Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what the average wait time between charge and sentence for crimes tried by jury was (1) in each year from 2008 to 2019, and (2) in each month of 2020.

The average number of days taken from charge to completion for crimes tried by jury in the Crown Court in England and Wales between the period of 2008 to 2019 has been provided in the table below.

The average waiting time between charge and completion for crimes tried by jury in the Crown Court in England and Wales in each month of 2020 is not available at this time. This is due to MoJ changing its data gathering, access and release practices due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notes:

1) Includes cases with an offence to completion time greater than 10 years but excludes a small number of cases with identified data quality issues and breaches. 2) Includes all for trial criminal cases (triable-either-way and indictable only cases) which have received a verdict and concluded in the specified time period in the Crown Court. This data also includes cases where the prosecutor has chosen not to continue with the prosecution. Not all cases included in this data will have gone to a full jury trial, for example where the defendant has pleaded guilty before their trial date.

3) Only one offence is counted for each defendant in the case. If there is more than one offence per defendant that completes on the same day, a set of validation rules applies to select one offence only and these relate to the longest duration, seriousness and the lowest sequence number of the offence.

4) Data from Q1 2018 to Q4 2019 are not comparable with previous periods and there is a requirement to break the series. The data from Q1 2018 onwards has been revised following the identification of defendant attrition through the timeliness process, as a result these defendants have been put back into the analysis. It is our intention to investigate the more efficient and effective way to provide robust and reliable back series in future.

5) The number of defendants shows the number whose cases have completed and where it has been possible to match from initial appearance at magistrates’ court to completion in the Crown Court. The match rate is typically between 90-95%, as for some cases, it is not possible to match defendants through the system and these cases are excluded.

6) Timeliness figures are only available from April 2010, so data for 2010 is presented above for Q2 to Q4 only.

7) Committal proceedings were abolished nationally on 28th May 2013. Triable-either-way cases are now sent rather than committed for trial.