Mapping Innovation

We work to promote the best of Britain’s innovative justice practice.
Funded by Calderdale Council, Positive Choices was founded in 2017. It is a single point of access to support and advice during pregnancy and early years for care experienced and other vulnerable young people.
Reflect offers support to parents in Swansea who have had a child or multiple children removed from their care through care proceedings.
Inspiration for Change is a parental support service in North Yorkshire to help parents who have had a child or multiple children removed from their care through care proceedings.
Mpower is a service delivered by Ormiston Families that aims to support parents who have had children removed from their care.
NEST (Nurture Empower Safe Together) is a service in Rochdale that takes a different approach to working with parents and their partners who have experienced recurrent care proceedings.
Humberside Police have developed a diversion programme for clients of sex workers, which sits alongside their work to safeguard sex workers in the area.
Parrallel Lives provides a therapeutic environment to families who have experienced Adolescent to Parent Violence/Abuse (APVA) in Swansea and Cardiff.
LEPH (Law Enforcement Public Health) Link is a brief intervention and signposting app, inspired by public health principles.
Devon and Cornwall Police have adapted their existing Deferred Prosecution Scheme for 18-25s and Care Leavers.
CFO Activity Hubs support individuals on licence or a community order to reintegrate into their local communities.
Cleveland Divert aims to divert individuals who have committed a first-time or low-level offence away from the criminal justice system by addressing the underlying causes of the offending behaviour.
Together for Childhood is a long-term project that uses a place-based approach in four communities to prevent child abuse.
Cranstoun’s West Midlands Arrest Referral Service aims to reduce the cycle of crime and substance use by assessing individuals who may be eligible for an alternative to custody.
The Out of Court Diversion Suite aims to divert individuals who commit low-level offences out of the court system by referring them to partner agencies that take a trauma-informed approach to address their offending behaviour. Brighter Tomorrows is a pilot programme that aims to tackle the complex needs of female offenders so that they are less likely to re-offend.
Safe Video Link Evidence Facilities are remote sites in Wales where survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence can deliver their evidence in a safe and secure environment.
The Caring Dads Programme in Leeds is a motivational intervention for fathers to address abusive behaviours and improve relationships with their children.
This specialist court model employs a multi-agency approach to provide a more effective response to processing domestic abuse cases within the criminal justice system.
The DAISY Programme is an attachment based perinatal programme for parents who have had a previous child removed from their care.
Family Safeguarding is a strengths-based, whole-family approach to child protection. It brings together all professionals working with a family in one multi-disciplinary team with the goal of keeping more children safely at home with their families.
Through the Local Criminal Justice Board, a number of out of court disposal pathways designed to encompass a broad demographic have been established, offering support and diversion away from formal court proceedings.
Northumbria police have established an innovative hub which centralises their multifaceted diversion programme, facilitating better decision making and improved outcomes for service users and communities.
This screening, treatment and diversion pathway, was developed to identify the links between gambling related harms and crime, to provide individuals with the opportunity to access the appropriate treatment service provision.
Stockport’s Supporting Families Employment Advisers, provide support with training, education and employment. They also accept referrals from the local Family Drug and Alcohol Court, providing holistic multi-agency support via the wider Supporting Families framework.
This multi-agency, early intervention project, supports the well-being of vulnerable and expectant parents. The project aims to break the links between early disadvantages - social and health inequalities - and poor future outcomes for families by providing wide-ranging support.
The Harm Reduction Unit enables criminal, health and social justice agencies to work together at a local level to manage the risks associated with stalking and domestic abuse and to support victims.
This innovative and intensive programme supports parents, mothers and fathers, who have had children removed from their care in the past and are at risk of recurrent care proceedings.
Project CARA is a risk assessed response to domestic abuse instances, which aims to prevent further abusive behaviour by raising awareness of the impact on victims.
This course offers the chance for people to understand and address hate crime related behaviour, while also offering the opportunity to engage in restorative justice.
This voluntary referral scheme takes a public health and educational approach to the use of drugs. It is used as a method of diversion away from criminal sanctions for those caught in ‘simple possession’ of controlled drugs.
Parenting Apart Programme (PAP), supports separated and divorced parents understand the harm and impact of entrenched conflict by helping parents to see separation through the eyes of their children.
New Chance is an adult diversion scheme for women based in the West Midlands. Participants are referred by police and are given access to a programme of tailored support.
This drug diversion scheme aims to reduce the harm caused by the use of drugs and drug-related offences by diverting people into a community resolution and access to drug treatment and support.
Checkpoint Plus is an adult diversion scheme that diverts women out of the formal criminal justice system into a holistic support package.
Glasgow Alcohol Court was established in 2018 and seeks to reduce the rates of reoffending by supporting individuals who offend with their underlying alcohol issues.
CASSPLUS is a community advice service in Devon and Cornwall which offers practical advice, personal support and help to access services to court users with the aim of reducing reoffending.
C3 targets individuals who are engaged in prolific, non-violent adult residential burglary offending. Participants are given a deferred sentence and an intensive community sentence plan tailored to their individual needs.
The Glasgow Drug Court aims to reduce drug misuse and related offending. If accepted on the programme, participants must engage in drug treatment, regular drug testing, and court reviews to monitor progress.
