Campaign: Criminal justice data gaps
We want an evidence-led criminal justice system - which uses data as its basis for promoting transparency, fairness and effectiveness.
What’s the problem?
Our criminal justice system is rife with data gaps. By data gaps we mean areas where a lack of published data makes it hard to answer questions of significant public interest.
We think these data gaps obstruct genuine scrutiny and development of our justice system. The absence of data makes it harder to spot where services are failing, whether marginalised groups are being mistreated, and support evidence-based policymaking.
Our work
Our work has focused on mapping and addressing these data gaps.
Despite repeated calls from MPs and researchers to start publishing certain types of data, we found that basic criminal justice questions still cannot be answered, such as: how many defendants appear in magistrates’ courts without legal representation? Or how many defendants are held in custodial remand beyond the legal time limits?
Our paper ‘Data and statistical gaps in criminal justice’ sets out why these data gaps matter and provides the Ministry of Justice with technical recommendations for how they could be addressed at minimal cost.
Publications
Report: Data and statistical gaps in criminal justice
March 2023
This report, supported by the Justice Lab, maps data gaps in the criminal justice system of England & Wales. It outlines how data can be used to create a fairer, more transparent justice system and provides the Ministry of Justice with technical recommendations to address existing gaps.
Briefing: Unrepresented defendants
February 2023
This briefing explores why data is needed on the number of defendants that appear in magistrates’ courts without legal representation.
Unrepresented defendants can face harsher justice outcomes, are more likely to have negative court experiences and typically slow down hearings. Despite public interest in this data, no official data is published on unrepresented defendants.
Briefing: Court backlogs
February 2023
This briefing identifies data gaps regarding the court backlog and how they could be addressed.
In particular, we call for timeliness data to be broken down by individual courts and types of crimes, and for a breakdown of plea types in the Crown Court backlog - as well as much more.
Briefing: Out of court disposals
February 2023
This briefing studies data gaps around out of court disposals (OOCDs) - non-court resolutions issued by the police to deal with low-level offenders.
Currently, very little data is published on who receives certain types of OOCDs and how effective they are at, for example, reducing the reoffending rate.
Briefing: Custodial remand
January 2023
This briefing examines data gaps on custodial remand.
We call for data to be routinely published on the length of time people spend in remand and the reasons why remand is used.
These data gaps make it harder to monitor trends in the use of custodial remand, and to identify the number of defendants being held beyond legal time limits.
Briefing: Conditional bail
January 2023
This briefing calls for the Ministry of Justice to fill data gaps on conditional bail.
We currently are unable to answer basic questions such as how many people are released on conditional bail or what type of conditions are being attached. We provide recommendations on how to address these concerns.
Written evidence: Remand data
January 2023
We provided evidence to the Justice Select Committee’s inquiry into adult custodial remand.
We call for data to be routinely published on the length of time people spend in remand and the reasons why remand is used.
Written evidence: Sentencing data
October 2022
We provided evidence to the Justice Select Committee’s inquiry into public opinion and understanding of sentencing.
Our response calls on the MoJ to improve accessibility to the sentencing data it already produces, and to start publishing court-level sentencing data. We also suggest that researchers should have access to anonymised judge-level sentencing data to better understand the causes of sentencing disparities.
What’s next?
The Justice Select Committee have called on the Government to “give urgent consideration” to our report’s recommendations and conclusions - which is highly encouraging.
We now think it’s time for the Ministry of Justice to act. Over the next few months we’ll be calling on the department to directly address certain gaps - such as its unfulfilled commitment to the Lammy Review to publish court-level sentencing data.
If you have any interest in supporting our advocacy work in this field, we would love to hear from you. Please do get in touch at contact@centreforpublicdata.org.