This workstream is led by Gloucestershire Reducing Re-offending board. The board is a multi-agency partnership that aims to facilitate and co-ordinate partnership work to help build better strategies for diversion and rehabilitation.

The board works closely with the South West Reducing Reoffending Partnership to ensure that regional commissioning and operational priorities are aligned. Reducing re-offending and increasing rehabilitation opportunities via better services are key objectives for the Gloucestershire Criminal Justice Board (GCJB) and this delivery group has been established in order to achieve those objectives. Activities and significant decisions will be reported to GCJB, who will retain governance and oversight.

The aims are to reduce levels of reoffending, to drive an increase in support and diversion opportunities and referrals, to increase the use of restorative justice practices, to improve confidence in the Criminal Justice System, and to gather and improve data sharing between all relevant agencies and parties.

Gloucestershire Criminal justice board measures criminal justice performance in a number of ways; through updates from meetings that focus on court performance, to constabulary meetings.

In addition, the board has a performance framework so it can closely monitor criminal justice data. The main objectives of this board are to improve court performance, file quality, monitor the use of out of court disposals, and to better inform the public about criminal justice performance.

This workstream is led by the Victim and Witness group.

The group has been developed to allow the criminal justice organisations, and services supporting victims and witness of Gloucestershire, to come together and conduct troubleshooting and quality assurance. This ensures that, as a county, we are providing a robust and quality service to victims of crime in Gloucestershire that is in line with the Victims Code of Practice.

The group focuses specifically on the issues affecting victims and witnesses by promoting and enabling a more positive experience for those involved in the criminal justice system.

Tackling male violence against women and girls is one of the Police and Crime Commissioner’s priorities and a Gloucestershire Constabulary priority.

The CPS have also developed a Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strategy. This is not only as a result of the importance the service places on improving prosecutions of these crimes and supporting victims, but also in recognition of the United Nations, Council of Europe, End Violence Against Women Campaign initiatives, and as part of the cross-government VAWG strategy. The cross-government VAWG narrative and action plans are available from GOV.UK.

In light of the fact that this is a priority for several board attendees, the board have also made it priority to join this work and ensure efforts are not siloed.

The board recently agreed to add a fifth priority that focuses on anti-discrimination. This is reflects the anti-discriminatory pledge that he constabulary has made.

The term has been chosen to encompass all elements of discrimination, not just focusing on one minority group. The board is working on putting together some meaningful priorities that will support the population of Gloucestershire and those who come into contact with the criminal justice system.