Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information her Department holds on the numbers of people who have been released under investigation for more than a year during the last five years.

Decisions on release and safeguarding are operational matters for individual and operationally independent police forces, taken in accordance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, its Codes of Practice, and national professional guidance. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services regularly inspects police forces, including on how they protect vulnerable people.

The Home Office hold statistics on the numbers of individuals Released Under Investigation by duration in the Police Custody and Pre-Charge Bail release, which covers the years 2022/23 to 2024/25:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69d50f114d39faba1f3b27a9/released-under-investigation-data-tables-year-ending-march-2025.ods

Prior to this, for 2020/21 and 2021/22 the Released Under Investigation statistics were published as Experimental Statistics.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/61b74f1fe90e070445fd782c/released-under-investigation-data-tables-police-powers-and-procedures-year-ending-march-2021.xlsx

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/636e3e4a8fa8f559604a0b2f/pre-charge-bail-statistics-police-powers-and-procedure-year-ending-march-2022.xlsx.ods

Due to the provisional and incomplete nature of this dataset, statistics on Released Under Investigation have been designated as ‘Official Statistics in Development’, to acknowledge that further development is ongoing to improve data quality.

Additionally, as different numbers of police forces have been able to provide Released Under Investigation data in each year, any trends on the number of people who were on Released Under Investigation for longer than a year should be interpreted with caution.