FOI reference: FOI-2024-2447

You asked

I would be very grateful if you could please provide me with a summary of the "issues with the quality of the source data" referred to by Mr Humpherson in his letter to the MoJ of 21 November 2024.

I would be grateful if you could please let me know:

  • which areas of the criminal justice system are affected by these data issues: ie. policing? courts? prosecution? another?

  • what categories of offence are impacted by these data issues? ie. sexual offences? fraud? etc

  • are the issues national or regional or both?

  • how severe are the data issues? 

  • how long have you estimated it will take to fix the data issues?

We said

Thank you for your request.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) published the latest criminal court statistics on 12 December. As part of the release of the statistics, MoJ published a Crown Court data quality update which summarises the scale, nature and impact of the data quality issues. The issues, which have now been resolved, only affected Crown Court data and have a minimal impact on trends in the caseload.

We're currently reviewing MoJ's approach to investigating and addressing the quality issues and will be publishing our findings and recommendations in the new year.