New criminal offences statistics in England and Wales: May 2014
Annual update of statistics on counting new criminal offences created by government departments in England and Wales from June 2009 to May 2014.
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The Ministry of Justice committed in its 2011-2015 business plan to establish a gateway to scrutinise all legislation containing criminal offences. It also committed to publish annual figures as part of the planned information strategy.
This publication provides users with information concerning the activity of government departments in creating new criminal offences in England and Wales during the period 1 June 2010 to 31 May 2014, with comparison made to figures from the previous 12 months where available.
Main findings
- In the 12 months ending May 2014, new criminal offences were contained in 42 pieces of legislation; this compares to 60 pieces of legislation in the 12 months to May 2013.
- From the 42 pieces of legislation, 280 new criminal offences were created. This represents a 14.4% decrease in the number of new offences created compared with the preceding 12 months (327).
- Of all the offences created in the latest period 183 (65.4%) were brand new offences, 62 (22.1%) were repealed and identically remade offences and 35 (12.5%) were offences repealed and remade with amendments.
- In the 12 months ending May 2014, 11 separate pieces of legislation contained repealed or revoked sections.
- The repealed or revoked legislation contained 213 offences. In the 12 months ending May 2013 there were 15 pieces of legislation repealed which contained 140 offences.
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 in the Ministry of Justice:
Secretary of State for Justice; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Criminal Justice; Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice Strategy; Permanent Secretary; special advisers; Director General, Corporate Performance Group; Director General, Criminal Justice Group; Director for Research & Analysis; Director for Criminal Law, Sentencing and Youth Policy; Director for Criminal Law and Legal Policy; Head of News; senior press officer.