Criminal court statistics quarterly: July to September 2024
Type and volume of cases received and processed through the criminal court system of England and Wales, including statistics on case timeliness.
Applies to England and Wales
Documents
Details
This is the quarterly Q3 2024 criminal courts statistics publication.
The statistics here focus on key trends in case volume and progression through the criminal court system in England and Wales. This also includes:
- Experimental statistics on ‘the use of language interpreter and translation services in courts and tribunals;
Additional data tools and CSVs have also been provided.
Statisticians comment
This report covers the period to the end of September 2024.
This is the first release of data since March 2024 and comes as a result of necessary changes made to systems used for processing court data which have enabled robust and accurate data to be produced. In addition, an external assurance review of the process and methods concluded that ”MoJ could have significant confidence in the Crown Court caseload statistics” which are published here.
We have taken the opportunity since the last publication to improve our Crown Court caseload methodology and align HMCTS and MoJ methodologies via the “One Crown” project. The published data concerning the Crown Court caseload, and the age open cases comes from “One Crown”, while we will move all other measures across iteratively as we review methods and refine our approach to ensure we release robust, trustworthy and high value data. The overall impact on the open caseload in these statistics is relatively small, and the technical guide explains that in more detail.
The demand on the criminal courts continues to increase with receipt volumes increasing at both the magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court, with the latest receipt volumes at the Crown Court representing a series peak since 2016.
Disposals volumes remained below receipts at both courts and as such the open caseload has continued to increase. At the Crown Court the open caseload continued to report a series peak, reaching 73,105 cases at the end of September 2024.
Both trial ineffective rates and average timeliness estimates remain historically high – these measures have tended to fall back from series peaks but have stabilised at levels well above those seen prior to 2020.
Criminal court statistics quarterly, October to December 2024
The next criminal court statistics publication is scheduled for release on 27th March 2025.
Pre-release
In addition to Ministry of Justice (MOJ) professional and production staff, pre-release access to the quarterly statistics of up to 24 hours is granted to the following post holders:
Ministry of Justice
Private Offices; Permanent Secretary; Director General, Policy; Director General, Chief Operating Officer Group; Direct, Courts and Family Justice; Director Analysis; Director, Chief Data Officer; Deputy Director, Criminal Justice Strategy and Criminal Courts Policy; Criminal Court Policy and Procedure; Criminal Court Insights; Deputy Director, Courts and Tribunals Joint Unit; Courts and Tribunal Joint Unit; Deputy Director, RASSO and Domestic Abuse Policy; Rape Review; Courts Victim Experience and Attrition; Deputy Head of News; 3 Press Officers.
His Majesty’s Court and Tribunals Service
Chief Executive, HMCTS; Chief Finance Officer, HMCTS; Director of Operations, HMCTS; Director, Strategy Analysis and Planning; Director, Communications; Head of External Communications, HMCTS; Deputy Director of Analysis and Performance (x2); Crime reporting and analysis; Deputy Director, Crime Live Service Owner; Crime Service Manager (x2); Deputy Director, Intelligent Client Function and Contract Services Division; Operational Contract Manager; Contract Support Officer.
Judicial Office
Chief Executive; Head of Digital and Data; Data Analyst (x2)
No.10
Private Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs; Justice and Home Affairs Policy Unit; Communications; Analysts