Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: March 2021
Overview of trends in out of court disposals, prosecutions, convictions, 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 March 2021 with accompanying commentary, analysis and presentation of longer-term trends.
We continue to review our data gathering, access and release practices during the pandemic, focusing efforts on priority analysis and statistics. Our statement explains this further. Of particular note, we have now resumed access to the Police National Computer following the pause to minimise non-essential travel by our analysts. A backdated series for offender histories (quarterly data from year ending Q1 to year ending Q4 2020) has been provided alongside this bulletin. However, work is being resumed on a priority basis in line with guidance from the Office for Statistics Regulation, we expect cautions data to be reinstated in subsequent releases. We will keep users updated of any further changes via our published release calendar.
Statistician’s comment:
The figures published today highlight a full year’s impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on criminal court prosecutions and outcomes. Latest short-term trends are mostly reflective of the impact of the pandemic on court processes and prioritisation rather than a continuation of the longer-term series.
The monthly data shows that following the sharp falls in overall prosecutions and convictions immediately following the March 2020 ‘lockdown’, these have since recovered, although not quite to pre-pandemic levels. Indictable offences have recovered faster than summary offences, reflecting the prioritisation of cases that were likely to result in a custodial sentence, this has also led to an increase in the proportion of defendants remanded in custody.
The custody rate increased in the latest year due to a higher proportion of indictable offences dealt with in court since April 2020, however, most offence groups have seen a decrease in the average custodial sentence length. The types of cases prioritised during the pandemic and pleas associated with these are likely to have contributed to the short-term fluctuations in custody rates and average sentence lengths.
Change to note
Common Platform and reform to criminal court data
The ‘Common Platform’ is a new digital case management system for the magistrates’ and Crown Courts. The system seeks to streamline data collection, data accessibility and improve the way criminal cases are processed across the Criminal Justice System. It will eventually replace the existing ‘legacy’ criminal court systems Libra (magistrates’) and XHIBIT (Crown), with a single, streamlined system.
Early adopter courts across England and Wales have tested the system prior to roll-out to all criminal courts. Derbyshire magistrates’ and Crown Court began this process in September 2020 and the roll-out has continued across England and Wales.
Court proceedings data recorded on the Common Platform are not included in this publication. It is estimated that in the period covered by this publication, a maximum of 1,700 cases from these courts are missing as a result. This accounts for less than 1% of published court proceedings data for this period. This proportion is expected to rise for future quarterly publications as the roll-out continues.
It is not yet known how significant the impact will be, but as a minimum we expect some series to be disrupted, and we may also decide to withhold or delay some publications of quarterly data. We are committed to ensuring that published statistics remain accurate, robust and coherent for users during the operational transition of data systems at the criminal courts.
Updates to this page
Last updated 3 September 2021 + show all updates
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An error in Table_Q6c of the “FTE2020Q2_revised.ods” within the "Offending Histories backdated series Q1 to Q4 2020" zip file has been identified and updated.
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First published.