Natural Justice: A Joint Thematic Inspection of the Arrangements in Scotland for Preventing, Investigating and Prosecuting Wildlife Crime

Our methodology included the following elements:

Consultation - the high level of media attention that surrounded the parliamentary debate on the 4th October 2007, including the announcement of this inspection, triggered a series of direct contacts from interested parties. We also sent letters to a number of key organisations inviting further comments and set up links on the HMICS and IPS websites so that others, should they wish to, could contact us directly.

Interviews - to supplement written submissions we organised a programme of interviews. These allowed us to examine the perspectives of key organisations further and in more detail.

Questionnaires - questionnaires were used to elicit broad initial responses from police forces and COPFS.

Fieldwork - all police forces and COPFS areas were visited. Further interviews and focus groups were carried out to establish how local action and activities compared with those being undertaken at a national level.

Observations - we also attended various partnership meetings and seminars in order to establish how these contributed to combating wildlife crime.

Case Review - a list of all wildlife crime cases reported to COPFS from the beginning of 2006 until November 2007 was obtained. All case files for those cases that were concluded were sought from COPFS. The vast majority of these were provided and all aspects of the prosecution were examined.