Corporate report

Criminal Justice Board for Wales Annual Report 2024 to 2025

Published 11 September 2025

Applies to England and Wales

1. Foreword

I am delighted to share our fourth Annual Report, to inform you about the work that the Criminal Justice Board for Wales has undertaken together over the last 12 months.

The Board is unique to Wales and enables us to come together as leaders across all aspects of the justice system with key stakeholders in Wales to focus on the big issues that we all care about and want to address. This year these include domestic abuse, rape response, victims’ rights, reducing offending and delivery of our Criminal Justice Anti Racism Action plan.

The report outlines in more detail the work we’ve done to address these challenges. I’d also like to take this opportunity to shine a light on some of the key achievements that exemplify the strength of partnership working we are so proud of in Wales - that makes these successes possible.

• improved understanding of victims’ experiences
  A new Victims’ Code Insight and Performance Model was developed to help Local Criminal Justice Boards (LCJBs) monitor compliance and assess, through feedback, whether victims’ experiences are improving
• stronger oversight of the domestic abuse response in Wales
  Building on national transformational reforms, we developed focused action plans and a shared data set to better identify what’s working and where further effort is needed to improve outcomes for victims
• survivor engagement supporting family court reform
  We listened to violence against women, domestic abuse, and sexual violence support groups in Wales, ensuring their voices shaped the changes being made to the family court system
• targeted response to local offending
  Local crime profile data was shared with LCJBs to support the development of action plans focused on key offences and the underlying drivers of criminality in each area
• public awareness campaign on anti-racism
  Following last summer’s public disorder, we launched a campaign to raise awareness and visibility of our Anti-Racism Action Plan, reaffirming our commitment to ethnic minority communities across Wales

Finally, I want to highlight the important reflective work we undertook in 2024. Since 2020, the justice system and political landscape have changed significantly. In response, we’ve taken time to reflect on how we work and how we can better use our unique role to improve the justice system and outcomes for those who come into contact with it in Wales.

At the end of this report, you’ll find a summary of our key reflections and the next steps we’re taking to reframe the Board’s vision, focus and strengthen its core purpose.

Ian Barrow
Interim Chair of Criminal Justice Board for Wales
Executive Director HM Prison and Probation Service Wales

2. Background – Who we are

The Criminal Justice Board for Wales focuses on the cross cutting and complex issues within the justice system in Wales by bringing together senior executive leaders across Wales to address the issues together This includes,

• His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service
• His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service
• the Youth Justice Board, Police services in Wales
• Chief Constables in Wales
• Police and Crime Commissioners in Wales
• the Crown Prosecution Service
• Public Health Wales
• Welsh Government
• the Welsh Local Government Association
• voluntary sector bodies
• the Victims Commissioner

3. Delivering Our Priorities in 2024 to 25

Below is a snapshot of the Criminal Justice Board for Wales Workplan for 2024 to 25, outlining four overarching priorities that focus efforts on key areas to improve people’s experiences and outcomes within the justice system. Tackling violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence and Children and Young people are the two golden threads across all priorities.

3.1 Victims and Witnesses

Ambitions:

• compliance with the Victims’ Code
• reduce domestic abuse attrition
• increase awareness of special measures
• focus on family court

3.2 People who have offended

Ambitions:

• bring together a picture of offending across Wales
• LCJBs will implement 12 month action plans to address local offending behaviours
• address service gaps in Wales: accommodation, neurodiversity, disabilities and mental health

3.3 Early Intervention and Prevention

Ambitions:

• LCJBs to deliver plan commitments
• a policy audit
• improve data collection and sharing
• develop an anti-racism training framework
• increase ethnic minority representation

3.4 Anti-racism action

Ambitions:

• LCJBs to deliver plan commitments
• a policy audit
• improve data collection and sharing
• develop an anti-racism training framework
• increase ethnic minority representation

4. Victims and Witnesses: Meeting their needs

In 2024 to 25 the Board, through the Victims and Witnesses Taskforce, focused on the achieving the following four goals:

1. Compliance with the Victims’ Code
2. Reducing domestic abuse attrition
3. Increase awareness of special measures
4. Focus on the Family Court

As reported to you last year, these ambitions were co-produced with victims and survivors across Wales, to ensure that we focused on resolving the issues in the justice system that were most important to them.

4.1 Compliance with the Victims’ Code

While the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) finalises its national Victims’ Code metrics and victim experience surveys, the Wales Victims and Witnesses Taskforce has developed an interim Victims’ Code – Assurance and Insights Model to support the Board in meeting its ambitions. Implementation of this model will begin in summer 2025.

