Criminal justice system statistics quarterly: December 2019
Trends in the use of out of court disposals, defendants prosecuted, offenders convicted, remand and sentencing decisions, and offender histories in England and Wales.
Applies to England and Wales
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The report presents key statistics on activity in the criminal justice system for England and Wales. It provides information up to the year ending December 2019 with accompanying commentary, analysis and presentation of longer term trends.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused MoJ to have to change its data gathering, access and release practices, focusing efforts on priority analysis and statistics. Our statement explains this further and in particular, we are pausing access to the Police National Computer, to minimise non-essential travel by our analysts. In line with guidance from the Office for Statistics Regulation, the decision has been made to delay the publishing of cautions data and the offending histories chapter of this publication. We will keep users updated of any further changes via our published release calendar.
Statistician’s comment
The number of defendants prosecuted has fallen over the last decade – and figures published today show a further slight decrease in 2019, though there were increases in some of the most serious offence groups, in particular violence. The increase in prosecutions and convictions for violence was driven by the legislation that introduced the new offence of ‘assaults on emergency workers’ from November 2018. The publication also shows that custody rates, which have risen over the last decade, fell slightly in the last year, in part because of the change in the offence mix – with a rise in the proportion of all sentences that were for offences which are less likely to result in a custodial sentence.
Although we often consider crimes to correlate with prosecutions, we would not expect prosecutions to move directly in line with the ONS published police recorded crime series, or Crime Survey for England and Wales as only those crimes that result in a charge are likely to flow into courts – in addition criminal court prosecutions cover a much broader range of offences than police recorded crime or the survey.
The period of data covered by this report covers calendar year 2019, so court activity will not have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We will consider how we can best cover this in future publications. In the meantime, HMCTS publish regular management information on court activity here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmcts-management-information.
Pre-release access
The bulletin is produced and handled by the ministry’s analytical professionals and production staff. Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons:
Ministry of Justice
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice; Minister of State for Prisons and Probation; 2 Parliamentary Under Secretary of States; Lords spokesperson; Principal Private Secretary; Deputy Principal Private Secretary; 3 Private Secretaries; 4 Assistant Private Secretaries; Permanent Secretary; Head of Permanent Secretary’s Office; Special Advisor; Head of News; 2 Deputy Heads of News; 2 Press Officers; Director, Family and Criminal Justice Policy; Director of Data and Analytical Services; Chief Statistician; Director General, Policy, Communications and Analysis Group; Deputy Director, Bail, Sentencing and Release Policy; Section Head, Criminal Court Policy; Director, Offender and Youth Justice Policy; Director, Offender and Youth Justice Policy; Statistician, Youth Justice Board; Data Analyst, Youth Justice Board; Head of Courts and Sentencing, Youth Justice Policy; Deputy Director, Crime; Crime Service Manager (Case Progression) - Courts and Tribunals Development; Deputy Director, Legal Operations - Courts & Tribunals Development Directorate; Head of Criminal Law policy; 6 Policy Advisors.
Home Office
Home Secretary; Private Secretary to the Home Secretary; Deputy Principal Private Secretary to the Home Secretary; Permanent Secretary, Home Office; Assistant Private Secretary to the Home Office Permanent Secretary; Minister of State for Policing and the Fire Service; Assistant Private Secretary Minister of State for Policing and the Fire Service; Director of Crime, Home Office; Head of Crime and Policing Statistics, Home Office.
The Judiciary
Lord Chief Justice; Private Secretary to the Lord Chief Justice; Head of Lord Chief Justice’s Criminal Justice Team; Lead for Criminal Justice for the Senior Judiciary.
Other
Principal Analyst (Justice), Cabinet Office
Updates to this page
Last updated 26 November 2020 + show all updates
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An issue has been identified with the recording of custodial sentence lengths for two cases of stalking offences in 2019. These records will be updated in the data tools when the data is next revised (to be published in May 2021). Please see the "Known issues" tab in the Outcomes by Offence data tool for more information.
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Offending histories commentary and data for year ending December 2019 was made available on 12/11/2020. This part of the release was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused MoJ to have to change its data gathering, access and release practices, focusing efforts on priority analysis and statistics. Our statement explains this further and in particular, we have limited access to the Police National Computer, to minimise non-essential travel by our analysts.
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Figures in Table A1.2 have been revised following the identification of a data transposition for certain Police Force Areas.
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The COVID-19 pandemic guidance on travel and social distancing has restricted access to some IT systems. The release of the detailed data tools for 2019 were delayed to allow for validation and quality assurance processes, and published on 28th May. Note that the impact of these quality assurance processes was minor at an aggregate level and did not affect the contents of the published bulletin.
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First published.