Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, how many people have been charged with attempted murder in each of the last three years by age group.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not maintain a central record of the number of people charged with and prosecuted for attempted murder. This information could only be obtained by an examination of CPS case files, which would incur disproportionate cost.

While no data is held reporting the number of people prosecuted specifically for attempted murder, the CPS can report the number of defendants where the prosecution was flagged under the ‘homicide’ category at finalisation.

The ‘homicide’ category includes offences of murder, manslaughter, causing death by driving dangerously, carelessly or under the influence of alcohol/drugs. The corresponding inchoate offences, such as conspiracy, solicitation, or criminal attempts, are also assigned to this category. It is not possible to separately report prosecution outcomes by the individual offences allocated to this category.

The table below shows by age group, the number of prosecutions in which defendants were allocated the ’homicide’ category at finalisation during each of the last three years.