This approach enables criminal justice bodies to prepare for the requirements set out in the Victims and Prisoner Act 2024^{[footnote 1]}, including the oversight and review of compliance with the Victims’ Code.

The model comprises two key components: data collection and victims’ lived experience. Police, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS), and HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) share data with Local Criminal Justice Boards (LCJBs) to better understand and monitor compliance with victims’ rights across the justice system.

In parallel, third sector providers contribute feedback based on victims’ experiences, offering valuable insights into whether compliance with the Code is translating into improved outcomes. This dual approach allows LCJBs to accurately identify areas in need of improvement and take coordinated, evidence-based action both locally and across Wales.

4.2 Reducing the number of domestic abuse victims who withdraw from the justice system

The impending launch of the NPCC’s and CPS Joint Justice Plan, alongside the extensive work already undertaken in 2023-24, presented the Victims and Witnesses Taskforce with an opportunity to review its response to domestic abuse. A mapping exercise was conducted to examine existing policies, plans, and governance structures in order to better understand:

• What actions were being undertaken
• Where duplication or commonality existed
• What domestic abuse data was being collected
• Who was responsible for monitoring and overseeing performance

As a result, a new way of working was agreed upon. Implementation is now nearing completion, with the delivery phase set to begin in summer 2025.

This new approach builds on the NPCC’s and CPS Joint Justice Plan, as well as the recommendations and concerns raised by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner in her Shifting the Scales report. Existing domestic abuse plans were consolidated into local Domestic Abuse Plans, aligned with UK-wide national priorities. These plans outline the actions required to improve the justice system’s response to domestic abuse -from reporting and investigation to charging, trial, and post-sentencing.

The plans are supported by a domestic abuse performance dashboard, which enables effective monitoring and reporting, helping to identify what is working and where further improvements are needed. Local Domestic Abuse Groups have been established to deliver these plans and report progress to Local Criminal Justice Boards (LCJBs).

We went further by bringing together the local Domestic Abuse Plans to identify shared challenges across regions. This led to the creation of a Wales Domestic Abuse Plan, which leverages existing partnerships and the geographical structure of Wales to deliver consistency, high-quality services, and improved experiences and outcomes for victims across the country.

4.3 Increase awareness of special measures

All Police Forces re-shared the short public facing special measures animations on social media and their websites to continue to increase wider public awareness.

Internally, to remind all staff of their requirements in relation to special measures we undertook a range of actions including:

• developing and sharing our ‘Special Measures: It’s everyone’s business flowchart’ with employees across the justice system. The document sets out key roles and responsibilities to ensure that all special measures are discussed with victims and witnesses.
• sharing of a special measures’ animation and the Remote Sites Information Pack with police teams working with victims of sexual and domestic abuse, equipping officers with the tools needed to support conversations about special measures.
• embedding of the internal special measures’ animation on police intranet platforms by communications leads, ensuring easy access for staff.

Encouragingly, performance reports show that across Wales, approximately 70% of victims offered special measures choose to apply for them, indicating that awareness efforts and the role of Special Measures Advocates are having a positive impact.

Regarding Remote Evidence Sites, nearly 200 individuals used these facilities across Wales between January and December 2024. Notably, three of the four Welsh regions saw a significant increase in usage. Survivors continue to report that giving evidence remotely made them feel safer and more confident, reinforcing the value of this provision.

4.4 Focus on the Family Court

We began to address this ambition, raised by survivors in 2023-24, by creating a Family Court Issues Log that sets out the specific issues and experiences of survivors in private law in the Family Court ^{[footnote 2]} together with the recommendations from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner Family Court and Domestic abuse report. The log was shared with survivor groups across Wales to examine and test that we had interpreted the issues correctly or identify where we could strengthen our response. As a result of this approach, we collated an outline of the work we had done to address survivors’ concerns in the Family Court which includes:

• Implementing the Pathfinder approach in all regions in Wales Private law reform:

Many of the issues raised by survivors - such as delays in the process, lack of recognition of coercive control, stigmatisation, and children not being heard - are being directly addressed through the implementation of the Pathfinder approach in all regions of Wales. This new model has reduced waiting times for child arrangement hearings by over 50%. Specialist Independent Domestic Violence Advisor (IDVA) support is now offered to all victims of domestic abuse, and the voice of the child is included in all court reports.

• Skills development

all key bodies across the Family Court, Judges, staff and CAFCASS Cymru have embedded training on domestic abuse and coercive control.

