Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: June 2021
Overview of 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 June 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. We have 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 2021 and Q2 2021) has been provided alongside this bulletin. We expect cautions data to be reinstated in our Q4 release in May 2022. We will keep users updated of any further changes via our published release calendar.
Statistician’s comment:
The figures published today continue to reflect the impact of the pandemic on court processes and prioritisation, in particular the reduced court activity during periods of restrictions and subsequent recovery.
Prosecutions for indictable offences have recovered to levels similar to before the pandemic, while monthly data shows summary offence prosecutions continue to recover.
The types of cases prioritised during the pandemic and pleas associated with these are likely to continue to affect the short-term fluctuations in custody rates and average sentence lengths. The latest annual data in the current period covers July 2020 to June 2021, and it shows a reduction in the proportion of those sentenced receiving custody (custody rate) – this is likely to at least in part be due to prioritisation of prosecutions most likely to result in custody in the early stages of the pandemic, and recently, more of the less serious cases showing in the data. In contrast, average custodial sentence lengths continue to increase, indicating that those cases resulting in custody remain amongst the most serious.
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 7,700 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.