Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many convictions there were for murder in each year since 2005; and what the conviction rate was in the same period.

The Ministry of Justice holds data on convictions for murder offences.

The published data, from 2010 to 2022, can be found in the following tool: Outcomes by Offence tool: December 2022.

The most recent published data available, from year ending June 2011 until the year ending June 2023, can be found in the following tool: Outcomes by Offence tool: June 2023.

The full calendar year for 2023 will be available in the next update of the Outcomes by Offence tool, expected in May 2024.

The data can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Prosecutions and convictions’ tab and using the offence code filer to select the following offences in the Outcomes by Offence data tool:

• 00101 Murder – victim aged 1 year or over
• 00102 Murder – victim under one year old

To cover the full period requested, convictions for murder offences from 2005 to 2009 have been provided in Table 1.

It is not advised to use this data to calculate conviction rate due to the Court Proceedings Database counting two separate records at two separate stages. We cannot track the defendant throughout their court journey and an individual may appear at each court in separate years, or for a different principal offence at different stages. As a result, this rate is not an accurate measure of the proportion of prosecutions that result in a conviction.