In Wales, there are approximately 19,700 staff employed in the justice sector as a whole, comprising 3.5% of the UK justice sector workforce.  There are 271 organisations in the sector that are located in the community justice and courts sub-sectors.  Community justice is the only sub-sector to work in the voluntary sector.  Employment is predominately in the public sector, as is the case in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. 

Sector employment distribution across the following sub-sectors:

• 60% policing and law enforcement, compared with 49.2% in the UK
• 16% community justice, compared with 25.3% 
• 15% courts, compared with 10.7%
• 6% custodial care, compared with 13% 
• 2% prosecution, compared with 1.8%

Welsh sector organisations report 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 the required skills (74% of organisations, compared to 57% in the UK).

41% of organisations in the sector reported skills gaps, compared to 30% in the UK sector.  Welsh sector organisations report skills gaps in IT/computing (41%), which is similar to reports for Scotland (47%) and Northern Ireland (46%), but lower than the UK figure of 54%.

Source: Skills Needs Assessment for Wales 2006

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