Victims of crime need supported through Covid-19 court crisis

Victim Support Scotland chief calls on the justice system to act

Kate Wallace, Chief Executive, Victim Support Scotland

Scotland’s movement into Phase 3 of lockdown is welcome, especially for those who have gone months without seeing their friends and families. But for people affected by crime, there is little to celebrate.

Chief Executive of the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS), Eric McQueen recently told the Scottish Parliament Justice Committee that courts would take at least three years to clear the backlog of solemn cases alone.

Victims and witnesses have been left with uncertainty about when, if ever, their case will go to court. The devastating impact of this on mental health cannot be emphasised enough. Throughout the pandemic, Victim Support Scotland has recorded a staggering increase in the number of victims contacting our services reporting suicidal thoughts and mental health issues.

Coronavirus has caused a crisis in our courts and the justice system is struggling to cope. Now more than ever, we must listen to people affected by crime to prevent the situation getting any worse for victims.

The Victims Taskforce was established in 2018 to improve support, advice and information for victims of crime. It is made up of people with direct experience of crime, victim support organisations, criminal justice agencies and the Scottish Government. Its core aim is to ensure victims’ voices are heard and streamline their journey through the justice system. Their voices are vital as we look to how to recover.

The legal profession is notorious for its use of archaic and unintelligible terminology. Throw in a huge number of almost identical acronyms – SPS, SCTS, COPFS, VNS, VIA – and the justice system becomes seemingly impossible to navigate at the best of times, let alone when someone is in the midst of a traumatic experience. Providing victims and witnesses with information that is clear and easy to understand is vital. When redesigning our website last year, Victim Support Scotland took on board direct feedback from victims, we now provide information in bitesize chunks rather than in single documents that felt overwhelming.

As part of the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act, emergency measures announced by the Scottish Government permit the early release of prisoners to prevent a potential outbreak. This includes providing updates to victims of eligible prisoners through the Victim Notification Scheme (VNS).

This, however, ignored key concerns that victims’ organisations have held around the VNS since it was first introduced in 2016: victims lack of choice in how criminal justice agencies communicate with them. Whilst the VNS may entitle some victims to information, what it does not do is guarantee that support will be provided alongside that.

The justice system has been slow to embrace technology. Communication to victims is made by letters sent to the last known address. Updates through email and text, rather than placing the onus on victims going back to agencies to update their details, would be an easy and cost-effective improvement to implement. Of course, this won’t be suitable for all victims, but it will be welcome for some.

Judges have a huge role to play in ensuring the criminal justice system fulfils its obligations to victims. Making sure the practice of sentence discounting for entering a guilty plea is clearly explained to victims and their families, as well as providing a clear explanation of how a decision has been reached, would provide a sense of understanding that the victim’s experience has been fully considered.

High profile serious sexual assault and rape trials have raised serious concerns in how the courts and judges treat victims. The number of survivors who tell us that “the trial was worse than the experience of being raped itself” should send alarm bells ringing across the criminal justice system.

Providing specialist training for jurors to allow them to examine their own unconscious biases and address harmful rape myths would be a welcome commitment.

As we move away from outdated approaches that focus on punishment and towards rehabilitation, the need to provide properly funded community resources that work alongside more traditional elements of the justice system to support victims cannot be side-lined any longer.

The justice system may not be the most obvious casualty in a pandemic to some. But by listening to the needs of people affected by crime, and by being open to change to meet the challenges of life in post-pandemic Scotland, the justice system in Scotland can recover without sacrificing the needs of victims and witnesses in the process.

Kate Wallace, Chief Executive, Victim Support Scotland