Returning defendants and distributive justice outcomes evidenced from Data First linked criminal courts data in England and Wales, 2011-2019.

• In Event: Sentencing and justice outcomes over defendants' ethnicity, gender, age and area of residence

Abstract

A pioneering data-linking programme, Data First, funded by ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK) has produced a suite of research – ready linked justice datasets for academic interrogation to fill theoretical and policy evidence gaps. The programme de-duplicates, de-identifies and links administrative data from across the justice system and with other England and Wales government departments to provide powerful new insights on justice system users, their pathways, and outcomes across a range of public services. Aligned with the substantive long-term decrease in the volume of crimes in England and Wales since the mid-1990s, the volume of defendants proceeded against for indictable offences in the criminal courts and the number of defendants aged 18-24 proceeded against in the magistrates’ courts fell considerably in the 2010’s decade.
This presentation discusses descriptive findings on: defendants in the criminal courts of England and Wales across offence types; the extent and nature of repeat court appearances, including the type of offences returning defendants are most likely to enter the criminal courts for; the spatial distribution of first-time juvenile offenders across local authority areas (2011-2019); and of all Crown Court defendants by offence type across the twenty per cent most deprived neighbourhoods (2013-2019). The results demonstrate how linked administrative data available through the ground-breaking Data First programme can be used for academic research and, as a case study, shed light on the vertical equity of the crime drop. The presentation concludes with: speculations on potential reasons for the presence of the identified crime inequalities; suggestions for further analyses, and their data requirements, to confirm or discredit these theoretical propositions; and policy implications of the present findings.

Authors

• Andromachi Tseloni, Nottingham Trent University

• James Hunter, Nottingham Trent University

• Thomas Jackson, Ministry of Justice