Details

This report presents key statistics on activity in the criminal justice system for England and Wales. It provides information up to the year ending December 2024 with accompanying commentary, analysis and presentation of longer-term trends.

Statistician’s comment

Continuing the recent trend, 2024 saw increases in the volumes of prosecutions and convictions at criminal courts. Prosecutions for theft presented the largest annual increase, followed by violence against the person and drugs offences. Prosecutions for sexual offences rose for the 6th consecutive year and represents a series high.

In the case of the more serious indictable offences, conviction levels are now at their highest since 2017.

The proportion of defendants dealt with for serious indictable offences who were remanded in custody continued to rise, with levels reaching a series peak in the magistrates’ courts.

Average custodial sentence length fell slightly for both indictable offences and all offences, driven in part by an increased proportion of conviction and custodial sentences being for theft offences which attract shorter sentence lengths but also a reduction in average sentences for some offence groups.

Crown Court data development (“One Crown”)

Recently MoJ and HMCTS worked together on the https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67e298ced4a1b0665b8ee1fe/Consultation_on_One_Crown_changes_to_the_Crown_Court_data_processing_in_CCSQ.docx" class="govuk-link">“One Crown” data project to create a single, consistent and flexible dataset that meets both MoJ and HMCTS needs. This is intended to bring greater transparency, clarity and coherence for all users of the Criminal Court Statistics series.

In the coming months we plan to move the Criminal Justice System statistics to the One Crown data model. Historically the two MoJ published series have been produced independently from distinct pipelines which is inefficient and risks undermining the transparency between the two publications. Moving to the same data model will improve the coherence and provide a clearer read across for users of the two CJS statistical series and our understanding of the underlying administrative systems.

Moving to the One Crown model will require a large amount of work in a short period of time. For this reason, we will be cancelling the planned publication of the CJS statistics to Q1 2025 in August 2025. We expect to bring forward the publication of CJS statistics by a month and publish Q2 2025 in October 2025 rather than November 2025. This change will be made to all subsequent releases and will ensure more timely release of CJS data.

This is the quarterly Q4 2024 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:

• Experimental statistics on ‘the use of language interpreter and translation services in courts and tribunals;

Additional data tools and CSVs have also been provided.

Statisticians comment

This report covers the period to the end of December 2024.

This is the second release of data following the implementation of the “One Crown” project which has aligned definitions, methodologies and data processing for all published Crown Court measures across MOJ and HMCTS. Following an external quality review in December, the data have undergone a review by the Office for Statistics regulation which agreed with the earlier review to find significant confidence in the data and retain the Accredited Official Statistics status of this release.

As part of the “One Crown” implementation, we have continued to improve our Crown Court methodology and align HMCTS and MoJ processes. We have reviewed and improved all remaining headline Crown Court measures. This approach ensures that we continue to release robust, trustworthy and high value data. The impact of change is small, and trends are largely unchanged. Further detail concerning each change and the impacts on published series are available in the consultation document.

The demand on the criminal courts continues to grow with receipt volumes increasing at both the magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court. Receipts in the last year are higher than they have been across the series and are 13% higher than the previous year.

Disposals volumes have increased but remain below receipts at both magistrates and Crown courts resulting in the open caseload continuing to grow. At the Crown Court the open caseload continued to report a series peak, reaching 74,651 cases at the end of December 2024.

In the latest period trial effectiveness has remained stable and timeliness has fallen back from series peaks – both remain above pre-COVID levels seen in 2019.

Criminal court statistics quarterly, January to March 2025

The next criminal court statistics publication is scheduled for release on 27th June 2025.

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 post holders:

Ministry of Justice

Private Offices; Permanent Secretary; Director General, Policy; Director General, Chief Operating Officer Group; Direct, Courts and Family Justice; Director Analysis; Director, Chief Data Officer; Deputy Director, Criminal Justice Strategy and Criminal Courts Policy; Criminal Court Policy and Procedure; Criminal Court Insights; Deputy Director, Courts and Tribunals Joint Unit; Courts and Tribunal Joint Unit; Deputy Director, RASSO and Domestic Abuse Policy; Rape Review; Courts Victim Experience and Attrition; Deputy Head of News; 3 Press Officers.

Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunals Service

Chief Executive, HMCTS; Chief Finance Officer, HMCTS; Director of Operations, HMCTS; Director, Strategy Analysis and Planning; Director, Communications; Head of External Communications, HMCTS; Deputy Director of Analysis and Performance (x2); Crime reporting and analysis; Deputy Director, Crime Live Service Owner; Crime Service Manager (x2); Deputy Director, Intelligent Client Function and Contract Services Division; Operational Contract Manager; Contract Support Officer.

Judicial Office

Chief Executive; Head of Digital and Data; Data Analyst (x2)

No.10

Private Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs; Justice and Home Affairs Policy Unit; Communications; Analysts

These historic data tables contain figures up to September 2024 for:

1. Police recorded crime
2. Crime outcomes
3. Transferred/cancelled records (formerly ‘no-crimes’)
4. Knife crime
5. Firearms
6. Hate crime
7. Fraud crime
8. Rape incidents crime

There are counting rules for recorded crime to help to ensure that crimes are recorded consistently and accurately.

These tables are designed to have many uses. The Home Office would like to hear from any users who have developed applications for these data tables and any suggestions for future releases. Please contact the Crime Analysis team at crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk.

List of the data tables as part of the ‘Crime outcomes in England and Wales’ Home Office release.

There are counting rules for recorded crime to help to ensure that crimes are recorded consistently and accurately.

These tables are designed to have many uses. The Home Office would like to hear from any users who have developed applications for these data tables and any suggestions for future releases. If you have any feedback, please contact the Crime Analysis team at crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk.

Related content

Crime outcomes in England and Wales statistics
Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables user guide

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/680797798c1316be7978e6cb/recrime-geo-pfa.csv">Recorded crime data geographical reference table (CSV, 21.9 KB)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6807988b148a9969d2394e5a/reccrime-offence-ref.ods">Recorded crime data offence reference table (ODS, 14 KB)

Police record crime open data, Police force area tables

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/680799613bdfd1243078e6d1/prc-pfa-mar2013-onwards-tables-240425.ods">Police recorded crime open data Police Force Area tables, year ending March 2013 onwards (ODS, 12.6 MB)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/680799ed8c1316be7978e6cd/prc-pfa-mar2008-mar2012-tabs.ods">Police recorded crime open data Police Force Area tables from March 2008 to March 2012 (ODS, 6.05 MB)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68079a4f3bdfd1243078e6d2/prc-pfa-0203-to-0607-tabs.ods">Police recorded crime open data Police Force Area tables from year ending March 2003 to year ending March 2007 (ODS, 4.79 MB)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68079bce148a9969d2394e5e/prc-subcodes-vawg-offences-mar2020-dec2024-240525.ods">Police recorded crime subcodes for selected VAWG offences, from year ending March 2020 to year ending December 2024 (ODS, 484 KB)

Police record crime open data, Community Safety Partnership tables

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68079c630324470d6a394e68/prc-csp-mar16-dec24-tables-240425.ods">Police recorded crime Community Safety Partnership open data, year ending March 2016 to year ending December 2024 (ODS, 73.5 MB)

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