Please note that it has come to our attention that table 5.16 of Court Proceedings was incorrect when originally published. This table has now been replaced with a corrected version.

The annual release, presented on a calendar year basis, covers offenders dealt with by formal police cautions, reprimands or warning, or criminal court proceedings in England and Wales.

The order of chapters follows the flow of cases through the criminal justice system. As in previous years, more detailed data for the calendar year covered are published separately in six volumes of supplementary tables.

Court level sentencing data are now available for the first time as part of the commitments made in the Ministry of Justice’s Structural Reform Plan, in accordance with public data principles. The data will provide members of the public with information about what happened in their court and the sentences given.

The report is released by the Ministry of Justice and produced in accordance with arrangements provided by the UK Statistics Authority.

The Criminal statistics, England and Wales 2009 were published on 21 October 2010.

The supplementary tables (Excel spreadsheets in zip files) were published on 21 October 2010.

http://www.justice.gov.uk/statistics/previous-stats/sentencing-annual">Sentencing Statistics (annual) (NS)

Changes to the statistics were published on 20 October 2010.

Previous issues

http://www.justice.gov.uk/statistics/previous-stats/archive">Criminal statistics annual report archive

Please email the web team if you have difficulty opening the zipped files.

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:

Ministry of Justice: Secretary of State; Minister for Criminal Justice; Minister of State; Permanent Secretary; Special Adviser; Director General, Criminal Justice Group; Head of Better Trials Unit; four policy advisors; Director of Analytical Services; two sentencing policy managers; Senior Press Officer; four press officers; Strategic Communications Advisor; Head of Fairness and Confidence Unit; Director Criminal Policy, Head of Justice Team; Head of Community Confidence Team; Strategy Manager.

Home Office: Home Secretary; Permanent Secretary; Minister for Police and Crime Reduction; Head of Crime Strategy; Head of Violent Crime Unit; Head of Crime Strategy; Press Officer; Chief Statistician.

Attorney General’s Office: Attorney General; Solicitor General; Senior Policy Official.

Crown Prosecution Service: Press Officer.

Sentencing Council: Chairman of the Sentencing Council

The Judiciary: Lord Chief Justice; Senior Presiding Judge

When the Home Secretary commissioned the National Statistician to undertake an independent review of crime statistics for England and Wales in December 2010, the terms of reference asked her to consider “whether or not the categories of notifiable offences for police recorded crime reported in the national statistics can be sensibly rationalised without reducing public trust or damaging transparency”.

The National Statistician found that there may be some scope to reduce the number of crime categories used for the reporting and collection of police recorded crime, and to consider how some offences currently excluded from notifiable crime might be reflected in published crime statistics. The National Statistician also stated that any change must be managed and introduced in a controlled and transparent way. She recommended that the issue should be considered by the new independent Advisory Committee on crime statistics that her report also recommended be established.

To inform the Committee’s consideration of these proposals, the Home Office issued a National Statistics consultation on 20 October 2011 on proposed changes to the collection.

• http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/home-office-science/consult-reccrime-class/consult-reccrime-class">Consultation on changes to recorded crime classifications and categories (PDF file - 367kb)
• http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/home-office-science/consult-reccrime-class/consult-reccrime-class-tabs">Data tables - Consultation on changes to recorded crime classifications and categories data tables (Microsoft Excel file - 130kb)

Below is the Home Office response to the above consultation which summarises the response from users to the consultation and the subsequent advice the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee gave to the Home Secretary on the issue. The Committee’s advice to the Home Secretary and her response are available at the web page of the http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/national-statistician/ns-reports--reviews-and-guidance/national-statistician-s-advisory-committees/crime-statistics-advisory-committee.html">Crime Statistics Advisory Committee.

The outlined changes to the classifications used for the collection of police recorded crime will come into effect on 1 April 2012.

• http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/home-office-science/consult-reccrime-class/consult-reccrime-class-response">Consultation on the changes to Police Recorded Crime classifications: Response from Home Office Statistics (PDF file - 288kb)

The changes to the collection outlined above will have no effect on the total number of recorded crimes but will have some limited impact on sub-categories due the aggregation of some existing categories. The changes will not feed through into the published statistics until the release related to the period ending June 2012, due for release in October 2012. A methodological note explaining the changes being made, the reasons for the change and an assessment of the likely impact will be published on 19 April along with the next quarterly release of crime statistics.

Responsibility for the compilation and publication of crime statistics for England and Wales will transfer to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) from 1 April 2012. The ONS will be considering improvements to the presentation of published statistics in line with the recommendations made in the National Statistician’s review. This will include the presentation of the recorded crime classifications in National Statistics outputs which will be affected by changes to collection outlined above.

Date: Thu Mar 29 09:30:00 BST 2012

• http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/home-office-science/consult-reccrime-class/consult-reccrime-class?view=Binary">Consultation on changes to recorded crime classifications and categories (PDF file - 367kb)
• http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/home-office-science/consult-reccrime-class/consult-reccrime-class-tabs?view=Binary">Data tables - Consultation on changes to recorded crime classifications and categories data tables (Microsoft Excel file - 130kb)
• http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/home-office-science/consult-reccrime-class/consult-reccrime-class-response?view=Binary">Consultation on the changes to Police Recorded Crime classifications: Response from Home Office Statistics (PDF file

Home Office Statistical Bulletin 08/12 presents police recorded crime statistics on the levels and trends in detections and detection rates in England & Wales for the financial year 2011/12.

