In Scotland, there are approximately 37,100 staff employed in the justice sector as a whole, comprising 6.6% of the UK justice sector workforce.  There are 452 organisations in the sector.  Employment is predominately in the public sector, as is the case in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  Community justice is the only sub-sector to work in the voluntary sector with just over 100,000 staff.

Sector employment distribution across the following sub-sectors:

• 65% policing and law enforcement, compared with 49.2% in the UK
• 14.3% custodial care, compared with 13% 
• 12.9% community justice, compared with 25.3%
• 4.9% prosecution, compared with 1.8%
• 3% courts, compared with 10.7%

Scottish organisations are less likely to experience recruitment difficulties across all levels of occupations with the exception of manual and ancillary workers.  Recruitment difficulties are reported to be the result of a low number of applicants with relevant work experience (59%).

37% of organisations in the sector reported skills gaps, compared to 30% in the UK sector.  Skills gaps in IT/computing were reported most in Scotland (47%), which is similar to reports for Wales (41%) and Northern Ireland (46%).  Scottish sector organisations were most likely to believe that the skills gaps are growing (67%), compared to 38% of sector organisations in the UK.

Source: Skills Needs Assessment for Scotland 2006

For a factsheet on the justice sector in Scotland go to the Skills for Justice website.