Criminal court statistics quarterly: January to March 2019
Type and volume of cases received and processed through the criminal court system of England and Wales, including statistics on case timeliness. Also includes statistics on the use of language interpreter and translation services in courts and tribunals, England and Wales.
Applies to England and Wales
Documents
Details
This is the quarterly Q1 2019 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:
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Management information concerning the enforcement of financial penalties in England and Wales;
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Experimental statistics on ‘the use of language interpreter and translation services in courts and tribunals’.
This release also contains additional information, including: representation status, grounds for sending, key reasons for cracked and ineffective trials and juror summons statistics.
Additional data tools and CSVs have also been provided.
The Crown Court information release is published as management information on the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website
Key Findings
- At the magistrates’ court, the volume of cases received and disposed both rose between Q4 2018 and Q1 2019 (up 4% and 5% respectively), however this is likely due to be a seasonal uplift often seen in the first quarter. Overall, the volume of cases received and disposed at the magistrates’ court has been declining since 2016, whilst the volume of outstanding cases has been broadly stable.
- At the Crown Court, the overall volume of cases received increased by 5% between Q4 2018 and Q1 2019, which can be most prominently seen in increases in receipts of possession of weapons (up 27%) and drug offences (up 12%) cases. The overall volume of cases disposed remained stable and below that of receipts, as such the volume of outstanding cases continue a declining trend seen since 2015.
- Despite overall falling trends since Q1 2017, the average (mean) amount of days between offence and completion of a case at the Crown Court has risen slightly in the most recent quarter (up 9 days to 535 days). This increase was mostly driven by the time spent prior to reaching the magistrates’ courts (‘pre-court’), which accounted for 357 (67%) of the average amount of days between offence and completion in Q1 2019.
- Total financial impositions increased by 8% to £155m in Q1 2019, mostly due to a £7.5m (8%) increase in fines. The value of total outstanding financial impositions continued to rise, reaching £1.14 billion in Q1 2019.
- In Q1 2019, a 7% increase in completed language service requests saw volumes reach the highest level since the new contact was introduced in 2016. The success rate also increased by one percentage point to 97%.
Criminal court statistics (quarterly), April to June 2019
The next criminal court statistics publication is scheduled for release in September 2019.
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
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice; Minister of State for Justice; Ministry of Justice spokesperson in the Lords; Lord Chief 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; Attorney General’s Office; 6 Press Officers and 8 Private Secretaries.
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
Published 27 June 2019
Updates to this page
Published 27 June 2019Last updated 26 September 2019 + show all updates
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As advised in the bulletin and guide published on 27 June 2019, due to concerns about data quality, table J3 has been withdrawn from this publication.
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Please note that an inconsistency in juror figures was identified and has been corrected following the receipt of updated data from HMCTS. This affects one figure in Table J1, where the number of jurors excused for other reasons in 2018 has been revised from 76,621 to 106,911. All other figures are unchanged.
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First published.