Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: June 2023
Overview of 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 June 2023 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.
Statistician’s comment:
Prosecutions and convictions have increased in the year ending June 2023, however, they both remained below levels seen in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic. Prosecutions and convictions have continued to increase for summary offences, whereas indictable offences have increased in the latest year following a decrease in the year ending June 2022. Prosecutions for sexual offences have continued to show an upward trend over the past five years (mainly due to rape and sexual assault) and those for theft offences have risen (mainly due to theft from shops) for the first time in the 10-year time series.
The custody rate for indictable offences has remained stable at 33% in the latest year. While average custodial sentence length (ACSL) has generally risen over the last 10 years (other than a decrease in 2020), it has fallen in the latest year for both indictable and all offences.
Last updated 19 March 2024 + show all updates
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Data behind interactive tools: Outcomes by Offence - sentencing (csv) has been updated to amend slight differences compared to the Outcomes by Offence data tool.
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First published.