Relevant Publications

Page last updated: December 2025

Listed below are some relevant publications which impact on community safety and building safer communities in Scotland, organised by theme.

Violence Prevention & Reduction

• Exclusion from School and Risk of Serious Violence: A Target Trial Emulation Study (2025)
• Safe Space? The past present and future of violence reduction in Scotland (2024)
• Repeat violence in Scotland: a qualitative approach – SCCJR (2023)
• What works to prevent youth violence: evidence summary (2021)
• Holding Our Own: A guide to non policing solutions to serious youth violence (2023)
• Keeping Girls and Young Women Safe: Protecting and supporting girls and young women at risk of exploitation, violence, gangs and harm – YouthLink Scotland (2023)
• COSLA: Violence Against Women Partnership Guidance (2016)

Justice & Criminal Justice System

• • Romani (Gypsy), Roma and Irish Traveller Communities and the Criminal Justice System (2025)
  • The Presumption of Harm and Descriptions of Child Sexual Victimization: Sentencing the Victim-Offender (2025)
  • Justice in Scotland: Vision and Priorities – updated July 2017
  • Ethnic Inequalities in the Criminal Justice System (2023)
  • Restorative Justice & Sexual Harm: The voices of those who have harmed (2023)
  • How Domestic Abuse Victims Experience the Criminal Justice Process in Scotland (2021)
  • Practitioner Perspectives on Working with Young Women in the Criminal Justice Sphere: The Importance of Relationships
  • What works to reduce crime: A Summary of the Evidence (Scottish Government, 2014)
  • Community Policing: A Review of the Evidence (SCCJR, 2009)
  • Code of Practice on the Exercise by Constables of Powers of Stop and Search of the Person in Scotland (2017)

Prisons & Rehabilitation

• Penal Policy on Families of Imprisoned People—Understanding Scottish Prison Policy Through Prison Staff’s Moral Sensibilities (2025)
• Four out of five males in prison have a history of head injury (2025)
• Scottish Prison Population Statistics 2021-2022
• A Review of Interventions, Innovation and the Impact of Covid-19 in the Scottish Prison System within a Comparative Analytical Framework (2023)
• Rehabilitating Scotland: Exploring the impact of mentoring based through-care (2022)
• Research – Prison population: substance use and wider support needs (2022)
• Imprisoned Families: Young People’s Experiences of Simultaneous Family Imprisonment

Drugs & Alcohol

• Barriers to Recovery: Overcoming Obstacles to Alcohol Recovery in the UK (2025)
• A Teetotal Britain? Learning from Faith Communities (2025)
• A Whole-System Approach to Drug Prevention for Young People in the UK (2025)
• Study concludes ending alcohol ban could increase risk of disorder and add to alcohol harms (2025)
• Changing Lives: Final Report of the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce (2022)
• Cannabis laws in Europe: questions and answers for policymaking – EMCDDA
• Changing Scotland’s Relationship with Alcohol: Recommendations for further action
• New Psychoactive Substances – Evidence Review (Scottish Government, 2014)

Poverty & Inequality

• The Relationship Between Dimensionality and Duration of Household Poverty During Childhood and Onset of Youth Offending (2025)
• UK Poverty 2024: The Essential Guide to Understanding Poverty in the UK (2024)
• Designing out the most severe forms of hardship in local areas – Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2023)
• Testing Times: Messages to Reframe Race (2023)
• The Cost of Disconnected Communities (2017)

Health & Wellbeing

• A Scotland where everybody thrives: Public Health Scotland’s Strategic Plan 2022-2025
• Scottish Health Survey 2021
• A Matter of Life & Death: Explaining the wider determinants of health in the UK (2022)
• Understanding the mental health needs of women and girls experiencing gender-based violence (2021)
• Marginalised Rural Communities Report (Support in Mind Scotland, Feb 2021)

Trauma & ACEs

• The Sciences of ACEs and Attachment: Their shared history in Scotland
• Enablers and barriers to trauma informed systems, organisations and work forces: evidence review
• Working definition of trauma informed practice (2022)

Children & Young People

• Distress Brief Intervention – Under 18s Elements: Evaluation (2025)
• Empowering Young People with Special Educational Needs to Recognize and Report Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (2025)
• New research from Samsung reveals how societal issues are impacting young people in the UK
• Managing risk of harm in the community: A guide for practitioners and managers working with children – Centre for Youth Criminal Justice (2021)
• Grappling with the Complexity of Early and Effective Intervention (EEI): Benevolent Intentions, Negative Consequences in Youth Justice Implications (2021)
• Keeping Children Safe: Information disclosure about child sexual offenders (Scottish Government, 2011)
• Life in Scotland for LGBT Young People (2022)
• Tackling abuse of older people: five priorities for the UN decade of healthy ageing (2022)

Transport & Road Safety

• WHO Global Plan: Decade for Action on Road Safety 2021-2030 (2021)
• Reported Road Casualties in Scotland 2021 (Published 2022)
• Women’s and Girls’ views & experiences of personal safety when using public transport (2023)
• Teenagers and Public Space Research: Final Report – Sustrans/Transport Scotland/APIC

Public Safety & Surveillance

• Public Space CCTV in Scotland (2023)
• Firework Review Group: Report to the Scottish Government (Nov 2020)
• Control of Dangerous Dogs – Revised Protocol (September 2021)
• Short Life Working Group Report on Facilitating Peaceful Assemblies (2022)

Crime Statistics

• Recorded Crime in Scotland: Year ending September 2022
• Homicide in Scotland 2021-22

Community Engagement & Partnership Working

• Imagine a Scotland where we are Equally Safe: a focus on public protection and violence against women and girls (VAWG): learning report (2025)
• How cross-service collaboration between ambulance, fire, and policing services can improve community safety and wellbeing: A systematic review and case study
• Supporting collaboration between the third and public sectors: evidence review (2022)
• Strengthening Community Councils: Exploring how community councils can contribute to democratic renewal in Scotland (April 2019)
• Community Planning Officials Survey: Understanding the everyday work of local participatory governance in Scotland (May 2018)
• Local Matters – Delivering the Local Outcomes Approach (Scottish Government, 2011)
• Revised National Standards for Community Engagement Scotland (2016)
• Case Studies in Community Engagement within the Context of Community Safety Analysis Report (SCDC, 2013)

Prevention & Public Services

• Preventing criminal exploitation: evidence summary (2025)
• Social Capital 2025: The Case for Strengthening Social Bonds to Prevent Crime (2025)
• ‘The Preventative State’: Rebuilding our local, social and civic foundations (2023)
• The Great Unraveling: Navigating the Polycrisis of Environmental and Social Breakdown

Migration & Human Rights

• The Black Book of Pushbacks – Border Violence Monitoring Network (2022)

Hate Crime

• ‘I Feel Persecuted. It’s So Distressing and Upsetting, It Is All Too Much’. A Disablist Hate Crime Typology: Intimidation, Exploitation and Brutalization (2025)

Cyber Crime

• The Reality of ‘Cyber Awareness’: Findings and Policy Implications for Scotland (2021)