• Promoting Accurate Information

CAFCASS Cymru [information fact sheets](https://justiceuk-my.sharepoint.com/personal/rachel_allen1_justice_gov_uk/Documents/Work%20from%20Old%20PC/CJBfW%20Plans%20&Key%20documents/CJIW%20work%20programme%20&%20quarterly%20tracker%20report/Annual%20reports/2024-2025%20Annual%20Report/Cafcass%20Cymru%20

%20GOV.WALES) have been promoted among survivor groups in Wales to dispel myths and ensure individuals are well-informed.

• Communication and Cultural change

The experiences of individuals who have gone through both the previous and updated Family Court systems are being captured to highlight positive changes. These stories are being shared publicly and across specialist sectors to promote awareness and transparency.

However, there is still more do, we will continue to work with our family justice colleagues on a range of issues, which include:

• complaints road map in Wales to capture the different avenues to register a complaint about different parts of the system
• increase awareness of the Pathfinder to ensure people know about the changes to the system and what they can expect
• promote the Family Court Transparency pilot

5. People who have Offended: Meeting their needs

5.1 LCJBs will implement 12-month evidence - led action plans to address local offending behaviours

As we reported last year, local offending crime profiles were developed to support Local Criminal Justice Boards (LCJBs) in creating and implementing evidence-based actions plan to address the top three crimes in their region. The plans were taken forward, a few examples of the work done locally to address the key offences are summarised below

• South Wales – implemented cautioning and relationship abuse programme to response to domestic abuse. The Integrated Offender Management Team focus on neighbourhood crime in line with their priority areas.
• North Wales - updated their multi agency response to tackling stalking and implemented an operation to increase their focus on public order and Anti-Social Behaviour
• Dyfed Powys – Further funding has been provided for pilots providing move-on housing for people supported by the integrated offender management programme across Dyfed-Powys – a known solution that works to reduce reoffending
• Gwent Operation Lumley - Focused on targeted areas based on ASB/violence, looking at prolific and repeat offenders within these areas

Local offending crime profiles needs assessments were updated in spring 2025. The LCJBs are using the data to set their local offending priorities and agree how they will work together to collectively tackle the most prolific offending and reduce re-offending in the coming years.

6. Early Intervention and Prevention

This year we concentrated on delivering three key ambitions, progress of each ambition is outlined below.

6.1 Criminal justice organisations are ACE aware, and trauma informed

For this ambition it is important to re-emphasise that this goal is far reaching and complex. Working in this way we are attempting real systemic change across Criminal Justice and devolved and non-devolved services across Wales – which means the work does take time, it is iterative and is being managed in stages to ensure effective results.

Work began this year with the identification of trailblazer organisations and their invitation to join the Trauma-Informed Criminal Justice Systems Community of Practice, hosted by the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Hub Wales, co-leaders of the Trauma-Informed Wales Framework.

HMPPS, HMCTS, and policing partners in Wales (including all four forces and Police and Crime Commissioners) committed to the initial implementation of the Trauma and ACE-Informed Toolkit, developed by ACE Hub Wales. Some organisations hosted events and conferences to support the development of an organisational Statement of Commitment - a key toolkit requirement - and to begin the self-assessment process.

This self-assessment, the first step in implementation, involves leadership engagement and identifying strengths and gaps across six domains: Leadership & Governance, Policies & Procedures, Service Design & Delivery, Physical Environment, Training & Development, and Monitoring & Evaluation.

The trailblazer organisations are at varying stages of completing their self-assessments. In 2025 to 26, they will continue using the Wales Community of Practice Group to share local learning and action plans, fostering collaboration.

• South Wales Police held a force-wide conference to build staff engagement and identified over 60 single points of contact to support the self-assessment process
• Dyfed-Powys Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner explored their roles and functions through a series of workshops with ACE Hub Wales
• HMCTS adopted a targeted approach, using the Trauma-Informed ACE Toolkit to ensure the Domestic Abuse Protection Order pilot in North Wales is trauma-informed

6.2 LCJBs, ensure they have the right services, interventions, and pathways available to intervene earlier and prevent crime and harm.

LCJBs are committed to early intervention and prevention approaches. However, it was acknowledged that this priority covers a broad range of work and initiatives, and a lot is already being done in this space, not least through the local People who have Offended plans and other partnership meetings in Wales, not least Community Safety Partnership. Therefore, this year as part of LCJBs strategic priority setting cycle, LCJBs reflected on their role within the preventative space and how to add value. As a resulted, leaders agreed to enhance join–up between partnership in Wales on the cross-cutting issues to create a cohesive response and encourage collaboration.

