Criminal court statistics quarterly: April to June 2020
Type and volume of cases received and processed through the criminal court system of England and Wales, including statistics on case timeliness.
Documents
Details
This is the quarterly Q2 2020 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:
- Management information concerning the enforcement of financial penalties in England and Wales;
- Experimental statistics on ‘the use of language interpreter and translation services in courts and tribunals;
- Experimental statistics on Failure to Appear Warrants at magistrates’ courts in England and Wales.
The Crown Court information release is published as management information on the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website. This has been affected by the changes to the administrative systems at Crown Court and as such has not been updated for Q2 2020.
Additional data tools and CSVs have also been provided.
Statisticians comment
“This report covers data to the end of June 2020, although courts continued to carry out urgent business and make more use of remote audio and video technology, the impact of COVID-19 response remains clear to see. Workload and trial efficiency estimates at both the magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court show that receipts and disposals have fallen, while both outstanding cases and trial vacations increased sharply.
It is expected that outstanding case and trial vacation volumes will maintain these higher levels while the limited operation of the criminal courts remains in place and the gradual reintroduction of jury trials at the Crown Court from 18th May 2020 continues. Published management information from Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) show that outstanding case volumes at both magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court remain above pre-COVID baselines between the end of June 2020 and the week ending 23rd August 2020.
The impact can be seen for other published measures which are calculated at the point that a case completes in the courts, such as the increase in average waiting time, as well as associated court functions such as financial enforcement collection and language service provision.
The significantly reduced volumes of cases being processed at the criminal courts as a result of the operational restrictions following the COVID-19 response mean that the data is unlikely to be representative of trends in previous periods.”
Criminal court statistics (quarterly), July to September 2020
The next criminal court statistics publication is scheduled for release in December 2020.
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 postholders:
Ministry of Justice
Permanent Secretary; Director General, Policy, Communications and Analysis; Director, Criminal Justice Policy; Deputy Director, Criminal Courts Policy; Criminal Court Reform Lead; Jurisdictional and Operational Support Manager; Head of Data and Analytical Services; Chief Statistician; 5 Press Officers.
Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunals Service:
Chief Executive, HMCTS; Deputy Chief Executive, HMCTS; Deputy Director of Legal Services, Court Users and Summary Justice Reform; Head of Operational Performance; Head of Criminal Enforcement team, HMCTS; Head of data and management information, HMCTS; Head of Management Information Systems; Head of Communications; Head of News; Jurisdictional Operation manager and Head of Contracted Services and Performance for HMCTS Operations Directorate
Home Office
1 Senior Policy Official and 1 Statistician.