Award of CR/2020/15 - Non-custodial interventions for animal welfare and wildlife offences

Descriptions

Section 1 - Introduction1. Scottish Government wishes to commission a research project to explore the evidence base for the effectiveness of non-custodial interventions to reduce reoffending in animal welfare and wildlife crime offenders.2. The specification sets out the aims of the work, and the tasks required of the contractor. It also sets out the management arrangements and timescales.Section 2 - Background & Context3. Non-custodial interventions, such as Community Payback Orders, have been increasingly recognised as important rehabilitation measures for reducing reoffending. The Scottish Government (2015) publication ‘What Works to Reduce Reoffending: A Summary of the Evidence’, for example, illustrates that there is limited but mostly positive evidence for the effectiveness of reparative and restorative programmes in reducing reoffending. As forms of non-custodial interventions, empathy-based training courses and restorative justice measures have been increasingly utilised in rehabilitation programmes. Although widely used, there is currently little conclusive evidence of their effectiveness in reducing reoffending. A lack of conclusive evidence may be due to the complex and long-term nature of reoffending statistics.4. Moreover, empathy training has been recognised as an important preventative measure. The Scottish Government has supported its use through the Roots to Empathy programme in selected Scottish schools. Restorative justice procedures are similarly used in preventing reoffending, in efforts to establish a beneficial dialogue between victims and offenders. The Scottish Government is committed to providing widely available restorative justice services across Scotland by 2023.5. There is now scope to investigate the use of different and varied interventions in cases of animal welfare and wildlife crimes, in an effort to reduce reoffending. Although other non-custodial interventions, such as Community Payback Orders, have been used for guilty charges in animal welfare prosecutions, these only make up 22% of disposals. Additionally, although there are a number of courses available for adults on developing human-human empathy, there appear to be no courses that facilitate empathy training in adults towards animals.6. Recommendations from the Wildlife Crime Penalties Review Group Report (2015) stipulate that empathy training be used for animal welfare offenders in appropriate cases. The subject was also raised during the progress of the Animals and Wildlife (Penalties, Protections and Powers) (Scotland) Bill, which was passed in Parliament on the 17th June 2020.7. Since this legislation, the Scottish Government has committed to investigating the use of empathy-based and restorative justice training courses specifically related to animal welfare and wildlife crime offending. This will provide evidence of the feasibility of introducing such measures in Scotland. The project will produce a set of research reports based on findings of an evidence review, in-depth interviews and a workshop.