Scotland’s Justice System:
Ritual or Reality?

Picture a courtroom in Scotland today. Jurors sit in silence, asked to decide on charges that could ruin a person’s life. They hear fragments of communication but never the full threads. They are told about “patterns of behaviour,” often without the surrounding context. And when the time comes to decide, their only choices are guilty or not guilty,  no space for genuine doubt.

That is not what justice was meant to look like.

• The presumption of innocence is the foundation of a fair trial.
• Recent reforms in Scotland, the tightening practice around sections 274 and 275 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 and the abolition of the Not Proven verdict as part of the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, together with the established use of the Moorov doctrine, restrict the ability of the accused to present context and defend themselves fully.
• When crucial evidence is withheld, and when political priorities steer legal change, the result risks becoming performance rather than the pursuit of truth.

If these premises are correct, Scotland’s justice system is shifting from reality towards theatre.

Over recent years, reforms have been presented as necessary to protect victims. Their cumulative effect, however, has narrowed the defence’s capacity to supply context. Material that might demonstrate innocence, text messages, emails, prior communications, can be excluded under the 274/275 regime, as documented by HM Inspectorate of Prosecution’s review of practice (government inspection). Jurors are asked to assess credibility in a vacuum.

Political actors have driven these changes. Justice Secretary Angela Constance led the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, which includes abolishing Not Proven and wider reform of sexual-offence procedure (Guardian coverage). Alongside her, Dorothy Bain KC, the Lord Advocate, has set out prosecution priorities and a reform agenda in her 2022 address (COPFS speech PDF).

Campaigning organisations amplify this trajectory, and many are publicly funded. Victim Support Scotland recorded £500,000 from the Scottish Government in 2023–24 to develop specialist remote evidence suites in Edinburgh (VSS Annual Report 2023–24, p.20 PDF) and £440,000 from the Victim Surcharge Fund in 2022–23 for the national Emergency Assistance Fund (Scottish Government VSF report and Annex A). Rape Crisis Scotland, which relies heavily on government grants, led the public End Not Proven campaign, welcomed by ministers and covered by the legal press and national media (Rape Crisis; Guardian).

None of this is hidden. It is stated in annual reports and parliamentary records. The effect is a feedback loop: government funds organisations whose campaigns support reforms, and those reforms reinforce government priorities.

The standard reply is that these changes are justified: victims must be protected, retraumatisation minimised, and serious offences prosecuted effectively. Few dispute the importance of that aim.

But the argument fails if protection for one group is purchased by silencing another. A system that shields some voices while muting the defence is not balanced; it is biased. Bias in law is not justice; it is prejudice wrapped in the language of reform.

The narrowing of admissible context has been paired with tighter control over scrutiny. On 16 September 2025, during final stages, ministers advanced amendments on the Victims and Witnesses Commissioner’s powers that included limits on information-gathering from justice agencies (Official Report extract). A system that conceals context from juries and constrains oversight cannot earn public trust.

Justice is imperfect everywhere. But when reforms steadily weaken the accused’s ability to defend themselves while amplifying political theatre, trials drift into ritual, predictable in tone, hollow in substance.

If evidence that could prove innocence is withheld, if political theatre displaces neutral adjudication, and if the presumption of innocence is reduced to ceremony, then we must ask: what, in Scotland today, remains of justice beyond its appearance?