Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: December 2022
Trends in the use of out of court disposals, defendants prosecuted, offenders convicted, remand and sentencing decisions in England and Wales.
Applies to England and Wales
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This report presents key statistics on activity in the criminal justice system for England and Wales. It provides information up to the year ending September 2022 with accompanying commentary, analysis and presentation of longer-term trends.
Between May 2023 and January 2024, work was undertaken to develop and deliver significant improvements to the criminal court sentencing data. For transparency, we have updated the annual interactive data tools published in CJSQ 2022 Q4 (May 2023 release) to ensure users have access to the revised figures for breakdowns by offence characteristics and offender demographics – these replace previous versions of the tools, which have been moved to a separate folder on the CJSQ 2022 Q4 landing page for archiving, but we urge users to use the new versions. While trends across the series remain reliable, users may find differences in figures between 2016 and 2017 - particularly at a detailed offence level or for specific sentencing outcomes. Users should consult the technical appendix for explanations of notable impacts due to the change in data processing methods between 2016 and 2017.
As a result, the Q4 2022 CJSQ publication has been updated to include revised annual tools, overview tables, technical guide and a new technical appendix. The commentary (including Statistician’s comment) and infographic are still based on the old data system and should not be used for exact figures.
Statistician’s comment:
The figures published today, for 2022, demonstrate the continued recovery of the Criminal Justice System (CJS) since the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and covers the period of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) action from April to October 2022, which may have impacted convictions at the Crown Court during the period. Prosecutions and convictions have increased in the latest year, however, they both remained below levels in 2019. The increase in the latest year was driven by summary offences, while prosecutions for indictable offences decreased. Prosecutions for theft increased for the first time since 2012 and sexual offences increased for the fourth consecutive year since 2018. Convictions for violence against the person decreased for the first time since 2020. The custody rate for indictable offences has risen to levels seen in 2020 at 34% in the latest year, after a fall in 2021. In the latest year, the average custodial sentence length (ACSL) for indictable offences has fallen slightly, although it has risen for most of the last 10 years.
Last updated 18 January 2024 + show all updates
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Between May 2023 and January 2024, work was undertaken to develop and deliver significant improvements to the criminal court sentencing data. For transparency, we have updated the annual interactive data tools published in CJSQ 2022 Q4 (May 2023 release) to ensure users have access to the revised figures for breakdowns by offence characteristics and offender demographics – these replace previous versions of the tools, which have been moved to a separate folder on the CJSQ 2022 Q4 landing page for archiving, but we urge users to use the new versions. While trends across the series remain reliable, users may find differences in figures between 2016 and 2017 - particularly at a detailed offence level or for specific sentencing outcomes. Users should consult the technical appendix for explanations of notable impacts due to the change in data processing methods between 2016 and 2017. As a result, the Q4 2022 CJSQ publication has been updated to include revised annual tools, overview tables, technical guide and a new technical appendix. The commentary and infographic are still based on the old data system and should not be used for exact figures.
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First published.