Accredited official statistics

Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: September 2022

Overview of trends in the use of out of court disposals, defendants prosecuted, offenders convicted, remand and sentencing decisions in England and Wales.

Applies to England and Wales

Documents

Criminal Justice Statistics quarterly: September 2022 (PDF)

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email web.comments@justice.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Overview Tables: September 2022

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email web.comments@justice.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Technical Guide to Criminal Justice Statistics

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email web.comments@justice.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

User Guide to Criminal Justice Statistics

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email web.comments@justice.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Pre-release access list: September 2022

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email web.comments@justice.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Details

This report presents key statistics on activity in the criminal justice system for England and Wales. It provides information up to the year ending September 2022 with accompanying commentary, analysis and presentation of longer-term trends.

Statistician’s comment:

The figures published today, for year ending September 2022, demonstrate the continued recovery of the Criminal Justice System (CJS) since the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the possible impact of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) action from April, which concluded in the autumn.

Prosecutions and convictions have increased in the latest year, however, they both remained below pre-pandemic levels. The increase in the latest year was driven by summary offences, while prosecutions for indictable offences decreased. For indictable offences, the only offence group to show an increase in prosecutions and convictions was sexual offences.

The custody rate for indictable offences has risen to levels seen pre-pandemic at 32% in the latest year, after a fall in the year ending September 2021. The average custodial sentence length (ACSL) for indictable offences has continued to rise from 24.0 months in the year ending September 2021 to 24.8 months in the latest year.

Updates to this page

Published 16 February 2023

Sign up for emails or print this page