Crime has a devastating impact on victims.

The immediate victims of the crime are left with sometimes years or, perhaps, even a lifetime of trauma.

There are hidden victims of crime - the families of offenders who are left behind to rebuild their lives with a loved one inside prison.

To limit this damage criminal justice experts state that the cycle of reoffending must be stopped.

We asked three third sector organisations how to bring that about and how the Scottish Government can help the families of those in Scotland's prison cells.

Mark Ballard, head of policy.

Having a family member in prison can be devastating; partners are often left to pick up the pieces both financially and emotionally and children can be hit particularly hard.

They are up to three times more likely to develop mental health issues when compared with their peers. Our services tell us that many families they work with are left isolated when a partner is sent to prison, often struggling to make ends meet and too afraid to seek support due to stigma.

There is currently a lack of dedicated support for children and families affected by imprisonment. The next Scottish Government should ensure that all Local Authorities commit to funding these dedicated support services

Prison Visitors Centres have a huge role to play in providing non-stigmatising support and facilitating a positive link between prisons and local communities. The current Scottish Government has invested £1.5 million to support the creation and continuation of Prison Visitors Centres. We would like to see the next Scottish Government continue with this, as part of plans to establish a Prison Visitors Centre in every prison in Scotland.

Lastly, the role of schools is crucial, but there is often a lack of understanding of the impact. Staff should be able to better support children with a parent in prison, whether this be through additional support for learning entitlements or better training on the impact of imprisonment, bereavement, trauma and loss.

Children with a parent in prison are too often the hidden victims of crime. Taking these steps will help ensure that they and their families get the support they need.

Prof.Nancy Loucks OBE, chief executive.

Families Outside is a national Scottish charity that works solely on behalf of children and families affected by imprisonment.

Perhaps surprisingly then, we feel the main responsibility for the prevention of offending and improvement of the lives of people with a family member in prison lies outside the justice system. The best way to support families affected by imprisonment is to prevent people going to prison in the first place. Imprisonment is an incredible disruption to families and places massive burdens on them.

The experience of the criminal justice process itself is part of this, but the wider impacts extend to housing, finance, physical and mental health, victimisation and stigma, travel and transport, and the entire family's future prospects - but especially those of children. These are the costs families face, without having committed an offence at all.

The toll on people placed in prison, their families, and on society as a whole is unquestionable, yet we still tend to rely on the justice system for the answer.

Appropriate responses to (and prevention of) offending, often lie in health and mental health, housing, and prevention of abuse rather than in the justice system. People who need these supports often either cannot access them or fail to meet the thresholds required for access.

Alternatively they do not seek the support they need, or fail to engage with such support, possibly through fear of institutional interference in their lives. This is not a justice issue: by the time families have reached the justice system, we have already failed.

David McAdam, community reintegration coordinator

The direction of travel of criminal justice & the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) is encouraging at present.

Visionary leadership within the SPS is focussed on transforming the lives of those within their care - now we need the systemic changes to realise that vision. Small changes can make huge differences in this regard.

Recognising the individual personhood of everyone in prison and developing person centred programmes of support. Radical alternatives to custody can reduce the overall prison population so that focussed work can take place with those in custody.

Prison is not an appropriate place to be helping an individual address their addiction issues, nor is it suitable for those with diagnosed mental health issues. Fresh thinking here is vital.

Significant help must be put into the final three months of a prison sentence so that when a penal sentence is finished the punishment is finished. It remains the case that 33% of people leave prison without any certainty about where they will sleep that night. In our case, we often have a supportive community and volunteer mentor arranged to offer support, but on the day of release an individual may be housed 15 miles away from that support, or not housed at all.

A guaranteed house, a registration with a GP, and an open bank account would take away so much of the stress people face in the first 48 hours after leaving prison.

Partnership work is vital. People in prison need a supportive network of friends and family who can nurture their dreams into reality.

Third sector organisations can facilitate that in a much more flexible way - supporting families to keep in touch, bringing mentors into individual lives, creating opportunities for employment through social enterprise activities within and beyond the prison.

Alan Staff, chief executive.

Over the last couple of years the Scottish Government has been working hard to develop the redesign of justice services and have laid out their intentions in the recently passed Community Justice Act.

Throughout this time Apex Scotland, and many others in the third sector, have been actively involved, particularly through the criminal justice voluntary sector forum, in ensuring that both the voices of the sector and those who are affected by justice services are not only heard but realistically help to shape the strategy for the future.

This is an exciting time as we see a shift in emphasis from custodial care and reactive responses towards pro-active and more evidence based approaches which are more commonly the remit of the sector. In the next term we would expect to see the establishment of the new Community Justice Scotland body and the development of the new National Strategy which we have worked to ensure explicitly involves the third sector at all strategic levels.

Specifically we are hoping to see delivery on the aspiration to focus more on early intervention and preventive services, greater acknowledgement of the social problems which breed offending including educational low achievement, and greater integration of the academic sector in assessing what works.

Perhaps the most significant development would be the establishment of genuine partnerships between the sectors to get the best out of existing resources.

To do this we need courageous leadership at political and organisational level, and a fresh public conversation on justice, fairness and what a modern Scotland wants from its justice services.