Key statistics on Criminal Justice

The criminal justice system (CJS) in the UK refers to the system that is in place to prevent crime, to catch criminals and to deliver justice. This involves the police, the courts, the probation service, prisons, community and prevention services. The CJS costs the Government £47.7 billion a year (public order and safety in 2023/24), an increase of 23% from ten years ago. As of June 2023, there were 1.42 million people in the criminal justice system, either on a court order, community sentence or in prison, over the course of last year.

In this series of statistics we have broken down the information into three parts.

1. Crime and how people enter the criminal justice system.

2. Prison and other forms of punishment and

3. Rehabilitation and reoffending.

These stats are hyperlinked with their source and updated when new data comes out.

Crime and how people enter the criminal justice system 

• Overall crime has reduced by 22% since 2017. However, there have been some exceptions – such as sexual assault which is up by 1.1% from 2014 and shoplifting remains at its highest level in 20 years.