6.3 Understand the prevalence of acquired brain injury for women in the criminal justice system in Wales

The final report into how women are affected by acquired brain injury across the criminal justice system was presented to the Board in the December 2024.

It was agreed that the report recommendations would be considered by Local Criminal Justice Boards as they develop their local plans in the spring of 2025. Followed by wider consideration at the Criminal Justice Board for Wales as they set their strategic priorities during June 2025.

7. Anti-Racism Action Plan 

The Board published their Criminal Justice Anti-Racism Action Plan for Wales, in September 2022 which sets out seven overarching commitments for the Board to deliver systemic and cultural change by 2030. 

We must first acknowledge the impact of civil unrest in 2024. These events emphasised the acute need for the Plan and to deliver change at pace for our ethnic minority people in Wales.

However, these terrible incidents also showed us our strengths. Community cohesion was the anti-dote to violence, restoring peace on our streets.

As a result, we have re-focused our approach to community engagement. During summer 2025, a Community Collaboration scheme will commence. Board members will visit community groups and events across Wales to experience first hand the services being delivered and the challenges they face. The learning from these visits will be collated, and a symposium with communities will be held in January 2026 to take forward action.   

You can read in more detail about this initiative and the wider work that was undertaken last year within our second Anti-Racism Annual Report.

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Some of the key headlines from the Anti Racism Annual report have been summarised below.

Increase diversity of membership of the Local Criminal Justice Boards and Criminal Justice Board for Wales

South Wales LCJBs reached out to local criminal justice partners and community groups and secured five new members from diverse backgrounds to sit across their strategic LCJBs as well as their working groups.  This approach has been adopted by other LCJBs in Wales who aim to complete the nomination stage and appoint new members in the coming months. In addition, the Criminal Justice Board for Wales (CJBfW) has appointed two ethnic minority people working within the justice system, to become invited members of the Board. Increasing diversity of voice, talent and expertise will enhance decision making and increase transparency.

Improve data collection and sharing to better monitor and understand disproportionality

Partner agencies have agreed the data measures they will share to better understand and monitor disproportionality and representation across the criminal justice system. This data is included for the first time within this year’s Annual report and provides an important evidence base on which the Board can determine where to focus effort and tangibly measure improvement and success.

In addition, an impact survey has been produced and shared by our communication provider Cowshed to understand and set a baseline of the awareness, knowledge and public confidence levels in relation to the Anti Racism Plan. This information will help focus future communication and engagement activity in the right place.

Develop an anti-racism and cultural competency training framework for CJS in Wales

The Anti-Racism Training Framework and associated Standards were shared and are being embedded across criminal justice organisations. Next year Anti-Racist training for existing operational trainers across the justice system will be implemented. We look forward to updating you in next years report on the outcomes.

Delivering the Anti Racism Communications Strategy

A range of activity has been undertaken this year to promote the plan, which includes:   

• launching a public facing communication campaign with new branding to increase awareness of the plan and its purpose
• communication material, such as posters and toolkits, translated into multiple languages
• web page for the Independent Oversight & Advisory Panel - hosted on the Wales Safer Communities Network website
• held workshops with the Community Engagement Network to develop more proactive messaging to demonstrate commitment to anti-racism from the justice system

8. 2025: Our vision for the Criminal Justice board for Wales

8.1 Board Refresh and reframe

Over the past four years, the political and justice landscape has undergone significant change - including a new UK Government with fresh priorities, newly elected and returning Police and Crime Commissioners, and a new Welsh Government Leader and Cabinet. In response, members agreed to review the Board, with the process beginning in autumn 2024.

As a first step, members reflected on the Board’s role, purpose, remit, and goals. This led to the emergence of three overarching principles:

• supporting LCJBs in delivering their priorities
• strengthening the Board’s strategic influence to drive system change
• focusing on improving outcomes for those who come into contact with the justice system

The second stage involved a development day to embed these principles and evolve the Board’s ways of working. We look forward to sharing the outcomes in due course.

1. Victims and Prisoners act 2024 - key sections: Sec 5 – Code Compliance (live 29/1/25).  Sec 6 – Code awareness and reviewing compliance: criminal justice bodies. Sec 7 – Arrangements for collection of victims’ feedback Sec 8 - Reviewing code compliance: elected local policing bodies - requirements of PCC’s ↩

2. Private Family law - related to - child contact arrangements, parental responsibility, specific issue orders, prohibited steps order,  financial ancillary relief and Domestic abuse injunctions ↩