The bulletin focuses on sanction detections where the offender receives some formal sanction such as being charged or summonsed, cautioned, reprimanded or given a final warning. Sanction detections also include penalty notices for disorder, warnings for cannabis possession and offences which are asked to be taken into consideration by a court.

Longer term datasets contain https://data.gov.uk/dataset/0e26ee1b-26b7-406e-a3b1-f3481b324977/local-police-recorded-crime-data">police recorded crime for police force areas and local authorities.

Outcomes assigned to offences recorded to December 2024 and the total number of outcomes recorded, by outcome type and offence type.

For the latest data tables see ‘Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables’.

These data tables present statistics for police recorded crime outcomes in England and Wales.

For the year to December 2018 these data tables show:

• what outcomes police forces assigned to offences recorded in the year, including the proportion not yet assigned an outcome
• all crime outcomes that were assigned by police forces during the year, some of which relate to crimes recorded in previous years
• crimes recorded in the year that were later transferred to another police force or ‘cancelled’, and why

For further information and commentary on crime outcomes statistics please see ‘Crime outcomes in England and Wales statistics’.

Detailed police recorded crime and outcomes data and longer term datasets are available in the police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables.

The report presents key statistics on activity in the criminal justice system for England and Wales. It provides information up to the year ending March 2020 with accompanying commentary, analysis and presentation of longer term trends.

Please note that the decision has been made to delay the offending histories and out of court disposals components of this publication. In line with https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Regulatory-guidance_changing-methods_Coronavirus.pdf">guidance from the Office for Statistics Regulation, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused MoJ to have to change its data gathering, access and release practices, focusing efforts on priority analysis and statistics. In particular, we paused access to the Police National Computer, on which these components rely, to minimise non-essential travel by our analysts. We will keep users updated of any further changes via our published release calendar. We will be publishing a response to our February consultation on changes to the frequency and timing of the offending histories components, setting out when these will be published in the future.

Statistician’s comment:

The number of defendants prosecuted has fallen over the last decade and figures published today continue that trend, with a slight decrease in the year ending March 2020. The figures released today cover the period to the end of March 2020 and any COVID-19 impacts, for example on the level of prosecutions, are likely to be small. For more information about COVID-19 impacts on courts, see the HMCTS regular management information publication: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmcts-management-information.

There have been increases in prosecutions for some of the most serious offence groups in the latest year, in particular violence, drug offences, robbery and sexual offences. The increase in prosecutions and convictions for violence continue to be driven by the legislation that introduced the new offence of ‘assaults on emergency workers’ from November 2018, while the increases for other offences groups are driven by an increase in charges brought forward by the police.

The publication also shows the different pattern for custody rates across offences – with a continued increase in custody rates for the most serious, indictable, offences, alongside a reduction in rates for summary offences. Average custodial sentence lengths continue to rise and were the highest in a decade. Although we often consider crimes to correlate with prosecutions, we would not expect prosecutions to move directly in line with the ONS published police recorded crime series, or Crime Survey for England and Wales as only those crimes that result in a charge are likely to flow into courts – in addition criminal court prosecutions cover a much broader range of offences than police recorded crime or the survey.

Pre-release access

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:

Ministry of Justice

Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice; Minister of State for Prisons and Probation; 2 Parliamentary Under Secretary of States; Lords spokesperson; Principal Private Secretary; Deputy Principal Private Secretary; 3 Private Secretaries; 4 Assistant Private Secretaries; Permanent Secretary; Head of Permanent Secretary’s Office; Special Advisor; Head of News; 2 Deputy Heads of News; 3 Press Officers; Director, Family and Criminal Justice Policy; Director of Data and Analytical Services; Chief Statistician; Director General, Policy, Communications and Analysis Group; Deputy Director, Bail, Sentencing and Release Policy; Section Head, Criminal Court Policy; Director, Offender and Youth Justice Policy; Statistician, Youth Justice Board; Data Analyst, Youth Justice Board; Deputy Director, Crime; Crime Service Manager (Case Progression) - Courts and Tribunals Development; Deputy Director, Legal Operations - Courts & Tribunals Development Directorate; Head of Criminal Law policy; 2 Policy Managers – Youth Courts and Sentencing; 6 Policy Advisors; 2 Justice Statistics analysts; Head of Data Innovation, Analysis and Linking; Head of PNC/Offender Histories Analysis; Head of Criminal Courts Statistics.

Home Office

Home Secretary; Private Secretary to the Home Secretary; Deputy Principal Private Secretary to the Home Secretary; Permanent Secretary, Home Office; Assistant Private Secretary to the Home Office Permanent Secretary; Minister of State for Policing and the Fire Service; Assistant Private Secretary Minister of State for Policing and the

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 2024 with accompanying commentary, analysis and presentation of longer-term trends.

Statistician’s comment

Alongside increasing police charge rates, the volume of prosecutions and convictions at criminal courts continued to increase. For the more serious indictable offences prosecutions and convictions reached their highest level since the year to September 2017.

This rise in convictions for more serious offences has increased the number of offenders being sentenced to immediate custody, while the volumes of those remanded in custody continued to rise.

For defendants sentenced to custody, the average custodial sentence length reduced slightly but remains high. The reduction in the latest period is largely due to the change in offence mix of offences sentenced to custody, with more theft offences, which attract lower custodial sentences generally.