland

Abstract

Community Justice Authorities (CJAs) were heralded on their inception as modernizing Scotland’s community justice system and resolving longstanding tensions between central and local government over community justice control, by encouraging partnership working and providing oversight at a regional level. However, they were largely unsuccessful and were quietly abolished barely a decade later. Using data from two projects, we analyse the policy ‘narrative’ of CJAs in relation to features of a changing political context – particularly the (re-)establishment of Scotland’s national government, its shifting relationship with local government and policy convergence and divergence with England and Wales. CJAs’ origins in local/national compromise created constitutional flaws which constrained their operation and ultimately sealed their fate, but they nonetheless began to develop distinct identities and contributions which have been largely overlooked. The case of CJAs illustrates how evolving local and national political contexts shape the development of justice institutions.

The Local Provision of Restorative Justice in Scotland: an Exploratory Empirical Study

“…The current 32 local authorities in Scotland were created in 1996 on the back of years of critique of previous local government arrangements, to gather all local services under one roof (Buchan and Morrison 2020). This system was partly modified from 2007 when the Scottish National Party (SNP) agreed to increased local flexibility and autonomy, in return for a long council tax freeze.…”

“…More recently, the 2016 Community Justice (Scotland) Act shifted the responsibilities of coordinating and overseeing community justice commissioning and delivery (including the organization of youth justice) to new partnerships at local authority level, simultaneously creating a national body (Community Justice Scotland) to provide leadership and raise public and political awareness. This reform has created significant disruption and expense for provider organizations and contributed to the further fragmentation of an already complex community justice landscape (Buchan and Morrison 2020;Nolan 2015). Austerity funding cuts have fed into such a complex political-legal dynamic.…”

The struggle is real: Theorising community justice restructuring agonistically

“…These eight regional bodies would have responsibility for governance, oversight and commissioning of community justice services within their areas. At the time, CJAs were seen as resolving the tensions between local and central control, but they too would soon be superseded (Buchan and Morrison, 2018). Conflict between central government and 'localist' interests (including local authorities and social work bodies) shaped the structural compromises around community justice governance in Scotland in 1989Scotland in -2007; a focus on hidden conflict could therefore be helpful to analyse the most recent reforms.…”

“…The CJA staff expressed a preference for the ‘enhanced CJA’ model, but their influence was limited. Even if CJA staff had been vocal, they could not have a significant role as there were only ever 24 full-time equivalent staff spread across eight CJAs in Scotland (compared to several hundred CJSW employees), and their powers were circumscribed – both formally, and informally by the need to maintain good working relations with local authorities (Buchan and Morrison, 2018). Nonetheless, a theme that emerged in the interviews with CJA staff was a sense of frustration that CJAs would be abolished just as they were beginning to contribute in a role of their own, albeit not the one intended for them (Buchan and Morrison, 2018):I think at one point we thought we would be working with the government to look at how we could enhance CJAs.…”

“…The research reported here is the first study of these reforms, and the most up-to-date work on the organisation of Scottish community justice. It advances the study of Scottish penal policy particularly as it relates to community penalties, drawing on work by McNeill (2005McNeill ( , 2019a as well as Morrison (2015) and Buchan and Morrison (2018). The theoretical focus is on two closely related Bourdieusian concepts -the penal field and the agonistic framework -which emphasise the role of (often hidden) conflict in the development of penal policy and practice.…”