Criminal Justice Statistics

The court system data used in this bulletin goes through a variety of validation and consistency checks. Individual records are validated in an automated process that highlights irregularities and inconsistencies. In particular, checks are made, where possible, to ensure that: Offences are correct and legitimate for the age of the defendant; The sentence given for an offence is applicable in law; Hearings are consistent with the court they are heard in; and Sentences follow guidelines given the age of the offender and the offence committed. In general data validation is ongoing to investigate unusual trends or records. For serious offences (such as homicide and serious sexual offences) and severe disposals (such as life imprisonment and indeterminate sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection [IPP]) individual records are flagged for manual confirmation which further reduces the possibility of error. 9For the Crown Court, where these validation failures occur, the data are corrected by referring to original court registers. Approximately 17,000 individual records in 2011 were corrected. At the magistrates’ courts the sheer volume of courts records (around 2.8 million per year compared with 100,000 Crown Court records) means these files cannot follow the same process. The majority of validation failures are subject to automatic amendment and any serious errors are manually checked. - From April 2011 all cautions data are collected from the Police National Computer, the records are validated for accuracy and completeness and amended as necessary. Additionally any apparent cautions given for serious offences, such as rape, are investigated thoroughly with forces. All cautions data prior to April 2011 were collected directly from police forces and have been through the same validation process.