The Edinburgh APSC is aimed at adult men with a pattern of low-level alcohol-related offending. They receive a community order incorporating addiction treatment, regular judicial reviews and support with additional needs.
The Community Advice service is a free and confidential support service at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court. It offers practical and emotional support for individuals appearing in court and their family members.
Pathfinder is a Deferred Caution and Deferred Charge scheme run by Devon and Cornwall Police. The diversion scheme aims to reduce harm and re-offending through the use of interventions with a strong community focus.
Love Barrow Families helps local families by supporting parents to address their underlying problems with the aim of reducing the numbers of children entering the care system.
FDAC is a therapeutic, problem-solving court model which aims to provide parents with intensive support to help them to address their drug and alcohol issues, and reduce the numbers of children in care.
NBFCIO is a charity in Stockport that works with parents who are involved with children’s services but have underlying issues. By addressing and building emotional resistance through the Trauma-Informed Programme, parents are able to meet their children’s needs.
The EAT programme is a police-led initiative in Wales that seeks to establish a multi-agency approach to tackling offending behaviour by identifying and supporting people who have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences.
The Promoting Positive Relationships Programme is a non-adjudicated preventative group programme that was developed for men at risk of being abusive in intimate relationships.
The Aspire programme was set up to support young men who are marginalised from communities and at risk of becoming involved in criminal or paramilitary activity.
Aberdeen Problem-Solving Approach (PSA) seeks to reduce the use of short custodial sentences by providing disposals to women and young men with complex needs and multiple previous convictions.
HMP Holme House is a reform prison that seeks to rehabilitate prisoners through its Drug Recovery Prison Programme (DRP) which helps prisoners to cope with addiction by addressing their underlying issues.
re:shape took a holistic approach to reducing the risk of sexual harm and keeping communities safe by offering tailored interventions to those at risk of causing sexual harm.
The ECO is a community-based alternative to short sentences. With a focus on rehabilitation and desistence, the ECO involves interventions that address criminogenic needs.
Belfast SMC takes a problem-solving approach to help offenders with underlying substance misuse issues. Eligible offenders have their sentences deferred while they engage in an intensive treatment programme.
Break4Change is a programme designed to help parents/carers and children who are involved in Child-to-Parent Abuse and aims to reduce parents’ sense of isolation and the young person’s feelings of entitlement.
This course aims to reduce the number of repeat alcohol-related crimes, with particular focus on violence. The programme combines interventions that address both violence and alcohol in conjunction.
Checkpoint is a voluntary adult offender diversion scheme which is aimed at low and moderate level offenders and helps them to identify and address the underlying causes of their offending.
The WONDER project aims to divert women from police custody facilities and help them to access tailored support and address their needs through a multi-agency and collaborative approach.
The CSTR scheme aims to reduce reoffending by improving access to mental health and substance misuse treatment in the community through greater use of treatment requirements in community or suspended sentence orders.
These services provide mental health support to people in Dorset who are in contact with the criminal justice system.
These projects in Northamptonshire focus on providing mental health support to eligible women who would otherwise be facing a custodial sentence, and support to people who frequently call the police during crisis moments.
Compulsory sobriety tags were piloted in London, North Yorkshire, Humberside and Lincolnshire to try to tackle a variety of alcohol-related night crimes such as alcohol-fuelled assault. The tags have now been fully rolled out across the whole of England and Wales.
Two projects set up by Northumbria Police, RESPOND and Street Triage Service, aim to improve the way that police and other agencies respond to individuals with mental health issues.
Previously known as the Alcohol Diversion scheme, this course is targeted at first-time offenders or those who commit low-level crimes whilst drunk and offers them the opportunity to pay for and attend a training course on alcohol misuse and risk-taking behaviours.
This screening tool has been developed to allow non-specialist frontline services to be able to identify if someone is affected by problematic gambling and try to engage them into an appropriate treatment option.
This scheme thuses GPS tagging to monitor the movements of individuals on prison and probation licence conditions in order to track the compliance of prolific offenders with their licence conditions.
This diversion scheme was set up to tackle the root causes of offending by offering deferred prosecution and a conditional caution as well as help with issues such as housing, mental health and substance misuse.
The Drug Education Programme (DEP) is a programme that offers individuals caught in possession of drugs a one-time opportunity to attend a course on the topic of addiction within Avon and Somerset.

This map charts innovative projects happening across the UK’s justice systems. You can search and filter the projects to find things that are most interesting to you.

The Centre for Justice Innovation regularly engages with practitioners to find out what’s exciting them in the world of justice. We want to know what projects practitioners are running that they are most proud of and, just as importantly, the ones a few counties away that are inspiring them.

We are expanding the map so that it not only includes innovations in criminal justice, but also in public family law and the child welfare system. We are keen to hear from practitioners from across the UK about new and exciting initiatives that we can add in all areas. If you would like your work to be included, please get in touch

Before you get in touch, please be aware that in order to be included on our map we require that your project:

  • is led by, delivered in partnership or commissioned by a statutory agency;
  • can demonstrate improved outcomes. In criminal justice, this might be for victims or service-users, or in family justice, for parents and children.
  • is innovative! By that we mean, it is trying something new in your locality or for that particular target group.