How well is the justice system working?

What this means

What this means

Crimes such as carrying a weapon or drug possession are usually discovered by police with the suspect in front of them, so they are far more likely to lead to a charge. Burglary and vehicle crime usually happen when nobody is around, so finding a suspect is much harder.

Rape cases often rely heavily on the victim's own evidence and can take a long time to investigate. About half of recorded rapes are closed because of evidential difficulties. The Home Office expects this year's rape charge rate to rise as more investigations finish.

What this means

Big city forces such as the Metropolitan Police, West Midlands and Greater Manchester record far more crime per person than rural forces, and they also have more officers per head. A high crime rate does not on its own mean an area is less safe for any one person, because cities draw in large numbers of commuters and visitors who are not counted in the resident population.

Charge rates vary less between forces than crime rates do. Tap any dot on the chart to switch to that force.

What the capacity figures show

The number of court and tribunal buildings fell by almost half between 2010 and 2024, from about 600 to about 320. Around 235 buildings closed in the two main closure programmes alone (2011 to 2014 and 2016 to 2018), mostly magistrates' and county courts. The number of magistrates more than halved between 2004-05 and 2022, before recruitment picked up again.

Crown Court sitting days were cut to about 82,000 in 2019-20, which the government's own review describes as a 20-year low. The backlog was already rising before the pandemic hit. Sitting days are now back above 110,000, but the backlog has not yet started to fall, because new cases are arriving at a similar rate.

What this means

More cases are arriving at court than the courts are able to finish, so the queue keeps growing. The backlog jumped in 2020 when courts closed during the pandemic, but it has kept rising since. London has the longest waits once a case reaches the Crown Court, and Wales the shortest.

Longer waits affect everyone involved. Victims and witnesses wait longer for their case to be heard, memories fade, and some victims withdraw. Defendants held on remand spend that time in prison before their trial.

What this means

In the year to March 2016, about 1 in 10 adult rapes reported to the police led to a charge. By 2019 it was about 1 in 30. It has since recovered a little, to around 1 in 20, but the figures for the latest two years will rise as open investigations finish. A charge typically takes almost a year from the report.

When a trial cannot go ahead on the day, victims and witnesses who have prepared to give evidence are sent home. In 2022, a strike by criminal barristers meant more than a third of Crown Court trials did not go ahead. The rate has eased but is still well above where it was before the pandemic.

The number of Crown Court cases that have been waiting two years or more has risen from about 750 at the end of 2019 to more than 7,000. Long waits make it harder for witnesses to remember events and more likely that victims withdraw.

What this means

Operational capacity is the most people prisons can hold safely. When almost every place is taken, there is little room to move people between prisons, keep vulnerable prisoners apart, or cope with a sudden rise in numbers.

Since autumn 2024 the government has released some prisoners earlier in their sentence to free up space. A change to the rules on recall in April 2026 reduced numbers by about 1,600. That is why the population has fallen since its peak, even though the court backlog is still growing.

Remand rises when cases take longer to reach trial, so the growing court backlog shows up here too. About one prisoner in six is now on remand. Self-harm has also roughly doubled since 2016, assaults on staff are back around their pre-pandemic level, and assaults between prisoners have climbed back towards their 2019 peak.

What this means

Roughly 3 in 10 people go on to commit another offence that leads to a conviction within a year. The rate fell to 23.1% in 2020, mainly because courts were closed and fewer new offences reached a conviction. It has risen every year since and, at 29.9%, is close to where it was in the mid-2010s.

The Probation Service supervises people serving community sentences and those released from prison on licence. Its caseload jumped by almost 10,000 in the first three months of 2026, partly because of a new way of counting. Staff numbers look as if they rose sharply in 2022, but that is when private probation companies were brought back into the public service in June 2021.

What this means

After 2010, spending on the courts service fell by about two fifths in real terms, reaching its lowest point in 2017 to 2018. Over the same years, Crown Court sitting days were cut, which left little spare capacity when the pandemic closed courts in 2020. Spending has since recovered, but is still below 2010 levels after inflation.

Criminal legal aid pays for defence lawyers for people who cannot afford one. It fell by more than a third in real terms over 15 years. Fewer defence lawyers can mean more delays, as the 2022 barristers' strike showed.

The Crown Court has been funded to sit far more days since the pandemic, more than 110,000 in 2025 to 2026. But more cases are still arriving than are being finished, so the backlog keeps growing.

What this means